G. S. Carter

Major Gordon Senior 'Toby' Carter DSO (20 April 1910 – 1988) who worked in Sarawak, Borneo prior to World War II for Shell Oil. He enlisted with the British Army during the war, and served in the Royal Australian Engineers and later in Z Special Unit in Borneo, where he was the Officer in Command of the Semut II operation in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak. In 1962 Carter had the initial idea for and was the driving force behind the establishment of both the Kinabalu National Park and the Kundasang War Memorial and Gardens near Mount Kinabalu in Sabah.

Life Carter was educated at Mount Albert Grammar School, Auckland. Described as "a courteous, soft-spoken, long, lean New Zealander" Carter worked for Shell as an oilfield surveyor in Sarawak, and had pre-war experience of the Baram-Tinjar River basin there.

Initially in charge of all Semut operations in Borneo, difficulties with the notoriously prickly Major Tom Harrisson led to the splitting of the operation into several units, Semuts I (led by Harrisson), II (led by Carter), III (led by Major W. Sochon, DSO) and IV. Carter was inserted by parachute drop on 16 April 1945 with seven other members of Z Special Unit to the Baram River area, near Long Akah. The area was probably chosen as Carter had pre-war experience of it. He had originally been recommended for appointment as Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Colonel H. A Campbell, director, Services Reconnaissance Department, but this recommendation was upgraded to the DSO by General Thomas Blamey. The recommendation remarks: Despite his wartime difficulties with Harrisson, they remained friends. In his 1959 book, World Within: A Borneo Story, Harrisson noted "Toby Carter and I kept our eye in, recently, by climbing Mt Kinabalu ... we stayed for days in the tiny Pakka Cave, at 10,000 ft. under the summit, looking out over the vast expanses of inside Borneo, once our peculiar empires."

In 1962 Carter initiated and was the driving force behind the establishment of both the Kinabalu National Park and the Kundasang War Memorial and Gardens near Mount Kinabalu in Sabah. The Kundasang Memorial and Gardens commemorate the 2,428 Australian and British prisoners who died during World War II at the Sandakan POW Camp, and the casualties of the three infamous forced death marches from Sandakan to Ranau. It also serves as a tribute to the many local people who risked their lives while aiding the prisoners of war. In his 2001 autobiography Blood on Borneo Jack Wong Sue discusses Carter and his wartime activities.