We need to Help Ourselves

Being Sunday, the naval base is deserted so we have a good look around. In one of the workshops I discover a sailor’s hat, so Peter takes a photo of me wearing it, to send home to Switzerland.

Hello Sailor

The crates with the air conditioning ducts, equipment, refrigeration pipes are awaiting us in the Naval Depot, but no electrical stuff. No cables, conduits, nothing.

I phone Dave Scott who tells me all the crates came directly from Brisbane. He phones Urs, who makes some inquires and apologises. They forgot the electrical stuff and they would send it immediately on the next boat. That means four weeks. There is no way I wait four weeks up in this heat for cables and stuff.

Pius my new offsider and I help Peter installing the ductwork and when a week later Fred arrives, I mention my dilemma. We take a walk through the Naval Base and discover an electrical store in another Nissan hut. It has large wire doors and we can see quite clearly, conduits, rolls of cables, everything I need. We find the store commander and ask him if we can buy or borrow some of the stuff we need to do this installation. No way, he says. No matter how much we plead and assure him that our stuff is on the way from Brisbane, he is adamant, he cannot and will not help us. Bastard!

        There is only one thing to do. That night the three of us sneak up to the store in the middle of the night. Peter with his tin snips Fred and I with torches, and Peter cuts a neat hole in the back door just big enough for me to squeeze through. I climb into the store and grab a few rolls of cable, some lengths of  conduit, saddles and conduit fittings and pass them through the hole to Fred and Peter.

        Afterwards, Peter fits the cut out section and sticks it neatly back with small sections of silver tape. It looks great but the silver tape is shiny and you can see the joints in the door. No problem, Fred says. He spits in his hands, rubs the spit onto the silver tape, takes some dirt and rubs it onto the wet tape. We stand back, shine the torches onto the door. You can’t see anything unless you knew what to look for.

      We make our way back to our Nissan hut and in the morning carry our newly acquired possessions boldly through the base to the job.

     No one even noticed, but when the workshop foreman seers us installing the conduits he said, ‘I thought you said you had no electrical materials’. I said, ‘oh we found the stuff in the refrigeration crate after all’.


        I guess they must have realised what happened when four weeks later, after we had gone, a crate of cables and associated electrical material arrived from Brisbane.