MOMENTUM

CALL CENTRES AND HOW TO HANDLE THEM

2010-01-14T11:53:00.008+10:00

I received a call from the elusive Telstra Customer Referral Centre, the one that sits up and pays attention once an angry customer gets past their working call centre. This included a promise to refund the ransom money paid to Telstra before it would permit my return to the Internet Service Provider from which it had illegally churned me. Let's see how long it takes for the money to appear. The current number of the TCRC, which changes once it becomes known to too many trouble-makers like me is, 132200.

A useful ploy, guaranteed to get instant attention from any call centre, is to utter the same phrase used by their own operators as an intimidatory opening remark. "This call is being recorded for operational purposes." Many phones now have a recording function and you will be believed whether you actually record the conversation or not.

When the call centre first answers, say nothing and do not press buttons or respond in any way. This will cut many minutes off the time you are about to spend replying to the same questions you answered in previous calls, and you will soon be flick-passed to a live human voice. You can save still more time by asking the voice to read the notes on your file which will have been posted by those you spoke to last time and the time before that. This doesn't always work and the voice will just go on asking the same questions and ticking boxes on the prompt screen, but it's worth trying.

Do not threaten legal action or mention your intimate friendship with a famous TV news personality. They have bigger and uglier lawyers than anyone you can afford : and bad publicity rarely damages the bottom line. The message you should try to get across is that you are potential Trouble with a capital T and you won't go away until they listen to you and fix your problem.

Good Luck. You can beat the system if you just keep coming back until the call centre gives up and actually does something.

ESCAPE FROM THE HALL OF DOOM

2010-01-08T09:24:00.004+10:00

Freedom at last. Internet access has been restored and I am again able to use my preferred Internet Service Provider, TPG Australia.

The battle was finally won after putting the frighteners on Telstra with the Telecommunications Ombudsman. Daily confrontations since December 24th with a series of disembodied voices in Telstra call centres and repeated assurances that the illegal churn, initiated by BigPond while I was in New Zealand and a long way from my locked and unoccupied office would be reversed are now at an end.....until next time ?

If it happens to you, don't waste time calling Telstra or BigPond. The Ombudsman can be reached on 1800 665376.

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AUSTRALIANS BEWARE. BIGPOND IS AFTER YOU

2010-01-02T11:13:00.005+10:00

The stand-off with Telstra continues into the New Year. Access to TPG, my preferred Internet Service Provider, is still impossible despite daily assurances from BigPond; (surely a misnomer, they must mean BigBrother), that the illegal churn would be reversed.

For this to happen, Telstra wants a ransom payment of $99. Otherwise no deal.

The phone line has finally been released and TPG is in the process of re-connecting me online. Best estimate is some time next week, probably about 5 days from now. If it happens, the hijack will have lasted over a month and my lawyers will no doubt take this into consideration when we go after the people responsible for this near-criminal activity in what was once a respected Australian Icon.

I am typing this at home before going to my online contact with the outside world at the Internet Cafe.

Happy New Year everyone. Make sure it stays that way by hanging up immediately if Telstra calls you.

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30 DAYS IN THE TELSTRA HALL OF DOOM

2009-12-31T11:05:00.002+10:00

It started early in December 2009 after I left Cairns for New Zealand to buy a yacht to sail back to Australia.I had been gone from my locked apartment only a few days when Telstra, unprompted by me or anyone else of my aquaintance, cancelled computer access on my home phone line to my internet provider, TPG. Australia and churned me onto their BigPond system from which I had escaped in April 2009 after an acrimonius dispute over inflated charges in their byzantine accounting system.

I was blissfully unaware that this had happened while I accessed the internet from my laptop in hotels and motels all over New Zealand, sending and receiving email, using online banking, posting on Facebook, making international phone calls on Skype etc.The truth only emerged when I returned to Australia on Christmas Eve, December 24th and tried to boot up the computer in my home office. A call to the TPG help desk eventually established that access to TPG had been cancelled on this telephone line on December 6 after a request for a churn to Bigpond, allegedly from my phone in the locked and empty apartment.

It was now Christmas Day, not a good time to try to talk to Telstra or anyone else, but I tried...and tried... until I finally got a response from a call centre in The Phillipines where all calls to Telstra were being directed. Miguel in Manila was difficult to convince that my problem existed, claiming that I had requested a transfer to BigPond, this had been done, and what was the problem?. I finally persuaded Miguel that my plight was genuine, but he could only advise me to call Telstra Australia after it re-opened for business in three days' time after the Xmas holiday break.

By then, I had established a routine at an internet cafe close to home and used my laptop there to access email, but this was an unsecured public site and other activities including internet banking are unwise and cannot be used.
It is now New Year's Eve, December 31. nothing has changed. I have just spent the by now standard 90 minutes pressing buttons, listening to assurances about the importance of my call, etc, to be told that Telstra's last promise of action by 5 PM delivered yesterday should have read byJanuary 5. 2010 . SIX DAYS FROM NOW I am about to try to reach someone a little higher on the totem pole. Watch this space as my sojourn in the Telstra Hall of Doom continues

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RISING SEA LEVELS, CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CARTERET ISLANDS

2009-10-15T11:57:00.013+10:00

The Carteret Islands, also known as Kilinailau Atoll are a low lying group of islands north east of Bougainville Island. The sea is slowly invading them as they sit perched on the encircling reef, just a few feet above the surrounding sea, and the global warming Industry has used the plight of the people there as an example of the ill effects of climate change.

Kilinailau Atoll from space

Leaving aside the inconvenient truth that global temperatures have not risen for the last 11 years and show no signs of doing so; or that more and more experts are questioning what has become an article of faith for millions of people worldwide, no reputable scientist questions the fact that the climate is changing. It always has and it always will, as the dynamics of the planet evolve and alter over time. What some scientists do question is the unproven assertion that human activity over the last hundred years is responsible for a massive and rapidly accelerating rise in temperature, causing everything from rising sea levels to catastrophic weather events.

One of the islands doomed to disappear

There is no question that the Carterets are being flooded by ever increasing erosion from the invading sea, or that this will continue until they disappear, and that rest of the world, including Australia is morally obliged ensure that the Carteret Islanders are relocated in a new homeland. Some have already left for Bougainville, and the rest will follow once the painfully slow task of confirming ownership of new communal land is completed.

Beaches like this one are shrinking

Attermpts to portray the islander's plight as an illustration of the fate awaiting us all unless we heed apocalyptic warnings on rising sea levels continue unabated and should be shown up and resisted.

A walk on the beach now requires wading

But despite all this, the sea is not rising at the Carterets any more than it is rising on nearby Bougainville or, for that matter on Bondi Beach as a visit to either will demonstrate. Tide levels worldwide are much as has been predicted and continue to show no appreciable increase overall, nor are they expected to do so: published tide tables for anywhere on the planet will confirm that this is so.

The inconvenient truth is that he sea is not rising: Kilinailau Atoll is sinking, and will almost certainly continue to do so because it is on the wrong side of the junction between two opposing tectonic plates on the sea bottom.

The fault line from space.(click on globe to view full size)

Click 'back' to return to this page

The Carteret's fate has nothing to do with surface weather or global temperatures, rising or otherwise. The under sea fault alongside this island group follows the Ring of Fire which runs from New Zealand through PNG and The Phillipines up to Japan and then over to Alaska and down the Americas to Antartica with active volcanoes at irregular intervals along its entire length.
The fault is visible evidence of the result of vertical movements both up and down in the earth's crust. The huge slow-moving plates collide along it in tectonically induced conflict producing constant instability and this is what is drowning the Carterets. The earth under them is sinking and taking them with it.

Palm trees, drowned and uprooted

Telling this to the true believers is a waste of breath and no more effective than attempting to convince millions of Americans that the earth and everything on and under it was not created in seven days some six thousand years ago, but we should continue to tell it like it is, not as the Global Warming/Climate Change promoters would have us believe it is.

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SINNERS REPENT...THE END IS NIGH

2009-10-04T12:20:00.002+10:00

With religious faith now reduced to low levels throughout the Western World except for the more fundamentalist sects which are still actively proselytising, it was only a question of time before the universal desire of homo sapiens for reassurance against extinction produced a new belief system.

The time is now, and what amounts to a new religion is sweeping the planet, gaining converts by the millions as it goes. It started out as Global Warming, a scientific theory that the earth is getting warmer due to human activity with catastrophic consequences to follow.

Global Warming was quietly discarded when data accumulated showing that for the last eleven years, average temperatures worldwide had remained level, or in some years had actually fallen. The 'warming' became Climate Change, a portmanteau term which can accommodate rises and falls in global temperatures as well as any and all climatic phenomena including seasonal hurricanes, retreating glaciers, blizzards in the arctic, floods in China, droughts in Australia and reduced egg production by battery hens.

As with its predecessors, believers in the new religion are immune to attempts to question the Articles of Faith and would exact severe penalties if they could on those who question these beliefs as did the Inquisition some four hundred years ago.

The erudite and respected scientist, Galileo Galilei was forced to discard his impious scientific theory that the earth was not the centre of the universe and that the sun did not circle its flat surface every 24 hours, neither did the moon and the stars. Galileo narrowly escaped fiery death at the stake for questioning the received wisdom of the scientific community, and he recanted just in time.

There is a striking similarity about the Galileo Affair and the Global Warming belief system. In Galileo's lifetime, those fortunate enough to be able to afford it could buy Indulgences from the church which would dramatically reduce the time spent in purgatory after death while their sins were forgiven them. Now, sinners who pollute the atmosphere with CO2 can obtain absolution and forgiveness by buying 21st century Indulgences, now labeled Emissions Trading Taxes. Once paid for, their sins will be forgiven and they can continue to emit the evil vapour, paying as they go with more Emissions Trading Tax.

Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.

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MORE ON THE SATANIC GAS

2009-09-18T10:05:00.001+10:00

The Evil Monsters

Here's a practical way to understand Australia's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Imagine 1 kilometre of atmosphere and we want to get rid of the carbon pollution in it created by human activity. Let's go for a walk along it.

The first 770 metres are Nitrogen.

The next 210 metres are Oxygen.

That's 980 metres of the 1 kilometre. 20 metres to go.

The next 10 metres are water vapour. 10 metres left.

9 metres are argon. Just 1 more metre.

A few gases make up the first bit of that last metre.

The last 38 centimetres of the kilometre - that's carbon dioxide. A bit over one foot.

97% of that is produced by Mother Nature. It's natural.

Out of our journey of one kilometre, there are just 12 millimetres left. Just over a centimetre - about half an inch.
That's the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.
And of those 12 millimetres Australia puts in .18 of a millimetre.
Less than the thickness of a hair. Out of a kilometre!
As a hair is to a kilometre - so is Australia 's contribution to what Prime Minister Kevin Rudd calls Carbon Pollution.
Imagine Brisbane 's new Gateway Bridge , ready to be opened by Mr. Rudd. It's been polished, painted and scrubbed by an army of workers till its 1 kilometre length is surgically clean. Except that Mr. Rudd says we have a huge problem, the bridge is polluted - there's a human hair on the roadway. We'd laugh ourselves silly.
There are plenty of real pollution problems to worry about. It's hard to imagine that Australia 's contribution to carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones. And I can't believe that a new tax on everything is the only way to blow that pesky hair away.

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More Climate Change Hysteria

2009-08-05T12:37:00.003+10:00

Galileo Galilei is long gone to his reward and, unlike him, we no longer risk summary execution for questioning settled 400 year old scientific opinion that the earth is the center of the universe with the sun, stars and planets revolvlng around it once every 24 hours and that's a relief.

But wait, there's more. Continue to switch on lights, iron your clothes, drive your car, cook your food using, ( shock, horror, ELECTRICITY), and we are all doomed. Furthermore, the fate of the planet and all who inhabit it will be decided in a little over 7 days if the Australian Parliament fails to pass the Rudd government's Emissions Trading legislation. Who says so ?. Respected and revered scientists from The Australian National University, that's who. These august savants have gone into specific detail on the damage about to be visited on various world renowned icons by rapidly rising sea levels caused by CO2, the Satanic Gas

The Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu National Park and, wait for it, the Sydney Opera House are all doomed unless sinners repent and do immediate penance in darkness and silence unbroken by the noise of car exhausts, power stations or machines of any kind unless they are powered by solar, wind or better still, pedal power

The Australian National University has a photo on its web page of dangerous gases emitted by the cooling towers of an offending polluter showing evil plumes pouring from menacing red towers. This is a standard shot used time and again by the Climate Change / Global Warming industry and is fraudulent mis-use of photographic evidence to mislead and confuse.

from the ANU website

The menacing clouds sullying the innocent blue sky are not CO2, which is a colourless, odourless atmospheric trace gas. The visible plumes are H2O, i.e steam which will soon dissolve and disappear, as will, in time, this meretricious nonsense from highly paid academics who could and should find something better to do with their taxpayer funded time.

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A Magic formula for beating Global Warming, Climate Change and The Evil Eye.

2009-04-24T11:31:00.005+10:00

It was late December 1999. I had just returned from sailing a square rigged cruise vessel from Cairns to Cape York and back again with a load of happy wanderers. It was a last voyage before the dawn of the 21st Century.

The entire planet was awash with doomsday warnings from IBM and some of the world's most respected scientists, all unanimous in their opinion that everything electronic ranging from PCs, Bank ATM machines and computerised navigation equipment, such as the relatively new GPS, down to the humble telephone and domestic hotwater system, would all fail on the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. Travel was not advised due to the expected breakdown of most communication systems, mobile phones included. Few if any of these, had software capable of operating after December 31 1999, said the experts.

It was christened the Y2K bug, and salvation was available only after an expensive innoculation performed by IT programmers who were harvesting a bonanza of fees from banks, international phone companies, security organisations and government departments, down to individual users of electronic navigational equipment like me.

These gurus, supported by gullible journalists world-wide. became very rich very quickly as they worked their magic and re-programmed electronic equipment before the dreaded sound of midnight bells on December 31st.1999. It was a brutal and exhausting fight, but they won. The new century dawned and the ATM's continued to work; trains ran without crashing into each other and the wheels of commerce and industry turned smoothly...Crisis averted by the narrowest of margins.

I awoke on new year's day to a chilling discovery. My personal GPS, (pictured here, and now a museum piece), had been forgotten. I had not sent it back to the factory for the expensive reprogramming required to keep it going after December 31st. It was now January 1. 2000... Too late ! The dreaded Y2K bug would have done its deadly work and laid it low.

My 20th Century GPS

I switched the GPS on, expecting a blank screen to confront me with my criminal forgetfulness, but after the usual pause to collect its thoughts, up came an accurate position from the constellation of satellites, still orbiting the earth unperturbed....nothing had changed...nothing had happened... everything worked just fine.

Almost ten years on, it still does!

So, next time you are confronted by a prophet of doom waving computer generated evidence as proof of immanent disaster, climatic or otherwise, save yourself time, money and apprehension by uttering the magic formula Y2K and continue with business as usual.

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2009-03-15T18:48:00.001+10:00

BAMAHUTA
Leaving Papua

People who lived and worked in Papua New Guinea prior to 1975 when independence was prematurely thrust on an ill-prepared and largely unwilling population by the Australian Government, are becoming a thin on the ground as the years roll on.

Most former colonies including PNG have coped with their new status with varying degrees of success, and a recently republished book by former 'kiap' Philip Fitzpatrick would be a welcome addition to any collector of stories written by the men who brought youth, stamina and dedication to the task of preparing a stone age country for political independence .

Rescued from its out of print oblivion by niche publisher Diane Andrews of Cairns, Bamahuta. Leaving Papua reeks of authenticity and personal aquaintance with the people of Papua New Guinea by a writer who lived and worked with them as a kiap in the final years of Australia's occupation of Papua from 1967 to 1973, two years before independence.

Like others who returned to PNG after 1975, including the writer of this review, Philip returned from time to time after the departure of the Australian administration, and was appalled and saddened by the shambolic and lawless depths to which the country he knew and loved had descended. The opening chapter of the book has a vivid account of an armed payroll hijack at a remote airstrip which Fitzpatrick survived after his driver was shot and badly injured. It makes gripping reading.

There is much humour and wry comment by this percipient and acute observer of mankind, both black and white, some of it racier and more personal than in books written by former kiaps like Ivan Champion, Jack Hides and J K McCarthy, but it deserves a place alongside these in the Papua New Guinea section on your bookshelf.

Brian Darcey

The once out of print book is now available from its new publisher by email at
dianepithie@gmail.com

Bamahuta. Leaving Papua © Phillip Fitzpatrick.
Diane Andrews Publishing 2008

A JOURNEY TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

2008-08-26T15:17:00.001+10:00

Click on an image for full size viewing.

Select 'back' to return to this page.

This was once the floor of the ancient sea that covered most of inland Australia. Finned monsters swam here, gliding over trilobites and other early life forms that had retreated from the land which emerged many millions of years ago as sea levels dropped.

"There's nothing here. Let's move on." overheard from a passing traveller, was one way of looking at it, but I was mesmerised by the sheer emptiness and the absolute silence of this ancient land.
There was a time when green, underwater light prevailed instead of the hard blue sky of today; when pterodactyls soared above the water instead of the whistling kites which now circled above me in the windless sky.

Parched yellow spinifex and mitchell grass now scrabble for space on the dry,red earth with an occasional stunted gum tree, the only other sign of life.....and then this !

and this

Lawn Hill Gorge, a green oasis almost at the Queensland/Northern Territory border. A hidden chasm which nurtures a lush, green tropical micro-climate. Where fish, turtles and freshwater crocodiles thrive. I launched my canoe and took this last photo in the late afternoon, just before sunset, when the red walls of the gorge caught the last rays of the setting sun.

I'll be back !

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'What's in it for us' ?

2008-06-19T12:02:00.000+10:00

PANGUNA
A personal perspective.

Arawa Town, Bougainville Island. Looking south towards Kieta
Taken from my aircraft. P2-BFD

Single-liners which altered the course of history are legion. 'Peace in our time' : 'Let them eat cake' : 'The winds of change' etc. One from an Australian politician, delivered on the lawn of the District Commissioner's house at Kieta on Bougainville Island is another.
The speaker was C.E.B. Barnes, a not particularly distinguished member of the Australian Government of the time. The leader of a delegation of tribal elders had asked him, in Pidgin ,"What's in it for us?"... 'it' was a mine in the mountains of central Bougainville which was on land tilled and cultivated by its native owners.

The Minister for Territories got off to an inauspicious start with the word 'Nothing' followed by quotes from the Minerals and Mining Acts and the dictum that mining royalties paid to the government could be distributed at its absolute discretion, and might, or might not, find their way to the landholders on whose property they happened to be. He went on to describe the compensation which could be claimed by dispossessed landowners. This tactless reply was the trigger for everything that followed; culminating in the violent events which terminated the short, unhappy life of what could have been a successful joint mining venture with the people of Bougainville.

My just-published novel BOUGAINVILLE BLUE has a description of this encounter. I was there, when Minister C.E.B. Barnes answered a polite query from a dignified village elder with a technically accurate but insensitive reply; to the consternation of senior field officers present when he used the loaded word "Nothing"
The mine, focal point in the conflict between Bougainvillians and the governments of both Australia and Papua New Guinea, was the trigger which crystalised and gave form to an endemic resentment of outsiders, which had existed on this mountainous island since its first contact with the outside world. Germans, Japanese and Australians had been left in no doubt as to the wish of the people for them to simply go away, leaving the owners of the land to continue their lives unhindered. Control by these various colonial administrations had been tolerated, but never accepted.

The Bougainville Provincial Government relied for its authority and finance on the national government in Port Moresby, but became increasingly vocal in its demands for autonomy. It was even more insistent in its demand that the income from the Panguna Mine be considered as its, by right. Since the mine was now providing PNG with half its entire revenue, this met with a blanket refusal from everyone from the Chief Minister down, but talk of secession just grew louder and more hostile. "The land and all that is on or under it is ours. Close the mine and leave, or we will destroy it and you," was the message.

The Panguna. mine

Isolated acts of defiance escalated into open rebellion which included attacks on plantations, sabotage and armed assault on machinery and workers at the mine, and widespread violence along the length of the island. Explosives, stolen from poorly guarded magazines were used to destroy power lines and pumping stations along the ore pipeline to the port. Specific demands from what had now become a disorganised rebel movement in virtual control of most of the island were made. The succession of events and the personalities involved are fully documented elsewhere. I need not repeat the story of the years of conflict, the thousands of lives lost or the numerous failed attempts to defeat the rag-tag Bougainville Revolutionary Army, which culminated in virtual victory for the rebels over the well armed forces sent to subdue them...suffice it to say that the rebels won !

Bagana Volcano near Panguna

In May 1989, the mine was permanently closed. All but a handful of its thousands of workers, white and black, left the island. Plantations, once the main source of prosperity and employment for the entire island, lay derelict and untended. The port with its massive powerhouse, wharves and ore processing plant, was totally destroyed by fire and explosives. The town of Arawa was systematically looted and demolished by armed gangs who roamed its deserted streets, secure in the knowledge that police, army and all forms of government control were no longer there. The hospital, the schools, the supermarket, the rows of suburban houses, and every other sign of the former foreign presence on Bougainville lay in smoke-blackened ruins. The rebels controlled the entire island. They occupied the remains of what had once been the head office of the mine overlooking the rain-fed lake which part-filled the abandoned open pit and its millions of dollars worth of machinery, and equipment.

Panguna. 2008.

The town of Kieta, once the island's administrative hub, was destroyed in the fighting along with its outlying suburb of Toniva, and Aropa airstrip is still unusable and derelict. An uneasy calm has descended, with ill-equiped and under-funded government offices now operating from makeshift premises in the ruins of Arawa. A small airstrip has been built along the beach near the town. Random shots at incoming light aircraft still occur. Movement outside the town is still controlled by the rebels, whose approval, seldom granted, is needed before venturing further. The Panguna valley is still very much a 'no go' area..
Years have now passed since the closure of the mine. The bitter civil war which took thousands of lives has not yet ended, despite official pronouncements to the contrary. Peace talks, interspersed with vicious firefights are still the way things are on far-from-peaceful Bougainville. Rumours regularly surface about a possible revival of the mine, fueled more often than not by opportunistic promoters from the less respectable fringes of the mining and exploration industry, while Port Moresby, with troubles of its own, seems content to let Bougainville make its way as best it can along the separate path the victorious rebels chose for it.

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BOUGAINVILLE BLUE....... THE BOOK

2008-06-11T14:45:00.001+10:00

One's first solo flight...first storm at sea... first love affair... first ?. are all destined to lie deep in one's memory, never to be forgotten, but a first book is up there with all of the above. So it was with me today after hearing "Congratulations. You are now a published author" from my patient and ever helpful publisher, Diane Andrews who can be contacted at

dianepithie@gmail.com

Readers seeking a historically accurate and detailed account of what has become known as The Bougainville Conflict won't find it in Bougainville Blue. It's an allegory, a story based on what happened on Bougainville, when an avalanche of men and machinery descended on an island still recovering from being fought over by the armies of East and West in World War Two.

I was there as the clash between Bougainville and the Western World and its material values grew ever more violent. Others who were also there for the short, unhappy life of one of the biggest copper and gold mines ever built, may draw comparisons with the actual conflict which engulfed the island and its people during this time; but it was not my intention to depict actual individuals or historic events in the novel, and I have not done so.

Bougainville still lies in ruins with the hard-pressed and dysfunctional government of Papua New Guinea still unable to bring itself to accept the unwavering wish of the people of Bougainville to govern and control their island. Until this is accepted, and real control over the land and its mineral wealth is given to the people; to coin a phrase; the blue on Bougainville will continue.

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SYNOPSIS. BOUGAINVILLE BLUE

A novel based on some of the events which occurred on this isolated tropical island after the arrival of thousands of strangers and an avalanche of heavy machinery.

Australian expatriate planter Richard Robinson and his wife Ruth lose their plantation after its forced resumption to build a new mining town.

Josip Nugui, the first of his people to go to Australia for an education; law student turned insurgent who tries to stop the mine and succeeds, at the cost of his own life.

Rod Burgoyne; American geologist and mine manager faces opposition led by Nugui which grows into armed rebellion.

Governments in New Guinea and Australia fail to cope with the industrial onslaught on one of the last almost untouched islands in the South Pacific.

Not a detailed historical account of what happened, and to whom, this is a work of fiction based on some of the actual events seen at first hand by the author when the Bougainville Revolutionary Army and the government of newly independent Papua New Guinea fought each other to a standstill; one of the biggest mines of its kind in the world was closed forever, and black and white alike were caught up in a whirlwind of anger and bloodshed which very nearly resulted in the permanent disintegration of the newborn nation of Papua New Guinea.

ONE MAN'S KINGDOM

2008-05-23T14:51:00.000+10:00

'KING' CARSON OF NUGURIA

A Life

He came back to his island home with his mother and sister at the end of World War Two . They were returning from wartime exile in Australia to Nuguria Atoll and the devastated wreck of a coconut plantation. His father, Lewis Carson was one of the Australian prisoners-of-war lost at sea when the Japanese ship Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by an American submarine while transporting them from Rabaul to Japan for use as forced laborers
Nuguria is one of the Polynesian outliers which ring Papua New Guinea. Its people are handsome, golden-skinned islanders; their original Polynesian heriditary characteristics have been modified by Micronesian and Melanesian genes contributed by arrivals from visiting canoes from Kapingamirangi Atoll to the north, from New Ireland to the west, and perhaps by visits from the ships of passing seafarers ranging from Admiral Zheng He's fleet on its voyage of exploration in 1421, to later ships carrying European explorers as they charted the legendary Pacific Ocean
Graeme Carson

The short-lived 19^th century German presence in the South Pacific made Nuguria plantation an attractive prize after Germany's defeat in the First World War. The victorious Australians seized it with alacrity, unceremoniously ejected the former owners with little or no compensation, and sold it, along with hundreds of other similar assets, to their own returned veterans. One of these was Lewis Carson, father of Graeme.

Nuguria was Graeme Carson's fiefdom. He ran the atoll as a benign but absolute ruler, and totally dominated its inhabitants, as did his similarly placed counterpart, John Clunies-Ross on Cocos in the Indian Ocean. Force of character and an absolute belief in their right to rule was a characteristic of both men, and this was accepted by the islanders until influences from outside sewed the seeds of discontent. The Winds of Change have now made anything remotely resembling this state of affairs unthinkable and much ink has been spilt reviling the discriminatory attitude and the paternal mindset of those early times, but whether the total absence of aid, assistance or basic governance for Nuguria which now prevails is in an improvement is a legitimate question.
Like many of his contemporaries, Graeme Carson accepted responsibility for the health and welfare of every individual on his property, in his case, all 58 islands on the twin atolls which made up Nuguria. He was administrator, doctor, nurse, mechanical engineer, book-keeper, unofficial arbitrator in disputes over land, unofficial matchmaker between partners from different families, and an occasional pugilist when a dispute demanded strong action.. His small ship was used to transport patients to Rabaul for hospital treatment free of charge and he arranged and paid for places in the prestigious King's School in Sydney for several young Nugurians. In short; his word was law, and government regulations and decrees from distant Rabaul ran a bad second to on-the-spot decisions by the freehold owner of Nuguria.

Carson's family lived on Tekani Island about 3 miles from the airstrip in a house built by his father, and the Nugurians occupied the adjoining island of Busureia. As well as providing money in return for labour or locally harvested copra and trocas shell, Carson was the only source of medical treatment on the atoll and the only authority to turn to in disputes. The nearest government official was many days sail away. Communication was by tenuous HF radio link to Rabaul on New Britain using the radio in the plantation office surrounded more often than not by a group of attentive bystanders. The artificial boat harbour lay immediately in front of his house with retaining walls formed by stacked mushroom coral heads overlaid by clean white sand. This tiny harbor sheltered schools of small bait fish in addition to the dugout canoes used for transport in the lagoon. In the early 1960's, he used his own labour and materials to carve an airstrip out of the narrow island at the southeast end of the atoll: 2,500 feet long and surfaced with a thin grass cover over coral rubble, it allowed fast and easy access to outside medical aid together with much faster mail delivery. It also produced a stream of official visitors from government departments in Rabaul whose insistence on correctly completed paperwork was not always welcomed by the busy owner of the atoll !

Boat Harbour. Tekani Island

. Graeme Carson married his first wife, an Australian girl, who gave him a son, Timothy. His mother, who lived on Nuguria as an undisputed matriarch, clashed repeatedly with her, and the marriage ended in divorce. Carson remarried, this time to Tetau, daughter of an heriditary Nugurian clan leader. She bore him another six children. The redoubtable Eileen Carson co-existed in wary but resigned amity with Tetau, until the matriarch's death by drowning after a fall from the seawall during a violent northwest gale.
Political independence for Papua New Guinea in 1975 marked the start of a revolt by young islanders against what they now regarded as the exploitation of their homeland. The easy relationship between Carson and the islanders began to deteriorate into open hostility, often fueled by outsiders who now began to arrive on Nuguria as the invitees of islanders returning from school in New Britain and Bougainville.
He applied for citizenship of the newly independent Papua New Guinea, renouncing his Australian citizenship in the process. While it was never officially spelled out, Australian passport holders who tried to continue in business in Papua New Guinea soon discovered that it was nearly impossible to do so in the face of official harrasment by newly promoted government officials, determined to exert their newfound authority. One of the unforseen consequences of this change in nationality left his family divided into those born before he became a Papua New Guinean citizen and those born later. The former were able to get Australian passports and move freely between New Guinea and Australia: the latter, as citizens of PNG, were only able to visit Australia for brief periods on tourist visas. This did not allow them to enroll in Australian schools, or to obtain access to medical treatment and other benefits, which their older siblings were still able to do.

Canoe. Nuguria Lagoon

After 1975, the plantation industry throughout New Guinea went into a rapid decline. Labour became hard to get, and even harder to control. No plantation was immune and production of copra and shell rapidly fell nationwide. A rise in nationalist sentiment as the new and hopelessly unprepared nation tried to continue the sophisticated administrative practices of its former colonial masters affected Nuguria and every other agricultural and commercial enterprise in the country. Inexperienced and under qualified clerks and junior tradesmen were shoe-horned into senior administrative positions in government and private enterprise, usually with disastrous results.
Life on isolated Nuguria Atoll was slower to change and the coconut groves which covered most of the 58 islands in the group still produced copra. The reefs continued to yield commercial quantities of trocas shell and Carson still owned and controlled the atoll, but his sway no longer held to the extent that he could decide who could and could not live there. Outsiders including missionaries from some of the fundamentalist Christian sects arrived. They succeeded in proselytising the more impressionable islanders, persuading them to discard traditional ancestor worship and replace it with their own aggressive brand of Christianity. Schisms developed, sometimes dividing families. One breakaway group moved to the southern end of the atoll and built a new village restricted to the newly converted.
A few short years after Independence, most of the expatriate population of New Guinea was either selling up and moving out, or adapting to the new regime and learning to accept bribery as a normal business tool. Carson, now a citizen of Papua New Guinea, stayed on and adapted as best he could, but labour was now unreliable; production of copra and trocas shell continued a downward spiral and his bank started to deliver threats of foreclosure, only deterred from actually doing so because, by government decree, plantations were now unsaleable to non-nationals and credit for PNG citizens to purchase them was no longer available due to the high rate of failure by those who had.

Family Group. Nuguria

Nuguria is no longer a working plantation. 'King' Carson is dead and the islanders are now left largely to their own devices with only sporadic official visits from the dysfunctional Papua New Guinea government. The airstrip, hacked out of the jungle by teams of villagers and plantation labourers is overgrown and no longer useable. The cargo ship which brought regular supplies and medical assistance to the atolls is broken down and unseaworthy and Nuguria can now only be reached by a hazardous dash across the miles of open water which separate it from New Ireland in small workboats or outboard-powered sampans which occasionally risk the crossing, or by a PNG Defence Force patrol boat. The atoll is now notionally administered as part of the Bougainville Province, but Bougainville, wracked by internal divisions carried over from the civil war which led to the destruction of the huge open-pit mine at Panguna cannot govern itself, let alone concern itself with distant Nuguria, which it has effectively abandoned.

In early 2002 Carson was voyaging from Nuguria to Nissan Island en route to Buka at the Northern end of Bougainville in the plantation workboat MV Eileen, when he collapsed with what was later diagnosed as a severe cranial occlusion. His crew continued on to Buka where the former hospital, now reduced to an aid post with limited medical equipment still existed. After a long delay, he was evacuated by air as an emergency patient to the Catholic Mission Hospital at Vunapope on New Britain, where he was treated for the stroke which had left him partially blind and unable to speak distinctly. Months went by and his condition did not improve. He and his wife Tetau flew to Australia, the nearest source of skilled remedial treatment for a stroke victim; but the delay in obtaining specialist treatment had, by now, resulted in permanent damage. Although still active, he spoke with difficulty, he could not write or type, and his vision was poor. As a Papua New Guinean citizen, he was only granted a three month visa by an unsympathetic Australian High Commission in Port Moresby, which also endorsed the visa of this former Australian citizen and member of The Royal Australian Naval Reserve "Not to be renewed or extended." Medical treatment in Australia was cut short when his visa expired, and he returned to New Guinea and to Nuguria where he died in May 2004.

He is buried alongside his mother on Tekani Island near the deserted and abandoned house where he lived and worked for most of his adult life. The trade wind still stirs the palm fronds above the graves and frigate birds circle high overhead, as they did when he and his sister lived there as children on this lonely Pacific atoll on the edge of the world.

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FAREWELL TO NEW GUINEA

2008-05-16T15:35:00.000+10:00

Kieta 1976... Now derelict and abandoned

FAREWELL TO NEW GUINEA

Part 1

The day started normally enough on Bougainville Island. Our office in Toniva, a suburb of the small coastal town of Kieta opened for business at the usual time and I sat down at my desk after checking the telex, (remember telex?), for overnight messages.

A call from our Papuan store manager from the main cargo wharf was the start of what turned out to be the beginning of the end for B F Darcey & Company, and the signal for our exodus from New Guinea.

"Customs say we can't ship that two tons of trocas for Japan"

"Why not? The export entries are in."

"Something about no more shell exports by non-nationals"

I drove to the wharf and found our shipment of bagged trocas shell resting on pallettes with a small crowd of locals gathered around it.
Manager Jim was glowering at two unsmiling customs officials, one of whom had a proprietorial foot placed firmly on the nearest bag of trocas.

"The law has changed", I was informed. "Dealing in trocas shell is now only for Papua New Guineans and your business can no longer buy, sell or export it".
A check with Port Moresby confirmed this, and was swiftly followed by an offer from an anonymus caller."Just heard about your problem. I'm a citizen and I'll be happy to buy the trocas from you..". A price of less than half the market value of the shell followed.

30 years on, a similar situation would present no problems. In today's New Guinea a discreet bundle of money in a plain envelope would result in removal of whatever the impediment was, but in those early post-independence times, bribery was unheard of.
It was 1978. Three years after a reluctant Papua New Guinea had been pitchforked into independence, ready or not, by the Australian Government, and things were rapidly unravelling.

The more prescient private business owners had already either sold up and moved out of the country or converted their firms to a partnership with one or more of their native staff as majority shareholders. This made the business no longer "foreign" and it could theoretically continue to trade, unhindered by the increasing number of restrictions on business for those now labelled "non-nationals'.

Finance for the new part-owners was obtained by way of a government-guaranteed bank loan. The more prudent of the former sole owners lost no time in transferring their money out of the country and usually followed it, leaving the business to be run by what was,more often than not, inexperienced and untrained new management
We had not done this and continued to run our Company as a fully owned family business.

We traded in Cocoa, Coffee, Trocas Shell, Crocodile Skins and other tropical commodities. We owned several commercial buildings at Toniva near the port of Kieta, a fleet of 4 wheel drive vehicles, and a twin engined aircraft which I flew. We ran a retail store which sold everything from artifacts and carvings to women's clothing and jewellery, and we lived in a house which we had built on the beach at Toniva, a short walk away from the office and stores.

'Head in the sand' accurately describes the mindset of the Darceys and many other expatriates in those post-independence years. The children, especially our young daughters, in the years immediately before our departure, had been increasingly exposed to aggressive and intimidating behaviour from young males in the streets and elsewhere and they were ready to leave long before their parents.

We were constantly getting unwanted and unpalatable advice to "sell out and get out" from former residents of similar places to Papua New Guinea who had moved there after their lives in Africa and Southeast Asia had been made uncomfortable, unsafe, or both.
We did not listen to them. New Guinea had been home for over 30 years. All four children had been born there, and life was prosperous and enjoyable. Where would we go ? Australia was fine for holidays and a good place to send the children for their secondary education, but not a place where we wanted to live.

Those who did move were easy targets for sellers of all kinds of fringe investments in Australia. Macadamia plantations, Ti Tree farms, Avocado orchards and other trendy investment schemes were only some of the means used to separate returning New Guinea residents from their money.

We stayed on; coping with an every increasing level of interference from the new Papua New Guinea Government, and a studied refusal to continue anything other than a benevolent 'hands off' by the Australian Government while it continued to send millions of Australian Dollars in untied annual grants to its former Trust Territory.

THE BIG CANOE OF NUGURIA. *

2008-01-27T11:16:00.000+10:00

The legendary Graeme (King) Carson of Nuguria had ordered the construction of what became known simply as The Big Canoe, and it was ready to start work.

Lloyds of London received some unusual proposals from our Rabaul office from time to time, but a request for insurance on this small ship was too much even for that un-flappable British institution.

"Sorry old chap... This is a bad connection. For a moment there, I thought you said the hull was built from a solid log"

"That's rightstandard construction material out on the atolls, and very good for boatbuilding."... long silence

"I'll run it past a few brokers and call you back"

He never did !

The Carson Family's Malekolon Plantation was on Anir Island in the Feni Group off the south-eastern coast of New Ireland.

Salat strait, Feni Islands from Malekolon Plantation.

Unlike Nuguria, Anir is a high island with big tropical hardwood trees. One of these was felled to be transformed by canoe-builders from the atolls into one of the largest dugout canoes ever seen there. Two smaller canoes were got from the same big log.

The half-finished hull. The three figures on the right are an indication of its size.

Electric power tools replaced traditional hafted adzes and carefully controlled fire for the initial work on the felled log, but final shaping of the sides and bottom was done with hand-adzes, using the sound made by a tap on the hull with the tool's wooden handle to determine when the correct thickness had been achieved.
The part-finished hull sailed from Anir to Nuguria after a diesel engine turning a three bladed propellor was installed. An outside rudder, a traditional ship's wheel and standard instrumentation including compass and binnacle were then added inside a fully enclosed wheelhouse. giving the helmsman full control from there.
She was completely decked in, with a long covered hatchway, under which copra or general cargo could be kept dry and secure in all weathers.

Never registered or in survey, she served for many years in Nuguria Lagoon as the plantation's main work-boat .The canoe would probably have been seized and impounded had it ever entered Rabaul Harbour or Buka Passage and it never did, but discrete and un-announced open-water voyages were sometimes made from Nuguria to Nissan Atoll and Malekolon.

Graeme Carson, ( right ) .

Frank Darcey Jr. inside the part-finished hull .

The Big Canoe at work. Tekani Island, Nuguria

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* The men from Takuu and Nuguria
who built The Big Canoe included :-
Possiri Popi, Apoke Sione, Teloma Mani,
Tumau Fariki,Tepiko Heia, Tonegina,
Tewavia Tehoru, Kipu Sieki, Trakoa
and Aruka.

LIVE BAIT FISHING: NUGURIA LAGOON

2008-01-15T10:02:00.000+10:00

In 1987, we were anchored at the western entrance to Nuguria, close to the island after which our yacht, Tekani was named. It was a sentimental return to this isolated South Pacific atoll where we had enjoyed many previous visits as guests of plantation owner Graeme Carson and his Nugurian born wife Tetau

S.V. Tekani. Nuguria Lagoon. 1987

During this, our last visit, we were fortunate to be once more invited to join the people of Busuria Village for live-bait fishing in the lagoon.

Tekani, the home island.

Live bait fishing involves many people and is carried out using traditional methods and materials; the end result is a canoe filled to the gunwales with fish, but many hours of intense effort by thirty or more people precede the final frantic few moments, when fish after fish is landed by casting small baitfish on barbless hooks into a milling school of trevally.

The water in the lagoon is crystal clear

The bait drive starts at low tide on the crown of the reef by dragging a long sweep-net into an ever-decreasing circle. The net is made from coconut fronds, twisted and bound together. It reaches from the surface of the water down to the shallow, sandy bottom in a dark, threatening curtain and is kept floating on the reef, when not in use. The net lasts for many months before being discarded and left to drift away. Small silver wrasse and other bait fish flee before it into a bamboo mat which is then emptied into a long split-cane basket hung on the side of the canoe .

The net is deployed

and dragging starts

driving small bait fish into an ever shrinking area

into the mat floating at its end

The mat is lifted carefully out of the water,shifting
the bait fish into the floating basket alongside the canoe

In former times, the canoe with its floating basket of live bait secured alongside, together with two or more other canoes, would be sailed or paddled across the lagoon to a deepwater reef entrance on its eastern edge, where schools of golden trevally are known to gather. An outboard motor now speeds this part of the live bait fishing operation, but everything else stays as it has been for generations.

After locating the school of trevally, the head fisherman first sprinkles the canoe with salt water in a traditional gesture of recognition to the ancestral spirits of the lagoon, then scoops up a bailer-load of bait fish and casts them in a wide circle around the canoe.

The fish start feeding on the live bait, undeterred by reef sharks which soon appear.

Fishers using bamboo rods with fixed lines impale live wrasse from the bait basket on barbless hooks and cast them into the school which is now in a feeding frenzy. Hook-up is immediate, as soon as the bait hits the water.

Bait casting

Five or more rod-wielding fisherman in the canoe soon fill it with a load of flapping trevally, fresh from the sea, more than enough to feed the entire village. Surplus fish are smoked and preserved for later meals.

A fish is quickly landed before it throws the barbless hook

From time to time, tales of a food shortage on Nuguria and similar atolls East of Bougainville, circulate in the electronic media. While the reports are genuine enough, they fail to point out that the shortage is of imported tinned fish and rice which have displaced taro and fresh fish as the staple diet: easier to open a bag of rice or a tin of Taiwanese mackerel-pike, than to toil in a mosquito laden taro pit or spend all day fishing under a vertical tropical sun; but, unlike its its Australian predecessor, the PNG Government is not always prepared to deliver shiploads of food to the atolls on request. Fortunately, the traditional hunter-gather skills of the Nugurians are still remembered, to be used again when hunger prompts.

Camera: Ivy Darcey

**************************************

THE CANOE BUILDERS OF NUGURIA

2008-01-07T14:44:00.000+10:00

The American whaler, Abgarris, first reported the atolls in 1830 and located them, not quite accurately, 120 nautical miles off the east coast of New Ireland, and 200 miles south of the equator

Nuguria Atoll. Satellite Image

Fead was the name given by cartographers to the larger one of the two island groups, but the original inhabitants knew it as Nuguria

Tekani, the Home Island,

There are two separate atolls with a deep-water passage between them. Both wear a thin necklace of low islets perched only a few feet above sea level on the outer rim of the lagoon. The highest point on every island is only a few feet above the high tide mark and, in common with other low-lying atolls in the Western Pacific, Nuguria, the larger of the two, is experiencing a disturbing rise in sea level: whether this caused by global warming or by subsidence of tectonic plates on the seabed is currently being disputed by a myriad of experts, most of whom have yet to actually set foot on these, or any other atolls.

Tekani Island boat harbour with dugout canoes

Before the arrival of European sailors, Nuguria's only contact with the rest of the world had been the occasional arrival of sail-driven canoes from Kapingamarangi, 600 miles to the North, and other arrivals from Nukumanu, Nukutoa and Luainia to the East. Some visitors remained, and infused Polynesian and Micronesian genetic material into the Indo-Asian DNA of the original arrivals.

Nugurian girl. Busuria Village

Fishing was, and still is the Islanders' main source of food, supplemented by Taro which is cultivated in excavated pits in the coral sand of the larger islands. The fertile soil in these artificially created food gardens has been laboriously built up over many years with organic vegetable material which replaces the nutrient-poor coral sand and rubble of the atoll.

******************

There are no large trees anywhere on these islands and traditional canoe builders were entirely dependant for suitable material for canoes on the infrequent arrival of drifting logs from the rain forests of New Ireland 120 miles to the West. The canoe-building skills of the craftsmen of Nuguria are legendary: they transform a raw tree trunk into a hollowed-out, graceful canoe using hand tools only.

Canoe from Busuria Village en route to fishing grounds in the lagoon.

Before the discovery of the atoll by European sailors, hafted adzes with sharpened clamshell blades; the hardest available material on these stone-free islands, were used after deliberate use of fire, to remove all but a thin outer shell of timber in the hollowed out hull with a thickness at the gunwale of only two centimetres, gradually increasing to ten centimetres or more at the bottom for added stability.

When finally finished, this huge log canoe was powered by an inboard Diesel engine and was used as a plantation work-boat in the lagoon. She made regular open water voyages to Nissan and to Malekolon Plantation near New Ireland from Nuguria.

Canoe sails were originally made of woven tapa cloth using traditional looms. Rigging to support the single mangrove pole mast and sheets for the sails came from coconut fibre. A species of tall mangrove supplied the mast and was also used for the outrigger which was attached to its booms by sharpened bamboo spikes and split cane lashings

20th century canoe with traditional rig near Tekani Island

The canoe builders of Nuguria now use imported sailcloth and power tools, but the final finishing cuts are still delivered using hand adzes with frequent pauses to guage the thickness of the hull by listening to the sound made by a gentle tap from the wooden handle of the adze; the same method used by their forebears here on these lonely islands at the edge of the world.

********************

FIFTY YEARS AGO IN NEW GUINEA

2008-01-02T16:00:00.000+10:00

In 1955, I had just returned to Sydney from a trans-Tasman crossing to New Zealand in Kylie, a steel ketch which had taken up the previous two years of my young life as we built her in the sand dunes of La Perouse on Botany Bay

The author at La Perouse before launching Kylie

As a newly married man, not yet gainfully employed, I was faced with two choices: Longreach in Western Queensland where a job as radio announcer awaited, or Port Moresby in what was then Australian Territory where Steamships Trading Company had a ship needing a supercargo, (Code for sea-going clerk/handyman/dogsbody)

Port Moresby (which I had never seen) seemed the better alternative and I left Sydney with a one-way ticket to Port Moresby aboard a vintage DC4 leaving my new bride behind to follow 'later', when my employers would hopefully pay for her to join me.

Port Moresby signalled my arrival with a shattering metallic clatter as the aircraft touched down on the wartime runway at Jackson's Airport, still covered with the ubiquitous marsden matting ; interlocking steel plates which the post-war territory used for purposes never dreamed of by its American inventors. Tank stands, pig fences, security barriers and fishtraps were just a few.

I had invested in a new officer's cap complete with snow-white cover to complement my reefer jacket and long trousers; appropriate attire for my new career, or so I thought. Sweating profusely in the humid air, I went straight to my new ship, MV DOMA which was moored alongside Port Moresby's only wharf, fully loaded needing only its new supercargo before departing for Daru across the Gulf of Papua.

'Duali'. Sistership to Doma

Her shirtless skipper David Herbert, brother of Australian author Xavier, raised a bushy eyebrow at the appearance of this new Supercargo in wildly inappropriate attire and wordlessly poured me a very large glass of Negrita rum before turning to the Chief Engineer with what I later learned was his invariable signal for immediate departure."Kick 'er in the guts Lofty!" he said, and we sailed for Daru without further ceremony.

Doma was part of a fleet of small ships bought by Steamships Trading Company for peppercorn prices from the Australian Government, which disposed of the huge mass of machinery and equipment left behind by departing U.S forces to anyone with a cheque book.

She was 120 feet overall. Flat-bottomed. Powered by twin diesel engines but without the usual benefit of contra-rotating propellers, which made her almost uncontrollable when going astern. She was designed by a general in the US Marines as a water tanker and general cargo carrier: if these small ships survived one beach invasion, this was all that was expected of them. Doma was fully loaded with a mixed cargo of rice, tinned meat, sugar, flour,tobacco and other staples below a single long hatch. The deck was completely covered with 44-gallon drums of highly volatile fuel, and this in turn was overlaid by over one hundred deck passengers, complete with pressure stoves, which were lit from time to time directly on top of the fuel drums.

Foredeck of Doma at Daru. Papuan Gulf

Navigation equipment was minimal. Depth sounding was by leadline. Other aids were completely absent. No Radar, no Radio Direction Finder; and no buoys, lights, or any other indication of position or depth for the hundreds of miles of shallow, mudstained water of the Papuan Gulf. The success (or otherwise) of a voyage was entirely dependant on the local knowledge of her officers and crew, mainly the latter, whose seagoing antecedents had sailed these seas in huge claw-sailed Lakatoi canoes for centuries.

Doma successfully completed this, my first voyage, with no more than the usual number of groundings and missed landfalls. On return to Port Moresby, she was immediately loaded with an almost identical cargo for the reef strewn East Coast of Papua. Destination, Samarai, at the Southeast end of Papua.

Loading copra and rubber at Otamata, Papuan East Coast

More appropriately dressed now for my job, I approached the shipping manager for an advance on my princely salary of sixty pounds per month for an airfare for my new wife Ivy who was patiently waiting in Melbourne. To the astonishment of Skipper "Dave" Herbert, Steamships Trading Company agreed. "Yer must have caught them off guard by turning up sober," was his percipient comment.

The voyage to Samarai was our honeymoon and attracted the close interest of planters at ports along the coast. They had been attentively listening to ships' radio Skeds carrying my messages to Ivy which included sentiments and detailed promises of connubial bliss better expressed in more privacy than that afforded by an open radio circuit !

Heat, dust, and an overall air of makeshift dilapidation pervaded Port Moresby, still showing the effects of years of military occupation, which ended in 1945.
The streets were potholed. Traffic was chaotic, and wheeled transport was salvaged army jeeps or trucks and battered sedans with the occasional new car driven by one of the newly rich entrepreneurs of this frontier town.
We set up our first home in an apartment in the dusty outer suburb of Boroko. Ivy started work as assistant to Dr Joan Refshauge in the Health Department and I went back to sea for two more trips on Doma.

Sufficient sea time now accumulated, I sat for the rudimentary examination of the times, gained a Ships Master's Certificate and was immediately offered command of a small 85 foot motor vessel M.V. Moturina.
I managed, with the considerable assistance of my Papuan crew, to safely negotiate the entire coast of Papua for the next three months. I will be forever grateful to those Papuan seamen for their help in keeping me off the reefs and mudbanks of their home waters.
A tactful, discreet cough, followed by meaningful inclination of a bushy head translated as " Turn now boss or we'll all be swimming ! "
Canoes at Pari village. Papuan coast

Moturina, like Doma, was another wartime legacy. Single-screwed with a high deck house aft. I first took command while she was on the slipway after a refit and proceeded to move her all of half a mile to the small ships wharf, where an official group consisting of the managing director, the shipping manager and the all-powerful harbour master, whose signature was hardly dry on my new masters certificate, awaited the arrival of the new Captain.

For six months of the year, the Southeast Tradewind blows across Port Moresby harbour at 25 knots or better, and it was directly behind me as I approached the wharf and its assembled dignitaries.
'Slow Astern,' rung down on the rickety telegraph to the engineer two decks below, had no discernable effect on Moturina's headlong charge at the wharf 'Half Astern,' followed by 'Full Astern!' had no time to take effect before wooden ship and solid timber wharf met with a rending crash, sending the welcoming committee down in a confused heap of white-clad limbs and bulging eyes, accompanied by a roar of alarm from the local wharf workers.

Damage was confined to a few planks stove in above the waterline, which were repaired much sooner than the ego of her chastened skipper, who retreated to the Snakepit, the mariners' retreat at the nearby Papuan Hotel.

************************************

FAREWELL TO NEW GUINEA. Part 2

2007-12-05T09:33:00.000+10:00

Life started to unravel very quickly. We finally realised that it really was time to go: that the New Guinea we had known and called home for over 25 years was fast vanishing, and we were no longer welcome.

Panguna, now one of the biggest open-cut mines in the world, was facing rapidly developing opposition from disgruntled Bougainville villagers, overwhelmed by the transformation of their island into an industrial maelstrom of men and machinery; something they had not asked for and did not understand.

Panguna Mine,Central Bougainville in full production

Plantations, which continued to produce the Copra and Cocoa on which the new nation relied on to supplement Australian aid dollars were finding the cheap, reliable labour on which these enterprises depended harder to obtain: workers had become less and less amenable to the ordered monotony of plantation life which required the laborer to rise before dawn six days out of seven for two years before returning to the indolent stop-start pattern of village life.

The police force lost almost all its experienced expatriate officers. The force now followed the same pattern as other government departments; rapidly promoting junior officers to senior positions far above their level of experience or competancy. For the first time, bribery and corruption started to infiltrate commercial life. It has now become the norm, and very little can be accomplished without it in today's PNG.

By the time the import of all this had sunk in, the possibility of finding a shadow local partner had come and gone. Banks and other lenders were now very reluctant to finance such arrangements, and the only thing left to do was to sell our physical assets; houses, buildings and vehicles etc.
This was still possible, but it was a buyer's market and values were less than a third of what could have been obtained a few short years previously. The commercial buildings were bought by Hagermeyer, a Dutch trading firm far more experienced in dealing with new Third World governments than I was. Our house went to an Australian bank whose manager lost no time in moving into a far more comfortable home than that formerly provided by his employers. The fleet of vehicles was bought by a local dealer with the exception of my Volvo which was shipped to Australia together with furniture and personal effects including an extensive library of New Guinea and Solomon Islands books and papers. Our leased bulk store was returned to its owners and our aircraft was loaded for a last flight from Kieta to Cairns in North Queensland.

Divested of all its assets, our now unsaleable business was placed in voluntary liquidation and life in New Guinea ended in a mixture of sadness to be leaving and relief at escaping the increasingly hostile and insecure atmosphere which now prevailed.

Was it all worth it ?... yes it was. We should have faced reality and got away sooner, but for all but the last few years, New Guinea gave us a safe, satisfying and adventurous lifestyle with an income far greater than we would probably have achieved in Australia. We had more than enough money to start again in Australia, which begged the question, what now?.........

to be continued

UP THE RIVER WITH A BAG OF MONEY

2007-11-20T10:31:00.000+10:00

In the 1960's, The United Nations Trust Territory of New Guinea still included many places deemed to be too dangerous to allow access by anything other than armed patrols. The upper waters of the Sepik River had only recently been removed from this no-go category when I started regular flying visits to collect native artifacts for re-sale in our store at Toniva on Bougainville Island.

On the Sepik River en route to Hunstein Lagoons

I owned and flew my own aircraft and had the advantage over other seekers after Sepik carvings and artifacts, as most collectors baulked at the cost of hiring an aircraft, the only practical means of entry into this remote area.

Loading our aircraft at Ambunti for the return flight to Bougainville

I could leave Bougainville in my Aztec and be on the ground at Ambunti, hundreds of miles up the Sepik River the same day.
Leaving the aircraft tied down but otherwise unguarded at the end of the short, very slippery Ambunti airstrip, I would hire a large dugout canoe complete with a predictably unreliable outboard engine to penetrate the billabongs and narrow tributaries of this aquatic world where a treasure-trove of authentic carvings and ceremonial objects could be bought from willing sellers in the villages and hamlets.

Ceremonial Shield. Maprik. Lower Sepik

Sacred Flute stopper.Upper Sepik. Now in The British Museum. London

Lack of respect for the religious significance of these carvings was not an issue. Masks, drums, weapons were all ceremonial objects on the Sepik River. They were only ever used a few times then discarded to decay and rot under village huts and sellers were only too willing to dispose of them when their ceremonial use ended: the problem was to penetrate the maze of waterways and backwaters and find them in time and then get them back to what passed for civilization in the coastal towns of post WW2 New Guinea.

The dagger was once a human thigh-bone. Not for Sale !

Silver coins were the only acceptable currency. Paper bank notes did not long survive in this hot, wet climate and were usually rejected. I started every expedition with canvas bags, each containing several thousand dollars in coins, hiring young villagers to carry and guard them. No money ever went missing.
Anyone foolish enough to do what I did in today's lawless and violent Papua New Guinea would be lucky to survive more than a few days before being assaulted, robbed and probably killed. White men could be, and sometimes were attacked and killed in the 1960's, but never for robbery in the jungle and I was never concerned for my personal safety.

Autres temps, autres moeures.

******************************

1956. Salvage at Sea in Papua New Guinea.

2007-11-08T08:20:00.000+10:00

MV DOMA...... THE UGLY DUCKLING

MV DOMA. Voyage No. 5. 1956

The Master
MV Doma
Port Moresby

Being in all respects ready for sea, you will depart Port Moresby for Morehead River with general cargo and passengers as manifested.

Return loading will be 1200 empty 44 gallon drums from the Australasian Petroleum Exploration Company base at Wasi Kusa River.

You will arrange with the Master of M.V.Melinda anchored 30 miles upstream in the Wasi Kusa to take this vessel in tow and deliver her to Port Moresby using every precaution against loss or damage to your own vessel and with due regard to the state of the river and associated hazards.

Melinda is said by her owners to be seaworthy but is unable to move due to a broken propellor shaft.

J.Buchart. Shipping Manager

Doma was flat-bottomed, and drew only six feet fully loaded, except for both propellers, which hung unprotected under the central rudder. This unconventional arrangement made running over one of the innumerable floating logs, which drifted awash on this coast at all seasons highly inadvisable. A bent blade was the best that one could hope for, but a broken-off propeller was more likely, with an even worse chance of a broken shaft which would spin backwards out of its housing taking the prop with it, resulting a high speed jet of water to rapidly fill the engine room and probably sink the ship.

Duali, a sister-ship to Doma

The voyage across the Papuan Gulf as far as Daru on the western shores of the Fly River Delta was uneventful, but from there on, for another 100 nautical miles across the top of Torres Strait, we would be in virtually uncharted waters. GPS Satellite Navigation gear, now standard on every sea-going vessel of any size was not even a twinkle in NASA's eye in 1956. Radars, Electronic Depth Sounders and Radio Direction Finders did exist, but not on Doma or any other small ship in these waters. We had a compass, a chart and a lead-line and were expected to use them to keep us afloat and on time along the entire Papuan Coast. The only certainty was that anything over five fathoms (30 feet) was not to be expected, and two fathoms was more likely. Lights, beacons, buoys and all the other usual navigation aids simply did not exist.
Doma crept slowly along the deserted mangrove-lined coast with a crewman heaving the lead from early morning to late afternoon; her young master hovering within instant grasp of the engine room telegraph, ready to signal Full Astern if the leadsman's voice rose an octave to match rapidly shallowing water. The anchor was simply dropped wherever we happened to be at sundown.
The exploration company was camped 30 miles from the Morehead river mouth close to what was then the Dutch New Guinea Border. We would have had no chance of reaching it without local knowledge and assistance. This was provided by a near-naked, painted tribesman who spoke neither English nor Pidjin nor the Police Motu. Hand signals and pursed lips pointed left or right directed the helmsman, and Doma arrived alongside the high mud-walled river bank which served as a cargo wharf, discharged the cargo and departed for the Wasi Kusa and MV Melinda, our prospective tow.

Emboldened by a successful passage right across the top of Torres Strait, we carefully retraced our outward voyage until the mouth of the Wasi Kussa River again loomed ahead.
This is a much deeper and more navigable river than most on this coast, and the base camp was reached without incident. Our highly dangerous cargo of empty aviation fuel drums awaited us. Full drums are (hopefully) properly sealed and leak-proof, but empties should be sealed again after thorough washing out with fresh water before being loaded as cargo. Needless to say, this nitpicking precaution was unknown in Papua in the 1950s, and the drums were loaded in whatever condition they were in at the time.

Busama, another sister ship to Doma, exploded in a huge fireball at Wewak before the Marine Department put a stop to this dangerous practice a year later.

Wreck of Busama at Wewak, PNG after her cargo of aviation fuel in drums exploded.

With 1200 empty drums stowed four high on deck, we steamed a few miles down-river where our tow awaited us. Melinda was a sorry sight, having swung to her anchor for almost three months waiting for a tow. She was manned by a mixed crew of Malayan and Papuan sailors and a Dutch engineer. The Master was a white-haired, cockney-accented Englishman,
Captain Salmon, known from Singapore to Sydney, I later discovered, as 'Sockeye Salmon.'

"Yer going to say its no go I suppose, young feller" was Captain Salmon's opening remark.
"My orders are to get you back to Moresby, and that's what I'm going to do."
This was greeted with a surprised snort and a swiftly poured glass of the inevitable Negrita Rum.
"We've got no power, no lights, and no towing gear," he said.
" I'll put you alongside down the river and then use your anchor cable as a towline with my chain as a sling from both quarters," I replied.
"Sooner you than me, young feller. Ever done it before?"
"No."
"Better have another then."
"No thanks.lets go"
And we did.

Many months after it was all over, I was told that Doma was the fourth ship sent to tow the broken down old freighter back to Port Moresby. The masters of the first three ships sent to do so refused to risk it: "Far too difficult.": the danger being that there was a real chance of both vessels getting caught across current in the fast-flowing Wasi Kusa, and either sinking or rolling over before coming to rest permanently in one of its shallow bends. Doma's young captain had no such doubts but the same sailor, now grey-haired and much more timorous, would agree with the first three dissenters, and refuse to even consider the operation which now got under way.

Melinda, of similar size and unpredictable behaviour to Doma, was lashed alongside for a headlong dash down the Wasi Kusa, letting the swift current carry us along and using engine power ahead or astern to keep both vessels out of the mangrove-lined banks. Incredibly, we reached the open sea still lashed together and undamaged, and rigged both vessels' anchor cables for a long tow across the Gulf of Papua into the persistent Southeast Trade Winds and relentless breaking seas. Speed dropped to a bare three knots whenever the wind picked up and five almost sleepless days and nights passed, before I triumphantly docked both ships alongside the wharf in Moresby Harbour.

Doma, aground and used as a breakwater at Belesana in Eastern Papua. Photograph taken from SV Tekani in 1987. Author in foreground.

Unknown to me, the owners of Melinda had a commitment from their insurers that this was to be a final attempt at salvage before they could collect their money.
No-one, least of all my employers who were owed several thousand pounds by Melinda's owners expected us to even make it down the river, let alone across the notoriously wild Gulf of Papua.
This, and much more, was relayed to me by a panel of experts in tne Snake-Pit, the mariner's retreat in the Papuan Hotel. I should have consulted them before, not after, my first attempt at salvage at sea.
************************

My Short Career as A Servant Of The Crown

2007-11-06T10:19:00.000+10:00

RABAUL MARINE BASE

In 1956, MV Doma was only a few years out of her wartime origin, but was already showing signs of a hard life as the tropical climate ate away at thin steel hull-plating when I assumed command, as the youngest ship's master on the Papuan Coast.

A voyage across the Papuan Gulf into the Northwest monsoon, the last of many such operations was abandoned when the Chief Engineer dropped a heavy steel bar in the engine room. It penetrated Doma's single-skinned bottom and produced a fountain of salt water which he temporarily smothered with a cement patch over a hastily riveted metal plate.

The ship's owners were not unduly concerned and suggested that the patch would serve as a permanent repair. I disagreed and was ordered to "Get on with it and stop nit-picking." but the thought of another hull failure in the single skin of this rusting survivor of who knew how many wartime stresses and strains made resignation of my command an easy decision.
Her previous master had found another job as crash-boat skipper with The Department of Civil Aviation at the Flying-Boat Base on Port Moresby Harbour, and I followed, exchanging a slow-moving eight knot coastal freighter for a 30 knot crashboat.

The Port Moresby Marine Base was equipped with high-speed launches powered by twin V-12 Dorman-Ricardo diesels. They were there to guard and control the flying boat landing area used by RAAF PBY Catalina amphibians, now owned by Qantas. These slow-flying aircraft made a leisurely circuit of several thousand miles twice a week from Port Moresby, covering all of coastal Papua and New Guinea and most of the Solomon Islands as far as Honiara. The Catalinas carried less than a dozen passengers perched uncomfortably on canvas seats down both sides of the hull, with their feet in bilge water which sloshed from one end of the aircraft to the other after most take-offs. The launches, ( "crashboats,") would sweep the harbour for floating logs and debris and the occasional native canoe before every take-off and landing. The rest of the time was spent on standby, waiting for an emergency of any kind, with the crew busily cleaning paintwork and polishing and re-polishing the brass fittings, which were liberally fitted throughout the vessel.

I had been with DCA in Port Moresby for only a few months. Unaware of the traps laid for unwary newcomers by long entrenched government employees, I treated my transfer to Rabaul as Officer in Charge. New Guinea Islands as a welcome promotion and we left immediately for my new posting. The Rabaul Marine Base had its crashboat lying to a mooring a few yards offshore from two ex-wartime buildings. One had been converted into living quarters for the boss, while the other was a workshop and store with accommodation for the boats crew.

At Rabaul, the weekly Catalina arrived on Mondays from Port Moresby via Lae, Madang, Manus and Kavieng, and departed the following morning for a flight to Honiara in The Solomon Islands, returning to Port Moresby by the same roundabout route on Wednesdays after an overnight stop. This left half the week free. The only other task was a short trip down-harbour with the town's resident vulcanologist for an inspection of Matupi Volcano which smoked away day and night and contributed the occasional earth tremor: these were ignored by blasé Rabaul residents as something of no particular concern.

My short career as a public servant came to an abrupt halt when the decision to close the Marine Base and replace Catalinas with DC3 'Gooney-birds'; a decision made before I left Port Moresby, was conveyed to me for the first time in a brief official telegram.

The crashboat was sold; the base was closed; and I was unemployed with a wife and new baby daughter to provide for and a grand total of twentyfive pounds in the bank.

To be continued

DECISIONS,DECISIONS

2007-10-29T14:30:00.001+10:00

Cherokee Six 300. Bougainville Island 1965

It was a short twenty minute flight from the small town of Buin at the southern end of the big island of Bougainville in pre-independence Papua New Guinea to Kieta further up the coast.

I was expecting no surprises over this familiar route and with no passengers or cargo the powerful 300 HP Lycoming easily lifted the lightly loaded Cherokee to a safe 3000 feet and I throttled back for the few minutes' level flight remaining before descent into Aropa Airport.

The late-afternoon weather was the usual mixture of scattered showers near the coast and a line of big cu-nims to port where the terrain rose steeply to five thousand feet or more culminating in the seven thousand foot extinct volcano, Mount Taroka with it's crescent shaped hanging lake at the five thousand foot level.

Below, a uniform carpet of thick jungle covered every inch of ground right down to the coast. Typical New Guinea conditions with nowhere to even consider a survivable forced landing. The few sandy beaches were too narrow and short and the only options after an engine failure were to ditch into shallow water near the coast or onto the just-covered barrier reef a few miles out to sea. neither of these was an attractive prospect, but better than flying into the solid jungle below.

The big Lycoming purred contentedly away for a few minutes more and I reached for the throttle to reduce power as the last ridge loomed ahead.

Suddenly, the smooth hum from the engine changed to a shudder which shook the whole aircraft; revs dropped and manifold pressure followed. Full rich mixture had no effect; a quick cycle through left,right and back to both magnetoes changed nothing, neither did switching fuel tanks and bringing the electric fuel pump on line.

First things first. I banked hard right and headed for the coast away from the forbidding terrain below while considering the possibile causes of the rough running. Dropped valve? Tip missing on a propeller blade ? Timing gear slipped? Plug lead fallen off? Ran over a black cat on take-off? "Aviate,navigate,communicate"… The first two disposed of I called Flight Service at Rabaul, far away on the other side of the Solomon Sea and advised them of my situation.
"Are you declaring an emergency?"
" No, but I'm tracking coastal to Aropa for a straight in approach and will call on final"
"Roger"

I was, by then, level at 1500 feet with the steep coastal hills to port and a reassuring light green band of shallow water under the wings.

The vibration got no worse and I made a straight-in approach to Aropa, landed without incident and taxied up to the one and only hangar where engineers, one carrying a CO2 extinguisher at the ready who had heard the whole thing on their hangar radio surrounded the aircraft making throat-cutting gestures which I interpreted as "shut it down NOW."

The reason was soon clear; from both sides of the long engine cowling, a vivid green stain spread fan-like along the fuselage. Avgas. The entire engine compartment was a bomb waiting to explode.

A quick inspection revealed a broken high-pressure injector fuel line which had produced a spray of 100/130 Avgas, filling the cowled engine compartment with an explosive mixture of vaporised fuel and air which neither the hot exhaust manifold nor electrical discharges from the magnetoes and alternator had ignited.

Even now, after a lapse of 30 years I like to think I would have immediately shut the engine down and ditched in the shallows had I known the cause of the rough running, and not continued flying to a safe landing at Aropa.

Coral Sea Flight

2007-10-25T01:36:00.000+10:00

4.30 AM Aropa Airstrip July 1970.The Aztec sits under its reflective silver cover at Aropa airstrip, tail projecting over the edge of the sealed parking area, chocks snug against the wheels..

The darkness is still absolute at this pre-dawn hour and dew beads the upper surface of both wings. It hangs in a stippled opaque curtain on the windscreen and side windows. Mosquitoes whine against my ears in a last try before the dawn banishes them to wherever mosquitoes go in daytime. The heavy flight bag bangs against my leg as I reach the aircraft and start the airman’s traditional walk-around.

Keys out, and unlock the door. Release the seatbelt left looped through the control yoke and pulled tight against wind-induced movement of elevators,ailerons and rudder. Start at the left side. Fuselage looks intact. Left leading edge of the tailplane with its glued-on rubber boot likewise. The elevator moves freely, as does the rudder. Duck under the HF aerial wire running from the right wingtip back to the tail and then forward to a small anchor point just above where I sit in the cockpit. It’s still there….good.

Right flap angled down towards the tarmac and fully extended is intact, and the aileron alongside it moves smoothly up and down when I try it. Wingtip smooth, and undamaged. Front leading edge of the wing also OK. Turn the small catch on the outer fuel tank and remove the inside cap. Stick finger into tank and verify tank full of fuel. Fuel Guages sometimes lie….fingers, never….. Close cap.

Crawl under the wing and remove the small leather cover from the pitot head. Very necessary to prevent wasps and other small insects blocking the tube which feeds the airspeed indicator. Another small hole in the fuselage sends air pressure readings to the altimeter. Check this as well.

The pre-takeoff check continues as I walk around the aircraft. Fuel drained into a bottle and checked for water, or anything else sullying its clear green purity…both propellers free of any nicks or chips… undercarriage looks good, and both tyres are firm under the weight…..We are ready to fly.

Into the aircraft and slide over to the left-hand seat. ( why always the left one?. Orville sat in the middle, but the pilot is now always on this side.) Before me, the panel of instruments and guages stretches across the full width of the cockpit; airspeed Indicator, turn and bank,artificial horizon,rate of climb, altimeter,heading indicator and the rest of the performance instruments right in front of the control yoke. The ADF dial is here with a smaller DME readout alongside it. The VOR dial takes up far too much space and is almost useless anywhere outside a few New Guinea airports The radios are stacked,one above the other in the centre, and engine guages, fuel indicators and some duplicated twins of the ones on my side are all crowded together on the right in front of the missing co-pilot.

Door closed and the handle is held down with an unapproved short length of shock cord. Aztecs have a history of doors springing open in flight. This prevents it.

The right engine starts and the panel come alive. Needles rise from their stops and three small green lights indicate all is well with the undercarriage. The left engine follows, and settles down to a steady rumble. Check the controls by moving the control yoke from stop to stop and fore and aft.
Both trims set to neutral, brakes off, and we roll gently forward towards the runway.

An all powerful, all knowing Department of Civil Aviation, irreverently dubbed ‘The Department of Colossal Aggravation’, has decreed that all aircraft must lodge a flight plan with ATC before leaving on any flight anywhere in New Guinea. Sheer necessity has modified this to allow an aircraft to take off and climb over the airport to enable tenuous high frequency radio signals to reach ATC controllers; they are at Rabaul two hundred miles to the northwest, and on the other side of the mountain range looming above the airstrip which blocks communication from on the ground at this early hour.

A quick call on the short range VHF radio tells other aircraft, if any, that we are moving onto the runway. Light is rapidly replacing the pre-dawn darkness as the aircraft trundles down the long airstrip right to the end, flaps coming up as we roll. The Aztec can, and does, use only a fraction of the length of this one, but why not use all of it if it’s available? The runway behind you,like air in the fuel tanks is high on the list of useless things in an aeroplane.

Stop at the end. Brakes on, and run up both engines to maximum power, cycling the propellors rapidly in and out of their emergency feathered position. A last check for anything on or near the strip which might endanger the takeoff.

Say aloud… ENGINE FAILURE ON TAKE-OFF
60 knots: close both throttles. Land straight ahead.

70 knots: Enough runway left? close both throttles. Land straight ahead.
NOT ENOUGH RUNWAY LEFT ?: Keep straight. Seventy knots. Gear UP. Flaps UP.Power UP. Identify; Dead Foot: Dead Engine. Confirm it with the throttle. Mixture closed. Feather it.
Keep straight. Seventyfive knots. Climb out and go for a safe height.”

A last look around. Open both throttles. Check for maximum RPM both engines.

Brakes off, and I am pushed hard against the back of my seat as the two engines power up. The plane gathers speed down the long runway. Airspeed needle leaves its stop and moves quickly past fifty knots, sixty, seventy……..stick back, and the wheels leave the ground. Maintain seventy five knots and increase the climb. Nothing shows over the long nose except pale blue sky. Wheels up. Start a gentle turn at five hundred feet and start circling to gain altitude for the obligatory call to Rabaul.

Rabaul Bravo Foxtrot Delta
Bravo Foxtrot Delta Rabaul. Goodmorning Go ahead
Rabaul Bravo Foxtrot Delta, goodmorning. Airborne at Kieta. Request weather for Kieta/ Kiriwina.

The weather forecast, when received is identical to yesterday’s and will be same tomorrow. Winds southeasterly up to the ten thousand foot level. Thunderstorms for late afternoon.

Thanks Rabaul. All copied. Ready with details.
Go Ahead.

Flight details sent and acknowledged, we are free to depart. A climbing turn towards the Crown Prince Range which divides Bougainville Island along its entire length brings us over the mountains and we soon reach the green coastal plain on the west coast; beyond it, the Coral Sea. Seven thousand feet seems a good idea today. Just a few fluffy fair-weather cumulus below in an otherwise cloudless blue sky… Aeroplane salesmen’s weather. Woodlark Island is an hour and a half away over the water.

Engage the auto-pilot and let it fly the aeroplane. It does it with less fuss or control movement than any human pilot, including this one. Coffee from the thermos and just sit back and wait for rough running in one of the engines which seems to be part of every long over-water flight.

The sea below is flecked with white horses kicked up by the Southeast Trade Wind. Wind up here is a guess, probably about 25 knots, southeast. No way of telling. There is a radio beacon at Buka, the length of Bougainville away to the north or Kiriwina even further away and ahead.. We just fly what is, hopefully, the right heading and sit and wait.

The ability to identify a dark line on the horizon over a hundred miles away as land and not just cloud only comes with practice and after many mistakes, but today’s sighting is easy. That hard-edged line sloping into the sea under a cap of cumulus cloud where Woodlark Island should be is indeed just that and the tiny Laughlan Islands soon show clearly under the left wing.

Wind the trim wheel forward to start a long descent for the big island, now showing plainly ahead. Turbulence starts to gently shake the aircraft as we leave three thousand feet and gets stronger the lower we descend. No tower or controller to talk to here but Rabaul Radio acknowledges our safe arrival as we enter the circuit for Girua airstrip.

Girua was built by the New Zealanders in the 1940’s for a squadron of Hurricane fighters. Just south of this big island, the Japanese suffered their first major defeat at sea in what was to become known as The Battle of the Coral Sea. The fleet was headed for Australia but a combined force of American and Australian ships intercepted the large Japanese force of aircraft carriers, light cruisers and destroyers and roundly defeated it. Aircraft from American carriers playing a major role in the sea fight which lasted for days before the remains the defeated Japanese fleet fled northwards. New Zealanders in their Hurricanes from Garua airstrip hurried them along.

The reefs around the island still cradle reminders of the battle. Crashed aircraft and other debris can easily seen from low flying aircraft in the shallow water. Teak gratings, portholes and other small pieces of marine debris from sunken warships can still be found in villages.

The airstrip is still in good condition; the original crushed coral retains its hard-surfaced smoothness produced as the scooped up, still-living coral coalesced into a rock-hard concrete runway after salt water was sprayed over the freshly laid surface while heavy rollers trundled back and forth under the tropical sun. The only aircraft using it now are a fortnightly Britten-Norman Islander and me. I come here every six weeks for a load of the beautiful wavy-patterned striped ebony carvings which are almost unique to Woodlark.

The light skinned inhabitants call the island Murua. It is part of the age-old trading and cultural exchange route, The Kula Ring, which still moves in a huge circle around the Louisiade Archipelago. Highly polished jade axe heads originate from this island and are used as ceremonial exchange items, as part of the ring. They come from Suloga on the island’s south coast where a quarry has provided the inhabitants with dark green jadeite stone for centuries. There is also gold in the hills here, and Australian miners risked fever and the clubs and axes of the warlike Muruans early in the 18th century in search of it. Many succumbed to one or both and mining ceased shortly after World War 1.

Nothing remains of those early enterprises. A single white family maintains a small plantation at Kulumadau. The planter augments his income by trading with the Muruans for finely worked wooden bowls carved from the island’s striped ebony logs.

We roll to a stop alongside the solitary windsock and the engines are shut down. A small grass hut holds a collection of cartons and loosely stacked striped ebony carvings left by the planter for collection.
The quality is uniformly excellent with all items showing the finely finished incised patterns which enhance these polished bowls and carvings, all are finished with a wetted cloth impregnated with talc-fine sand from the beach alongside the airstrip. No checking for faults is necessary and a cheque is left in the hut. This is New Guinea, where business is done with a handshake or a brief radio conversation and honest dealing is taken for granted by people who rarely meet face to face.

The Aztec is filled with its load of carvings. Fuel from a drum left for us in the long grass is pumped into the tanks, and I taxi down to the end of Girua strip and take off to the east.

With a full load, the climb to cruising level is slow, but we level out at six thousand feet and head for home. A layer of cumulus below now gives only an occasional glimpse of the sea where white-caps still show the direction of the southeast surface wind. Whatever the windspeed up here is, it is now against us and the return flight will be slower.

The NDB radio beacon at Kieta is not to be relied on at any great distance due to the deflection of the radio signal by the mountains of Bougainville, but the peaks of the Crown Prince Range show clearly over 50 miles out. The weather is still good out here and both engines have settled down to a contented synchronised rumble. As we approach the west coast, build-ups of towering cumulus cloud appear behind the range heralding bad weather on the east coast where Aropa airstrip awaits us. Turbulence disturbs steady flight, causing slight continuous shaking the closer we get to the coast. Height must be maintained until we are clear of the high central range where cloud now sits in a grey blanket with only the highest peaks of the mountains showing above it.

Over the range and it’s time to descend. The signal from the Kieta beacon is now loud and clear. Just as well, as it will almost certainly be unofficial instrument let-down today. I am instrument rated, but the aeroplane is not, due to the cost of keeping it maintained and equiped for legal instrument flight and the distance from a suitably equiped facility to carry out the regular inspections. We have a panel loaded with navigation aids including marker beacon, Distance Measuring Equipment and VOR, all good to have but Kieta has none of these, just the solitary NDB now beeping its identifying signal loudly in my earphones.
The needle is rock steady, pointing directly at the antenna behind Aropa airstrip. The needle wavers, hesitates, then suddenly reverses to point directly behind us. We are over the unseen sea below and clear of the mountains.

Power off, and we descend in cloud towards a turning point over the unseen Zeune Islands, eleven miles offshore where a 180 degree turn puts us on a return course for the northern end of Aropa Airstrip. No point in looking for it yet. We are in solid cloud. Fly the panel and watch the rapidly unwinding altimeter. Light rain spreads a gauze film over the perspex windscreen with a minute left to go and no sign of a break.

If this was a commercial operation with paying passengers to consider, as well as Big Brother DCA, the approach would have to be abandoned. A turn away from the unseen land ahead and a retreat to a different airstrip would be mandatory, but as with many things aeronautical in New Guinea, expedience, experience and familiarity with the idiosyncracies of local weather allow me to press on.
1500 feet and still no break in the cloud. 1000 feet is my personal minimum here and this is rapidly approaching when we emerge from the cloud, and the airstrip appears ahead with a heavy shower approaching from the hills.

No time for a full circuit. A quick radio call to alert anyone else in the air around Aropa gets no response.
Wheels down. Landing checklist methodically ticked off and we straighten up for a final slide down the last few hundred feet until the first cone markers at the end of the runway pass beneath us. Power off……stick back……back… back… ri-i-ight back and the wheels touch the runway with a satisfying squeak.

Rabaul Bravo Foxtrot Delta—landed Kieta at time three zero. Cancel Sarwatch.
Bravo Foxtrot Delta…. Kieta…. Sarwatch terminated Rabaul. Good afternoon.
Bravo Foxtrot Delta . Apinun.