This biography is based on an oral interview with Linnie’s son, Ted Calvert, and written information supplied by her daughter, Valerie, and son, Alan. Photos were provided by the Calvert family, Erin Foley, and Cindy Farquhar. This biography was collated by Rennae Taylor.
Contents
Class of 1948
Family background and childhood
Linnie Bryant Tombleson was born on 12th January 1925 on the high-country family sheep farm at Ahi-titi, situated in the Waimata Valley, about 38 kilometres north of Gisborne. She was welcomed into the farming family of Ted and Nora Leslie (nee Hughes) Tombleson and her two older siblings, four-year-old sister Cecil and two-year-old brother John.
Her father, Cecil Edward Tombleson (Ted), had grown up in Otonga, near Gisborne, in a farming family (originally from Barton-on-Humber, England). He lied about his age and went to Egypt to fight in World War I where he was injured, hospitalized and met his future wife Nora Leslie Tombleson née Hughes. They married on the 29th January 1921.
Nora was born in Pahiatua. Her father came from County Kent in England and was an early NZ surveyor. She trained and graduated as a nurse at Wellington Hospital and when World War I broke out she was “head hunted” to look after injured soldiers in Heliopolis, Egypt where the Aotea Convalescent Home had been established. Decades later, after the death of her husband at the age of 45 years, she did some private nursing which included accompanying and caring for wealthy sick elderly women on overseas trips.
Nurse Wade, a friend of Linnie’s mother who had been with her during the war, came to Ahi-titi to attend to the birth and to care for mother and baby. Linnie and her siblings grew up on her parents’ high country sheep farm. Linnie had a strong attraction to the outdoors but on the farm her two older siblings dominated the farm work allowing Linnie to help her mother in the home and so she and her mother became good friends.
She didn’t have as strong attraction to the sheep and sheepdogs the way the rest of the family did but she loved mustering and became a good horse rider. Her main jobs were milking the cows, churning for butter, keeping the firewood chopped and stacked, and helping her mother in the vegetable garden. The family were self-sufficient in milk, meat, vegetables and fruit and even made their own soap. They went to town only on special occasions such as sheep sales, or when they needed to buy machinery, cloth, flour, salt or sugar.
On their remote farm, Nora was called upon by the local community to help with many health challenges and would sometimes look after them in the family home. This early childhood influence is probably what led to Linnie’s initial career aspiration, and what helped prepare her for the pioneer life she would later lead.
Linnie started correspondence school at the age of seven. Her brother said her memory was exceptional. After completing fifth form, at the age of 14, she went to Solway College, in Masterton for two years to gain University Entrance. Linnie was dux of her year; which is still noted on the “hall of fame” at the school. During this time, she was able to get to know her mother’s side of the family who lived in Pahiatua in the Wairarapa.
Another big part of her teenage years was leading a loan guide troupe. She travelled around the north island by train to visit the other loan guides in her team. Her children can see in retrospect how all this studying alone by correspondence, learning from home and corresponding with other children who were alone, was good preparation for her future on the mission field. She learned to be self-sufficient and self-taught so that she found ways not to get lonely in a foreign and lonely place.
When the headmistress asked what she wanted to do following graduation, she replied that she hadn’t really thought about it but had thought to become a nurse like her mother. Her headmistress told her that her marks were good enough to go to university, and she should think about university instead (an unusual choice for a farm girl in those days). This advice plus the inspiration of the story of the medical missionary, Dr Ida Scudder, who went to India and eventually founded the Vellore Christian College in 1918 for training women medical doctors inspired Linnie to lift her goals. (Her children remember their parents first invitation to mission work was actually to Vellore).
She left school to be with her mother when her father died in April 1941 and by this time, she was inspired to be a missionary doctor. Two foreign languages were required for entrance to medicine, so Linnie spent a year back home studying Greek to add to her Latin qualification before going to study medicine at University of Otago in 1942 at the age of 17 years. There was a family discussion about her chosen career pathway with her uncles in disagreement – they had never heard of a Tombleson going to university and certainly not going as far away to Dunedin. Her mother supported her though and paid all her expenses beyond what her university bursary funded. During the summer break she would return to the farm and help with fencing and other projects.
University and house surgeon years
Linnie initially boarded with a widow who was a friend of her mother’s then later stayed in a women’s hostel which her son thinks was run by Knox. She attended Knox Presbyterian Church and the University Christian Fellowship and enjoyed the youth activities which included tramping, picnics, tennis and ski trips; she loved to walk and to be in the outdoors. She never felt part of the university social scene and her son said this would have been her choice. Her daughter said the male students did look down on the women and her mother carried a slight grudge about this. Her 5th year medical student research essay “Tuberculosis among the Māori of the Cook Hospital District” was done with her classmate Shirley Robertson . During her sixth year she boarded with relatives on the North Shore, took the ferry across to the city and would walk up to Auckland Hospital. She graduated with her MB ChB in 1948, did her house surgeon years at Auckland and Wellington then went to work at Cook Hospital, Gisborne to be close to her mother for at least a year after she graduated.
While at university Linnie met her future husband, Peter Calvert, who was the brother of her best friend, Nora Calvert. His son said “when his mother found out he also wanted to be a missionary doctor, she knew he was the man for her.” Peter had done one year of law at Otago University before enlisting and being trained in Canada to become a World War II Royal Air Force navigator in a Mosquito bomber squadron. His son said war was hard for people who believed in freedom but also preferred not to kill people. Navigation sat with his father’s conscience more easily than many other positions, as it was an essential and difficult role that didn’t require “pulling the trigger”. On his return from the war, he changed his career pathway to medicine as he felt it had more ability to improve the world compared to law.
Peter finished his medical training in 1951 and he and Linnie married two weeks later at the Wairarapa farm of one of the Hughes relatives who had embraced Linnie during her two years at Solway College. Nora Calvert and Lloyd Geering were their attendants which their son finds amusing as his parents and Gerring certainly diverged significantly in their Christian beliefs in latter years.
Early career and commitment to their lifelong mission at Kapuna
Ted believes his parents desire for mission work would have evolved over the time of their courtship. He recalls as children hearing the following type of reply from his father:
“Growing up, he’d always say that he didn’t want to be cutting or dealing with the ingrown toenails of rich people. In our mind, we had no idea what an ingrown toenail was. So we visualised these little old ladies with purple streaks in their hair, with the sort of toenails that had somehow curved up and grown into their toe. It wasn’t until we were well into adulthood we figured out what an ingrown toenail was. But, because it was a typical reason for why they were not in New Zealand we just imagined it must be the most horrendous medical issue that one had to deal with. It actually meant, we’re not going to deal with trivial things like this, but we thought it was some really dastardly thing that he feared to do in New Zealand. So I think both of them had an aversion to making the rich more comfortable when there were poor who were needing to be protected from dying.”
The couple were committed to equality and Indigenous rights and sought to help people with limited access to education.
During the next couple of years, they consolidated their medical skills at Auckland and Wellington Hospitals and had their first child Valerie in 1952. Linnie worked in chest medicine and tuberculosis (TB) and Peter did extra training in obstetrics in preparation for the adventurous life of missionary doctors to which they both aspired. They were sent by the London Missionary Society (LMS) to do an eight-month tropical medicine course at Sydney Medical School and while there welcomed their second child Edward (Ted). Peter’s mother came over to help with childcare. They were offered a position at Vellore Hospital in India but declined as they learned the position had a suitable Indian national doctor applicant as well as they only wanted Peter; the wives were not allowed to work and were expected to go to the mountains for the hot season. Linnie wanted to work even if she didn’t get paid.
In 1954 they were sent to a remote jungle swamplands mission hospital at Kapuna, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Kapuna Hospital, on the banks of the Wami River was built in 1949 with a monetary gift from a UK donor to the LMS prior to World War II. It was replaced by a new hospital in 2022, and the work is now part of Gulf Christian Services (GCS).
Linnie and Peter fell in love with Kapuna and its people and made it their lifetime home. In PNG no one cared whether she worked or not. They had two further children, Alan in 1957 and Colin in 1958 and once again Peter’s mother came to help with childcare. Linnie worked part-time during these early years and taught her four children using New Zealand (NZ) correspondence school, until they left for secondary education in NZ where they stayed with relatives. Peter died in 1982, and Linnie took over the running of Kapuna on her own. While Peter was alive, Linnie worked but was never paid. When he died, his mission salary went with him. Linnie worked on a nurse tutor position (or possibly a matron’s position) and salary.
Valerie graduated as a PNG trained doctor in 1976. She had medical registration in NZ and worked there for many years, and later she returned to take over the running of Kapuna hospital when Linnie was 83 years old. Colin and his wife Barbara became the administrators of the hospital and raised their four children there. Ted and Alan both became NZ engineers but regularly returned to help with projects.
Through their life commitment to Kapuna, Linnie and Peter were able to serve more than 45,000 tribal people in this remote area accessible only by boat/canoe. During her lifetime Linnie delivered generations of babies – estimated at 10,000 over 60 years. She helped save many lives through aggressive treatment of TB, and immunization against deadly diseases like measles and cholera – the vaccines stored safely with a kerosene-powered refrigerator. They also largely eradicated the parasitic skin disease scabies in the region. They trained young local women as nurses for the hospital and over a thousand male and female community healthcare workers (CHW) to work in the isolated communities throughout the nation. They set up aid posts which were small clinics run by locals who they trained in basic medical care. This training is now done at the Community Health Workers School at Kapuna. They provided medical advice via two-way radio to mission stations throughout the nation and travelled to remote areas by paddle or motorized canoe, and later were assisted into some areas by MAF, Missionary Aviation Fellowship float planes.
Linnie was devout in her faith and loved to teach the bible to community healthcare workers, nurses, and students, also translating parts of the New Testament into local dialects. She was always on call for people and was passionate about alleviating suffering. When not working, Linnie would spend many happy hours tending her garden, planting flowers, bananas and pineapples.
Awards
Dr Calvert received the British Empire Medal for meritorious services to health in 2002, and the Queens Service Order in 2003, for community service. She was made an Honorary Fellow of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 2006, and a Life Member of the Medical Society of PNG in 2009, in recognition of her continuous dedication, commitment and service to health care, health education and the medical society in PNG.
Senior years
Linnie partially retired from the medical work at age 85 years and fully at the age of 90 after breaking her hip. She died on 8 August 2023 at the age of 98 years. The nursing students carried her body to the local church and the community held an all-night vigil, singing and telling stories of Bubu Mei (Grandma) as she was lovingly called at Kapuna. In the morning, her body was wrapped in a woven mat of palm fronds and placed in a freshly carved dugout canoe. Nursing students carried the canoe through the breezeway at the hospital, where she had spent countless days of her life ministering to families. Then they laid her in the grave beside Peter, in the land they had given their lives to.
In 2019, Foley writes in Linnie’s obituary that her petite frame and wrinkled skin give away her age, yet her eyes still sparkle with energy as she looks back at her life in the bush. “Not many people stay 60 years, but the longer you stay, the less dogmatic you get, the less proud you get, and the feeling is, it was all God anyway who did it,” she said, sitting in a wheelbarrow in the garden she planted in Kapuna. “All the good bits were Him.”
Her daughter Valerie remembers her mother being a life-long learner who was very happy in her key life choices and enjoyed tropical medicine – “the diseases of the rich had little interest to her”. Periodicals and medical journals, especially the British Medical Journal, were extremely helpful in keeping her up to date with international medical thought. Attending medical symposiums and entertaining medical visitors were professional joys in her life.
Professor Cindy Farquhar as a 6th year medical student from the University of Auckland, spent 8 weeks of her trainee intern medical elective at Kapuna. These are a few of her recollections:
“I spent 3 weeks at Port Moresby General Hospital and then flew for 2 hours to Baimuru (stopping briefly in Kerema). I was met by a staff member from Kapuna and travelled by canoe with an outboard for 90 mins. The Church Missionary Society had told me before I left that Kapuna Hospital was one of the most austere places that their missionaries were placed. It didn’t matter to Linnie. I remember her cheerful attitude. My memories include going off in the canoe to visit the aid posts or villages, staying overnight in villages where we were offered fresh pineapple, applying litres of anti-scabies lotion, doing my first operation with Peter (it was a large lipoma), a staff member with a transverse lie that became a breech after prayer, the Monday morning washing when all staff (doctors included) washed all the sheets and towels in coppers over a fire made of wood”
“I remember nearly running out of food as the boat from Moresby was having repairs (the staff cut down a sago palm and prepared sago to supplement our meals – lots of chopping and hard work). I remember that when you stepped off the raised hospital walkway it was very wet underfoot with leeches. I remember very sick children with cerebral malaria, or tuberculosis or severe skin infections, or severe malnourishment. And I remember a part of the hospital for mother and their babies where they could come and get food and health care. I remember the daily ward rounds; I remember the training school for nurses and aid post workers. And at the heart of everything were Peter and Linnie – cheerful and determined, lovely role models and faithful to their call to missionary work. Peter died a few months after I left, and I last saw Linnie in Auckland when she was about 82 years old and came to the Medical Students Christian group. She was cold in Auckland and keen to return to Kapuna. And return she did.”
Her grandson, Jadon Calvert, interviewed his grandmother in 2019. The interview is available on youtube, entitled “Bubu Mei 2019”.
