In 2007, a post-graduate student of social anthropology at Cambridge University, Hannah Ivory Athayde, contacted the Hadfield family. She was writing a thesis on James and Emma Hadfield, missionaries with the London Missionary Society in the Loyalty Islands of new New Caledonia for more than forty years (1878-1921) who had been very successful in building up the congregations in Uvea and Lifu. Hannah mentioned to us that very few of the artefacts remained in the Loyalty Islands, and that the people of those islands would love to have some back. The family realised that we had dozens of such artefacts. They had been given to our father by James and Emma in 1910, when they had brought back hundreds of others to Britain, which had been sold or given to collectors and museums.

To the members of the Hadfield family the artefacts were curiosities; to the Loyalty Islanders they were important proofs of their culture. Several members of the family had been looking after the artefacts without really knowing what to do with them. So when we heard how much the islanders would love to have them back we were very willing to return them, provided there was a suitable place to display and preserve them. Those of us who had visited the Loyalty Islands over the years knew of no suitable place in these islands, but Hannah assured us that the Museum of New Caledonia in Noumea would be suitable, and might well be willing to accept them. We contacted the Museum, who assured us that they would be glad to accept them, as their collections included very few artefacts from the Loyalty Islands. So the family collected most of what we had, and sent them out in 2009 in the care of one of the family.

The gift of these artefacts inspired the Museum of New Caledonia to prepare an exhibition celebrating James and Emma Hadfield, from September 2013 to February 2014. The exhibition included many of the artefacts given by the Hadfield family, and others lent from the collections in the National Museum of Scotland and the British Museum, which had worked with the Museum of New Caledonia as part of its Melanesian Art project. It also included many photographs from Emma's book Among the Natives of the Loyalty Group (MacMillan and Co, London 1920) and elsewhere, and contributions from Hannah Ivory Athayde's thesis. It was very well displayed and well worth visiting, as are the rest of the museum's collections.

James and Emma's four children were all born in the Loyalty Islands, two in Lifu and two in Uvea. Of their twelve grandchildren only three of us survived at the time when the exhibition opened. As the one who had arranged for the collection of the family's artefacts I was invited to open the exhibition.

The welcome given to me and my wife and family in Noumea and then in Lifu was amazing. At the exhibition in Noumea a choir of women from the Loyalty Islands sang a song specially composed for the occasion. Then a group of young men in full war paint performed a welcome dance, in the course of which they surrounded my wife and me and escorted us symbolically up the beach, as their ancestors no doubt escorted James and Emma up the beach at Uvea on their arrival from Lifu in 1879, after several months of learning from an experienced missionary. When we visited Lifu in the Loyalty Islands the pastoral trainees welcomed us enthusiastically with songs and a communal meal.