 Armstrong, received its Explorers' medal. They had explored respectively the last terrestrial and the first extra-terrestrial 'unknowns'.
The Leahys found appreciable pay-dirt only at Kuta (Western Highlands). On 5 March 1940 Leahy married at St John's Church, Darlinghurst, Sydney, a 19-year-old North Queenslander Jeannette Gwendolin Best; she was an alumna of Sydney Church of England Girls' Grammar School. Jim Taylor was best man; Margaret Dovey (later Whitlam) was bridesmaid. They had five children who went into professions and business but Mick could not acknowledge three mixed-race sons at Mount Hagen who came under Danny's patronage and thrived. When the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit offered Mick only a sergeant's rank, he organized an assignment to the U.S. chief engineer as a Royal Australian Air Force flight lieutenant. He glided into remote Telefomin to build an airstrip and was awarded the U.S. Medal of Freedom with bronze palm in 1948.
Post-war Australia offered him in 1952 a mere M.B.E. which he temporarily declined when refused a £25,000 war service loan. He felt he had earned generous Highlands agricultural leases, and saw vendetta in being overlooked but, after years of delay, acquired mixed farming properties at Zenag on the Wau-Lae road. He locked horns with kiaps and villagers over policies, rights and tenure, was left off the Morobe District Advisory Council until protests were lodged, and was a hapless litigant against the administration. Yet he prospered after Papua New Guinea's independence although he had fulminated in the press against E. G. Whitlam's campaign for it, envisaging aid from 'hardworking, frugal and generous Australians' being despoiled by cargo cultists. In 1968 he could decline to have a black university student in his house because it would upset his servants and, though well-read, hoped George Wallace would win the American presidency. Survived by his wife, he died on 7 March 1979 and was buried at Zenag with Catholic rites. Ewunga, his trusty 'shoot-boy', after whom he had named his most promising gold-bearing creek, hoped to join him soon. Two natural sons came unrecognized to his funeral in a Mercedes-Benz and wept. Leahy belonged to the Imperial Service Club, Sydney, and the Returned Servicemen's League, Lae. His portrait hangs in the Pioneers' Club, Mount Hagen.
His brothers also settled in New Guinea as farmers. James pioneered the coffee industry and was a principal in the Highlands oligopoly, Collins & Leahy.
James Griffin, 'Leahy, Michael James (Mick) (1901–1979)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/leahy-michael-james-mick-7134/text12311, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 30 May 2016.
This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, (MUP), 1986