I remember my Birthday

We’re in Rabaul for a week, when one night we stand at a bar in Chinatown. There is a calendar behind the bar and I look at it. It’s the 20 February. My god, I exclaim, it’s my birthday! I shouldn’t have said that. I’m buying lots of drinks and consume much too many myself. When we leave Chinatown for the Boat club I’m totally drunk.

A familiar Date

I don’t remember anything after that and wake up in the morning with a tremendous hang-over. I can’t face breakfast and just have coffee. We’re driving into the mountains behind Rabaul to a volcano recording station some half hour drive away. It’s a new building, not yet occupied and Ted is finishing the refrigeration work while I sit in the shade, feeling terrible.

I’m very thirsty and look for water. The water is connected to the building but it is rainwater from a tank behind the building. The water runs out of the tap but is the colour of tea, it doesn’t matter, I need some, I’ so thirsty.

I drink straight from the tap, even though the water is discoloured, it doesn’t taste like anything and is warm, it feels good. I drink some more and go back to sit in the shade. Why did I drink so much last night?

Rabaul Plantroom

Ted is working away in the plant room and when he emerges ready to go I feel nauseous. In the car I hang my head out of the window and let the rushing air cool my head. I am never going to touch another drink for as long as I live.

It’s late in the afternoon when I start to feel human again. Ted wants to go to the club after dinner and when we get there, I drink orange juice the whole time we’re at the club.

I'm Going to Rabaul

Life in Port Moresby is a bit of a ritual. There is not much to do. No TV, but there are three Picture Theatres in Port Moresby, and a Drive-In.

Most Evenings, after eating at Watkins’ Mess, Willie and I sit in one of the rooms at Barlows’ Mess and drink a few beers while reminiscing of our previous lives in Switzerland.  Working in such intense heat all day means drinking beer doesn’t affect you as much.

Friday nights we all go to the Drive-In Theatre near Racecourse Road and have dinner there, then we sit on top of the bonnet or on camping chairs in front and enjoy the movies.

The two Willies at the Ela Beach RSL

Sunday mornings, we drive down to Ela Beach to the RSL and have a few beers and a counter lunch in the Beer Garden, which is facing the beach. 

Carrier Air Conditioning have the service contract with the Australian Federal Government looking after all the installations of Public Buildings in the whole of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. It is a quarterly contract and it needs an electrician and a refrigeration mechanic to travel to each site and do a routine maintenance service.

Dave asks me if I would like to go to some of the places and Willie would go to the others. I am looking forward to see more of New Guinea so I agree. I am given an air ticket and am told to fly to Rabaul, where Ted Stuyvender a Carrier refrigeration mechanic would meet me. We would do the services in Rabaul and then fly to Wewak in the Sepik District to do the services there.

Ansett Fokker Friendship

The following Monday, Willie takes me to the airport and I board a Fokker Friendship plane to Rabaul, via Lae. It’s a four hour flight and Rabaul is beautiful. As we fly in, we circle over a volcano and we can see right into the crater. The lagoon is deep blue, there are lots of palm trees and quaint little native villages among the palm trees.

Ted greets me at the airport. He is a big bloke with a big black beard and a big gut and speaks with an American Accent. In the hire car on the way to town, I ask him where he is from.

'England, he says,

'England'?

'Yes', he insists.

He could have fooled me, he sounds very American not at all English. Well, maybe I’m wrong, maybe they do speak like him somewhere in England.

We drive under the palm trees to the heart of Rabaul. The CDW hostel is in the middle of town. Ted has already organised my room and gives me my key and shows me to my room. All the rooms look the same from the outside. They are small, but clean with a single bed and a cupboard as well as a small table and a couple of chairs.