Me and my Boys

               One of the Australian Administration buildings in Konedobu, is without air conditioning, we get the call early one morning. I attend and find the mechanical switchboard had burned out during the night in one of the many thunderstorms we experience in Port Moresby.

             We can't have the building without air conditioning for very long. The staff, mostly european, cannot cope too well working in these extremely high temperatures and humidity levels

             I get Metu and Tom to remove the burnt out components, head back to the office and order replacement materials. I need to hurry and get back to the job quickly. The boys need to be supervised constantly or they spend hours trying to unscrew bolts that hold the components in place the screwdriver the wrong way. They need to be reminded, 'Wrong way, Tommy'.

              While I am in the plant room, I also check the rest of the refrigeration machinery. Konedobu is the area in Port Moresby where most of the Administration Buildings are situated. During the week, there are hundreds of european office workers going hither and dither from buildings to buildings, all air conditioned by Carrier Air Conditioning.

            Weekends the place is deserted. Europeans gather for sporting activities or hold parties or drive to some of the beaches for relaxation.

Big Plans are afoot

We are now four people living in Barlow’s flat, three Swiss and a South African. Willie (from Basel), Werner (from Winterthur) and myself (from Thun). We sit and talk every night, drinking beer. We consume a carton of beer every night during these planning sessions between the three of us. I know, because every third day it’s my turn to buy a carton of beer. The empty bottles threaten to take over the stairs to our flat.

We plan a trip by VW bus from Singapore to Switzerland through Asia, the Middle East. Most nights we plan and scheme and drink a carton of beer. Some nights Willie, who has found a girlfriend called Kerrie, is out with her and only Werner and I continue planning the trip.

Werner tells me that while I was on the other side of the island, that upon his return from Lae,  he sometimes went out with Willie and Kerrie and Diane Speakman, Kerrie’s friend. Everyone tells me about Diane who I haven’t met yet.

Will the Morobe District really disappear?

For some time there have been rumours going around that a big earthquake is about to destroy the Morobe District. Lae is the capital of the Morobe District. This earthquake has been forecast by some American female medium appearing on American TV. There are many expat people who live in Morobe Districte who believe that and have booked their holidays and are leaving the region for Australia, but not us. Phil and I stay in Lae and take our chances. I can't imagine Dave allowing us to leave Lae just because some nutter forecasts an earthquake.

Click on map to enlarge it

It’s Saturday night and Phil and I go to the movies. When we return to the hostel I climb into bed and start reading my book, when suddenly the room starts shaking madly. OMG, the earthquake. It’s true, we’re going to die. Everyone jumps out of their beds and runs outside. The earth rumbles and shakes, fortunately not violently. It lasts for about five minutes, then everything is calm again. We go back to bed.

Next day, the newspaper’s front page reads, EARTHQUAKE – WE’RE ISOLATED. Apparently the Seacom cable that links Australia to Asia and Europe and passes trough Lae, was damaged by the earthquake. So this woman was partially right. There was an earthquake but it didn’t quite destroy the District, just a vital link.

We stay another few weeks in Lae and it’s been over three months since we’ve been away from Port Moresby, and we’re glad to be home, when we land at the airport in Port Moresby.

A thermohydrograph takes a walk

Dave sends me a letter and a thermohydrograph an instrument that records temperature and humidity and plots them onto a long strip of graph paper, from Port Moresby. He wants me to fly to Goroka. Carriers have installed a new system some months earlier in the operating theatre of the new hospital and apparently it’s not performing well. Phil continues the service work in Lae by himself. I book a flight and head for the hills. It’s much colder in Goroka and I hire a car and find a Chinese shop, of which there are many throughout the Territory. I need to buy a jumper (sweater), it gets quite cold at night up there. I book into a motel and drive to the hospital.

The sister in charge won’t let me in until I put on a theatre gown, theatre hat clean white theatre wellingtons and wash my hands. I set up the instrument and tell her I’ll be back the next day to pick it up. It will have by then recorded the temperature and humidity over a twenty-four hour period. Just what Dave had ordered.

Thermohydrograph gets stolen

I have the rest of the day and next day to go sight seeing. There is not much to see in Goroka, except once every two years on a long weekend, when the Goroka Show takes place. On these days, Natives come from far and near all dressed up in their native dresses and paints. So do thousands of tourists and the media from all around the world. During those days, Goroka doubles its population, but unfortunately now is nothing on in Goroka, so I stay in the motel and read. The next day I return back to the hospital, get into a gown and scrub up again and retrieve the instrument and put it back into it’s specially designed wooden box, all painted and Carrier Air Conditioning written all over.

At the motel I leave the box in the car and get a big surprise the next morning when I find the car had been broken into and the thermohygrograph has been stolen. Nothing else has gone, well; nothing else was in the car. I phone Dave in Port Moresby who first tells me go to the Police to report the theft and ads …don’t do that again. As if if it was my fault the car got broken into last night.

I report the theft to the local Police Inspector, a white fellow and he tells me the instrument is probably ending up in some straw hut being revered as a religious symbol.


I  have a couple of hours to wait for my flight back to Lae, so I wander over to the Main Market at Goroka, it's not far from the airport. People come from near and far to try to sell their produce, mainly fruit and vegetables. They walk for days to get to the market, then walk back to their villages.

They present some colourful pictures with a lot of them in their native costumes at the market stands which are provided by the local government council on market days.

I drop back the hire car and fly back to Lae to continue the rest of the service visits with Phil. Werner goes  back to Port Moresby, he’s finished his job in Lae.

Werner and I start a business

One weekend, Werner and I are having a beer in the old Hotel Cecil near the airport. It’s a run down pub that had seen better days, run by an elderly lady, whose family has owned the hotel for a long time. A couple of natives come to the door of the Saloon bar with some carved wooden statues. I don’t take much notice at first, but when I see another patron of the bar bring one of those statues to his table, I have a closer look. It’s a statue of a ‘meri’ (native girl), wearing a grass skirt. It looks quite good. It wears a short grass skirt and when you lift the skirt, the statue reveals it is anatomically correct. ‘How much did you pay for that’. I ask. ‘Ten bucks’, he replies. The statues are carved from pine wood and are painted with original pigments such as crushed charcoal for the black parts, crushed chalk for the whites and ochre for the facial pigmentation. All the colours rub off real easily, so we'll need to be careful.

My '' boystatue
I bought in Lae. 

I go outside just as the natives walk away. ‘Hey you’, I call out. ‘Yes, masta’?

‘You got any more of these’? I ask, pointing to the bar.

‘No, but we can make’, he says.

‘How long’, I ask,

‘Day after tomorrow’, he answers.

‘I’ll have one’, I say

‘Me too’, Werner says, beside me.

‘Ok, masta. Two days’. 

A couple of days later, Werner and I go back to the Cecil and wait. As promised, the native chap is back with two statuesques, a mary (girl) and a boy. They look great. We both give him ten dollars each and take the two new artefacts to the car, me with the boy and Werner with the mary, our two new artefacts.

I tell Werner about the Belgian fellow I had met in Wewak and how he comes to the Territory to buy artefacts twice a year. We should do that he says. ‘That’s what I reckon’ I reply. ‘Well we already have some stock’, he laughs.

Bulolo and Wau

We need to hire a second car after all. Phil and I have to drive up into the mountains to Bulolo and Wau, where we have to service the air conditioning units in the telephone exchanges. Werner needs a car in Lae. We hire a small Daihatsu and drive up to Wau. It’s a three hour drive up there.

It’s an unsealed road all the way up but not too bad. About half-way up to Bulolo, we come to a settlement and realise that most cars parked at the European’s houses are Volvos, just about every house has one standing in their driveways and we also pass a lot driving by. Very strange, that.

Me, posing with the gold miners

From Bulolo, it’s another hour drive to Wau. About 30 minutes into the drive, we see people down in the creek to the left working at  mining gold. We stop the car and climb down to watch. They have set up a trough and are washing the gravel as it passes over the trough to find gold. An old European prospector runs the outfit and I have a chat with him. He seems to make a decent living, paying the natives cash every day so they come back.

Back on the road and a little later we arrive in Wau, another mining settlement. It has the Gold Mine and a pub and that’s about it. We book into the pub and have a shower after the long drive on the dirt road up from Lae. A few beers, dinner and we’re calling it a day.

Next morning, after breakfast, we drive up the road to the telephone exchange to replace the bearings to all the air conditioning motors. When we walk in, the operator of the exchange says, ‘It’s about time, you guys come to fix the airconditioning, it hasn’t worked for over a week’.  I find the switchboard has burnt out, what a mess. I asked the technician if there was an electrician in town who could sell me some cables. No such luck, but he tells me to try the Wau Gold Mine. They might be able to help. Their maintenance bloke takes me to his supply store. They have everything we needed and are willing to lend it to me provided we will send the stuff up from Port Moresby to replace what we borrowed, they have cables, contactors etc.

I work out it will take me about four days to re-wire the entire switchboard. Back at the exchange, I ask the technician for a phone line to phone our office in Port Moresby but he tells me he has no lines but can let me have the emergency line if I am quick. 

I’m on the phone to Dave Smith in Port Moresby and it goes like this:

'G’Day Dave, listen I can’t talk long, I’m on the emergency line phoning from the Wau telephone Exchange, can you hear me'?

'Yes, I can'.

'Listen Dave, I’ve found the switchboard burnt out. I can get all the stuff from the Gold Mine. It’ll take me four days to rewire the board, Do you want me to do it'?

'Mmm, eh, mmmm',

'Dave',

'Yes'?

'Do you want me to do it'?

'Mmm, eh, mmmm',

'Dave',

Yes'?

I’m phoning on the emergency line, do you want me to do it'?

'Mmm, eh, mmmm',

That's when I lose it, slam the phone down and thank the technician for letting me use the emergency line and we drive back to Lae. What’s wrong with this bloke? Why does he have to be so indecisive?

Back in Lae, there is a telegram waiting for me at the hostel it says:

YES STOP PROCEED WITH REPAIR TO SWITCHBOARD IMMEDIATELY STOP

Too late, mate, we’re back in Lae. I phone Dave and tell him we’re back in Lae and he’ll have to send someone else. I can’t understand some people. I had it all organised, had all the materials, was on site and could have fixed the switchboard there and then. Some people should not be managers.


         

Time to say Goodbye to Madang

I’m sad to say good-bye to Madang I love it here. But we must go on with our trip and when we land in Lae, Werner Utzinger who is up from Port Moresby, working here, greets us. He already has a hire car so we don’t need another one. Werner drives us to Barclay’s hostel where we move into our rooms.

No troubles here with the bearings, they await us at the wharf. We take Werner to his job site in the mornings before taking off to do our service work. A very unique phenomenon in Lae is that it rains every afternoon. You can set your clock by it, on the dot of 2 o’clock, down comes the rain for about an hour or so. The end result is Lae is extremely green. The golf club near the airport looks lush with deep green fairways and bushy trees.

While having a drink at the Outrigger bar of the 'Melanesian Hotel' in town, we hear the boss talking Swiss-German to another hotel employee. I’m with Werner and we call out to them in Swiss-German. They look surprised and come over for a chat. It turns out that Walter Gschwind is the hotel manager and Hanspeter is his chef. They invite us for a game of Jass, the Swiss national card game for the following Saturday and we accept. Small world.

Füfzg, Ass mit de Stöck

Saturday before lunch we front up and are taken to Walter’s private rooms. We play cards all day and night and drink quite a bit. On the house, of course.

Come back tomorrow morning; they say when we leave way after midnight. We will, we say.

Sunday morning we’re back at the hotel and get stuck into some serious drinking and playing Jass. I wonder who’s cooking for the hotel guests. My sou-chef, I’m being told, don’t worry, he knows what to do.

It’s a long weekend and on Monday morning we’re back again. We haven’t had a decent meal or sleep since Friday and I’m starting to feel it. By Monday night I’m totally out of it. Three days of solid drinking has taken its toll. I’m sick as a dog and crash in an empty hotel room. I don’t wake up until Tuesday morning when Phil calls to see if we are going to work.

I thank Walter and Hanspeter, for their hospitality and Phil drives us to work. I totally enjoyed this weekend.