A substantial amount of material regarding Blyth’s work and activities in New Guinea is included in Hope, Penelope (1979), ‘Long ago is far away’, Canberra: Australian National University, from which the following extract is quoted (p 132):

A new Resident Magistrate was appointed to Kikori in October 1924. He was A. L. Blyth who had joined the service early in 1914. He was a retired English military man with a standard of colonial service hitherto unknown in the Delta Division. He had a gammy leg - whether it was an old assegai wound, as was hinted, or a tropical ulcer inflamed by alcohol, as the teetotallers scornfully suggested, never became clear. It meant that he made no long exploratory patrols -he sent the lower ranks on those. He also loathed canoes and whaleboats and would have liked a smart cabin boat with uniformed crews so that he could sweep up to village wharves lined with cheering populace ... Yet though he insisted on forms and ceremonies to an extent which irritated his immediate subordinates Blyth had a quality which the villagers recognised. His reports show a new attitude towards the people - less schoolmaster and policeman in tone and more attentive to their reasons for their behaviour which they were ready to explain to a sympathetic ear.