Qualla: Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral, Dogura

Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral, Dogura: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Twenty thousand tons of stone and timber - every pound of it carried by hand, up a 220-foot plateau, by volunteer Papuan workers. That is how Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral came to stand on the Dogura plateau above Wedau village, and it is a fact that should be sat with for a moment before anything else is said. When the doors opened for consecration in October 1939, the Archbishop of Brisbane stepped ashore from a boat named Maclaren King, pronounced his blessing in Wedauan - a language he had quietly taught himself for the occasion - and the crowd on the beach answered him with three cheers. The war in Europe was already six weeks old. In a corner of Papua most Europeans could not find on a map, a cathedral longer than either Sydney's or Melbourne's Anglican seats had just been born.

Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral, Dogura: The Plateau Above Wedau

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dogura sits on a broad tableland that rises abruptly from the Coral Sea coast, sixty metres above the Wedau shoreline in Milne Bay Province. Before it was a cathedral complex, it was a battleground - one of those places where rival clans had settled their disputes by force for ge...

Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral, Dogura: What It Took to Build

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Bishop Henry Newton proposed a permanent cathedral in 1932. The architect was Leslie Wilkinson, Professor of Architecture at the University of Sydney, whose original design turned out to be too ambitious for the mission's resources and had to be scaled back. The modified plans we...

Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral, Dogura: A Norman Church in the Coral Sea

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The completed cathedral is 170 feet long and 50 feet wide, 70 feet across the transepts, with twin towers rising 64 feet above the plateau. At the time it was built, nothing else in the Territories of Papua or New Guinea was larger. Its style is Norman-Romanesque - round windows,...

Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral, Dogura: The Martyrs of New Guinea

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The consecration happened in October 1939. By 1942 the Japanese had landed on the north coast, and Anglican clergy and lay workers were among those they killed. Two died at Gona, in the Sanananda area. A third, Father James Benson, was presumed dead - until 1945, when he walked o...

Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral, Dogura: Still the Seat

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ss Peter and Paul remains the seat of the Bishop of Dogura, whose diocese covers all of Milne Bay Province. The current Dean is Faithful Arewa. The cathedral has been the site of small and large events over the decades - the ordination of the first Papuan priests in 1941, the con...