The Die Was Cast - My Journey to New Guinea

News items from Bougainville

The Bougainville Aftermath

For your listening pleasure: TAIM BILONG MASTA

70 years of PIM are now available on the internet - click here

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23 September 2019

Along the Sepik


Set on the Upper Sepik River in New Guinea, this film records the day-to-day experiences of Kiap (one-man representative of the Australian government in regional areas) Barry Downes as he patrols an area that in 1963 had only recently been brought under control from headhunters. As well as being a record of the role of the colonial administration, Along the Sepik offers insights into some tribal communities' cultures through depictions of their spirit houses and traditional 'sing sing' ceremonies.

Downes investigates a murder, and the culprit is caught and tried by a magistrate in a jungle courthouse under the Australian flag, on the edge of the Sepik River. Australian patrol officers and their men operated under rugged conditions to bring western law and order to this remote area. The film also portrays some of the impact the colonial government had on regional, traditional communities.

This and several other movie clips are available from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia - click here.

 

22 September 2019

All that praying never paid off

 

A few clips by Adam Constanza, a travelling "content creator"


Adam shot a number of clips on and around Bougainville. They're no the Bougainville of old but the Bougainville of now. For more (of the same), click here

 

John Laws' Bougainville


 

Journalist Sean Dorney returns to his beloved PNG, perhaps for the last time


... and don't we all know how he feels!

 

21 September 2019

Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad had nothing on them


"In Australia I sickened of the urban life, the crowded rush to work in the mornings, the tiresome after-work booze-ups at the pub and the predictability of my future. I’d spent five years in advertising. I was now an account executive doing the bidding of my corporate masters, selling the American dream that had become Australia’s. My initial fascination had become a curse and no longer was I interested in the shallow search for unique selling points and catchy phrases, the pretty pictures and the jingles, selling capitalism to the masses.

As I observed the careers of my fellow workers grinding relentlessly toward retirement, I felt a dark cloud descending and as it thickened around me I struggled to find a way to escape. I thought about inland Australia where mining companies paid well and life was rough in the desert. I considered joining the army, something to initiate and toughen me and help me escape the malaise I felt. But the war in Vietnam was in the headlines every day and Australians were dying in a distant struggle that made no sense to me and I quickly dropped the idea. And then, one day, an old school friend suggested Papua New Guinea.

We were having lunch at a pub when he told me about patrol officers, young men employed by the Australian government taming the wilds of Papua New Guinea. Suddenly the cloud lifted as I realized that perhaps this was the answer, a way out; overseas travel and adventure, all paid for by the Australian government.

Immediately I began reading to learn as much as I could about this faraway place and applied to become a Cadet Patrol Officer with the Australian Department of External Affairs. It would take six long months before the invitation for an interview arrived.

Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad had nothing on James Sinclair and Jack Hides, Ivan Champion and the other great explorers who wrote of their adventures in Papua New Guinea; who’d disappeared behind the ranges and into the swamps and vast inland valleys deep in unexplored territories on the second largest island on Earth."
Click here to continue.

Indeed, Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad had nothing on them and all those who came to New Guinea in search of adventure and a less-than-ordinary life. Not all were as eloquent as Andrew Leslie Phillips in the article above but all can relate to his words, "In Australia I sickened of the urban life, the crowded rush to work in the mornings, the tiresome after-work booze-ups at the pub and the predictability of my future.".

Andrew became a 'kiap', or patrol officer, in New Guinea and also spent several years on Bougainville; I was a "Bank Johnny" in Australia and became an audit clerk in a chartered accountants' firm in Rabaul, then went to Bougainville, then Port Moresby and Lae, and travelled all over New Guinea which became "home" to me like no other place.

A lifelong friend from my New Guinea days who, like all of us, had to return to Australia but struggled to fit back in, put it rather well when he said, "My spiritual home will always be New Guinea."

Perhaps this struggle is something we all share. I, too, still think almost every day about those many faraway places in which I lived and worked. The years spent there have left me unsuited in many respects for life in the deep south. I feel suspended between my past life in the islands and my present life in mainstream Australia, and I still seek a place where I can feel truly content.

Perhaps I will always remain AN OUTCAST FROM THE ISLANDS!

 

The Closure of Bougainville Copper Limited's Mine: Lessons for the Mining Industry

Here is Allan Manning's thesis of October 1994. Pretty "dry" reading but a good summary of the facts: click here.

 

20 September 2019

Bougainville before the conflict

"One of the most beautiful group of islands of the south-west Pacific, with a population estimated to be less than 200,000 in 2005, and a human occupation of almost 30,000 years, Bougainville has had a remarkable history. Apart from one significant known wave of migration about 3,000 years ago, Bougainville and the nearby islands to its south and east — where peoples of similar language, culture, and appearance live — remained in virtual isolation until European interventions in the 19th century."

More good reading for those who want to know more than what's written up in the tabloid press: click here

 

18 September 2019

21 days and 11 ports

What a cruise! 21 days and 11 ports: Brisbane, Alotau, Conflict Islands, Madang, Wewak, Rabaul, Kitava, Gizo, Honiara, Luganville.

Sailing from Sydney in April 2021, so you have plenty of time to save up for it! And when you're ready to book, go to Princess Cruises, go to the drop-down box "Month/Year", select "April 2021", then click on "View Cruises", then move down the next page until you come across "21-Day Papua New Guinea & Solomon Islands".

And, no, I'm not on a commission but you can always buy me a beer in the Wheelhouse Bar when we meet! Until then!


 

The Bone Man of Kokoda

Okay, this has nothing to do with Bougainville and the Bougainville Copper Mine but who am I to get in the way of a good story - indeed, who am I? - and "The Bone Man of Kokoda" is a cracking good yarn:

"The Bone Man" is Kokichi Nishimura, a member of the 2nd battalion, 144th Regiment of the Japanese Imperial Army. In 1942 he fought along every foot of Kokoda as the Japanese attempted to take Port Moresby. He was the only man from his company to survive the campaign. As he was evacuated to safety he made a promise that one day he would return to his comrades and bring them home to Japan for proper burial.

After the war, Nishimura prospered. But under the surface, the driving ambition of his life was to fulfil his promise. In 1979, he shocked his family by returning to New Guinea to search for the remains of Japanese soldiers. For the next 25 years, Nishimura lived alone along the Kokoda Track. Armed only with a metal detector, a mattock and a shovel, he searched for his dead comrades. Over the years he found hundreds of them - some he was able to identify and return their bones to their families; others were unknown, and their remains were sent to Japan's official shrine for its war dead in Tokyo.

In 2005 Nishimura, now in his mid-eighties and seriously ill, was forced to return to Japan. His story is an incredible adventure that gives us a radically different viewpoint on a battle that has become part of our national myth. Nishimura's life and quest above all offer a poignant reminder of the futility of war.

In 2010, already in his 90s, he returned one more time to Kokoda to help find the jungle grave of a WWII Australian captain who was killed for taunting his Japanese captors - click here.

He died on October 25, 2015, aged 95.

Read more of this cracking good yarn in these sample pages or listen to an interview with the author, Charles Happell:


 

15 September 2019

PARADISE, the In-flight Magazine of AIR NIUGINI

You no longer have to fly AIR NIUGINI to read their lavishly illustrated PARADISE in-flight magazine. Come fly with me by clicking here.

 

10 September 2019

Fifty Years ago in New Guinea

My old mate Brian Darcey wrote, apart from his first and only book, "Bougainville Blue", some very evocative articles on his blog www.darceyco.com which, alas, is no more.

Brian Darcey during his final years in Cairns

Well, neither is Brian who sailed - or flew - over the horizon in May 2018, but it would be a shame not to preserve some of his writing for his four children and five grandchildren and, indeed, all "Territorians" of the "taim bipo". Here it goes:

 



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.

 

Thanks, Brian, for bringing back good memories of our times in the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea. Long after you had left them, I also did a short stint with "Steamies" to set up their tug-and-barge operations for the Ok Tedi Mine - click here -, so there's something else we had in common.





8 September 2019

From the late Brian Darcey's blog: Farewell to New Guinea


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 pallets 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'd be happy to buy the trocas from you." A price of less than half the market value of the shell followed.

Thirty 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.

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.

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 labourer 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 competency. 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 reality 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?"

The above was copied from the archived copy of Brian Darcey's website www.darceyco.com. Brian will always owe us his answer to the self-posed question "what now?" as, sadly, he passed away on 14 May 2018 in Cairns. I briefly visited and stayed with him on his yacht TEKANI II a few years earlier - see here and here -, and I am sure he would have liked me to preserve his writings. He is also the author of "Bougainville Blue" - see here.

 




 

6 September 2019

Bougainville Blue




 

In the early 2000s, Brian Darcey wrote a book, "Bougainville Blue", which is about Bougainville and named after its spectacularly beautiful butterfly but also about a ‘blue’ which is Australian slang for a fight. It’s about the beauty of Bougainville and its flora and fauna. And it's about the destruction of Bougainville.

Brian and his family lived in Papua New Guinea for twenty-five years, from 1955 to 1980. He was the original Rabaul agent for CRA Exploration when he operated B.F.DARCEY & COMPANY PTY LTD at Rabaul until 1965, then at Toniva on Bougainville Island. They were cocoa and trochus shell exporters, but also had a store at Toniva selling artifacts, jewellery, clothing etc.

"Bougainville Blue" is a work of fiction but it also tells the reader about the Panguna Mine which was closed by a ragtag militia bent on reclaiming their land. Brian saw the Bougainville Revolutionary Army come into being. He observed the rise and fall of Australian rule in Bougainville. He watched the ‘blue’ take place. Listen to an interview Brian gave in 2008: click here or here.

"Bougainville Blue" is still available by mail order from Diane Andrews, email dianepithie@gmail.com, for $28, including postage.

 



5 September 2019

The Highlands Trilogy


Read more here

 

For anyone interested in the early days of European exploration of New Guinea, this three-in-one documentary series filmed over a ten-year period - "First Contact" (1983), followed by Joe Leahy’s "Neighbours" (1989) and "Black Harvest" (1992), - offers footage of exceptional quality considering that it is twenty to thirty years old.

Youtube has some short clips:



First Contact


Black Harvest


First Contact - The Day the Plane Came




PNG Highlands Trilogy from Music Films Distribution on Vimeo.


 

Occasionally, the full set of DVDs is on sale at ebay at around a hundred dollars, not an unreasonable price considering its rarity.

The DVDs as well as the book are also available direct from the producers - click here.

 

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 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 acquaintance 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, 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.

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

 




1 September 2019

PNG Geography 101


 :

... and while we're on Youtube, here are some more: