Another Swiss Electrician arrives

        We finished the installation and prepare to return to Port Moresby. Pius is very sad. He is a smart kid and I feel sorry for him. He hasn’t got many prospects in Manus Island, he is a good worker and would make a great helper back in Port Moresby. I get his details and promise to try to move him to Port Moresby for maybe an apprenticeship somewhere.

        We return to Port Moresby. I wonder what’ll happen when the new materials arrives on the base long after we have left.

Some weeks later in Port Moresby, Werner Utzinger also arrives from Brisbane for a stint in the Territory. It is good to see him again. Willie had gone to Madang for a job, so Werner moves into his room at Barlows. I again have a drinking buddy, and a Swiss one at that. It’s great.


Sunday morning and we all drive to a remote beach which Willie calls 'Swiss Beach'. It's about an hour's drive from Port Moresby. It's a nice spot and we cook a bar-b-que and have a few beers. All the Carrier staff is there except Dave and his family. 


Very soon the kids from nearby villages come over to investigate us and we organise an impromptu soccer game with the kids. Someone has brought a spear gun and we all try our luck at spear fishing.

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Above (top) - we play soccer with the local kids

Above (middle) - time for a swim

Above - (bottom) - spear fishing Swiss Dude

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.

        

I join the Australian Navy

 My car has arrived and I now have my own transport in Port Moresby. It’s great, not have to rely on other people.

They send us a chap named Fred Harrison, a refrigeration mechanic, who arrives complete with wife Wendy and a couple of small children. Dave finds them a flat to live in.  Fred is a cheerful fellow and within a short time is liked by everyone. Being married, he gets the company ute to take home with him, but has to drive us around if needed.

One of the first jobs Fred is given is at the Australian Naval Base in Manus Island, part of the Admiralty Islands near the Equator. A new air conditioning system needs to be installed and they send Peter Fides, a sheetmetal worker and myself up there to start the installation. Fred is to follow a week later to do the refrigeration work.

Peter and I arrive at the Naval Base called ‘HMAS Tarangau’ and are given a Nissan hut to ourselves. It is quite large with about ten bedroom cubicles with walls about 2 metres high and open above and there is a communal kitchen, which we don't use as we are eating at the Petty Officer's Mess. 

I sometimes listen to Swiss Radio
International on shortwave

There is absolutely nothing to do in the naval base so we work long hours. I sometimes listen to shortwave radio for news from Switzerland.

 There is a young native boy hanging around the hut. His name is Pius and he tells us he’s still at high school. He is an intelligent young native and I employ him to help me with my installation. On Sunday, Pius calls to our Donga and I ask him if he can get us some coconuts from one of the many palm trees outside our hut. 'Of course', he said and proceeds to climb one of the trees with the aid of his handkerchief with which he ties his feet together and up he goes right to the top where he dislodges a few coconuts.

Pius climbs a palm tree

I am amazed, here I am on a tropical island of the Pacific, so very far from my home in Switzerland, watching a native boy doing what comes natural to him, climbing palm trees to get coconuts.

Back on the ground, Pius takes the husk off with his teeth, a bit like we peel a banana. The milk of the freshly opened coconut tastes nice and in the heat is very refreshing.

Wewak Catholic Mission

We only stay a week in Wewak. There is not much there, only the hospital which has two systems, one in the operating theatres and another in the maternity ward. The other air conditioning system just outside  Wewak is in the army base, about a half hour drive out of town.

But while we are in Wewak, Ted says he wants to show me the Catholic Mission in the hills. We drive up there one afternoon and come to a series of timber buildings with corrugated roofs. We stop and walk into the Reception area. 'Can we see the artefacts father', Ted asks. 'Sure', the priest says and takes us across the yard to a much larger building. He unlocks the door and when we enter I am totally surprised. The building is packed full with all sorts of Native masks, carved statues, bones and other typically New Guinea Native artefacts. They are all on tables and have price tags on them.

At the Wewak Catholic Mission 

We stay about an hour in this room and I buy a few small masks for a few bucks to send home to Switzerland. We pay the priest and return to Wewak. But the image of all those artefacts stays with me for some time. I want to come back at a later stage and spend much more time in that shed.

We fly back to Port Moresby and I am back working at the Papuan Medical College. Carriers have picked up a lot of projects in New Guinea. Not surprising, as we are the only large air conditioning company in the Territory. There are a couple of small operators in Port Moresby but they can’t handle large projects. We now have so much work that Dave Scott advises Brisbane, we need someone permanently commissioning and testing finished projects.

Wewak Next

My three weeks in the Territory are up and I phone Dave Scott in Port Moresby. He is surprised to hear I was only going to stay three weeks. He had asked Urs for a permanent electrician, not a temporary one. Naturally, he wants me to stay. (Another ‘porkie’ from Urs). I have come to like life in the Territory, so I agree to stay for at least three months. Dave is very happy with that. I ask him to get Urs to ship my car up from Brisbane, on company expenses, of course.

We stay another couple of weeks in Rabaul and when we have finished all the services, we return the hire car and book a flight to Wewak. Another Fokker Friendship takes us there and from the airport in Wewak we take a cab to town. We stay at the Wewak Hotel right at the end of town, which is built quite high above the ocean. We look down about 100m to the beach below. We move into our rooms and find a hire-car place.

The hotel at Wewak is up on Wewak Hill

At dinner time we walk into the dining room and Ted heads for a table with a chap sitting there already. Why can’t he pick an empty table?

Ted introduces us and the chap tells us his name as well. He is another traveling salesman in town trying to sell medical equipment to the medical practitioners and the hospital.

I’m from England, Ted announces. So am I, the salesman replies. 'Where abouts', he asks. Ted comes out with some unheard name of a small village in Surrey. This gets the other chap very excited, So am I he beams. I shudder, this is going to be very good. I wait.

That’s when Ted backs down, 'well no, he says, 'actually I am from the United States. My mother came from Surrey'. Nice one Ted.

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 Learning how Air Conditioning Works

After dinner we walk down to the waterfront to a Boat Club. It’s very dark, not many street lights and the moon shines through the palm trees. There are a lot of natives walking in the streets. They say, 'Good Night masta', as they pass us and smile. The people of Rabaul are much more friendly than the native people in Port Moresby or Lae. Ted tells me that Rabaul is one of the safest places in New Guinea. 

We have a few drinks at the club and Ted befriends an Australian traveling salesman who is staying in Rabaul for the night. 'I’m from England', Ted proclaims. The salesman looks at him suspiciously, 'Really'? he says. I wonder why is he pretending to be English instead of American? I guess he must have his reasons. I can also see that our new found friend doesn't believe him.

Ted knocks on my door at 6.30 in the morning. We’re having breakfast at the hostel and drive off to the first job. It’s in the Administration Building in town.

Mechanical Switchboard

It’s only 9 o’clock but already it is very hot and humid. The plant room is big, has a very large switchboard, four compressors and an enormous air handling unit. My job is to service the switchboard, that means I have to tighten all the electrical connections, check all the operational functions of the various components and clean up any dust. Ted’s job is much more elaborate. He has to check the refrigeration system, which involves a lot of opening and shutting of valves of the refrigeration circuits.

When I first started work at Carrier Air Conditioning as an electrician, I didn’t know anything about air conditioning I just wired switchboards to diagrams, and tested them after they were wired. And still I didn’t know if they worked properly. I didn’t know what the functions were or what they did. For me as an electrician that was not important, as long as the switchboard worked.

Now, that I’m here in an actual working plant room I start to look around and observe Ted. My switchboard job is done within an hour so I ask Ted if I can help him. 'Not really' he says, so I just observe him what he is doing and ask him questions like what does this do or that?

Ted looks pleased that I’m interested and explains in great details how everything works, how the refrigerant liquid expands at the Thermal Expansion Valve, how the condenser turns the hot gas back into liquid and how the compressors pump the whole lot round and round. It’s fascinating. We climb into the actual air handling unit through doors. It’s nice inside, very windy but cold, about 16°C, in no time my clothes are dry from perspiration. It feels great.

Ted shows me the innards of the unit, the fan that supplies the cool air into the three floors of the building. The fan is very large, taller than me. Ted tells me to be careful not to be sucked into the fan. He shows me the evaporator coils where the cold gets picked up by the air moving over it  to be delivered into the occupied areas, it is all fascinating.

It takes us the whole day to finish the service at the Administration building, checking everything, cleaning and leaving the plant room in a spotless condition. It’s easy work, I love it.