William Ashworth emailed from Brisbane:

Bill Ashworth today, 82 years young, and fit as a fiddle

 

Hello, my name is William (Billy) Ashworth and I was the very first operator (dozer) to start the very first road construction from Kieta to Nairovi Camp -???- onto Panguna, around about 1965 or 1966, not sure now.

There was only a small hotel and a big hall there then, and the managers at the pub were from Charters Towers; can't remember their names now, sorry. The hall was for the missionary or minister, and I remember his broken-down landrover being carried by a hundred legs underneath it, as the Rotokas natives - Rorovana natives??? - brought it back to the hall, all yelling and singing, kids running around everywhere; lovely bedlam at the time.

I operated a Euclid C-6 crawler tractor for a Frenchman from the Solomon Islands. I was there for about six months. The Euclid C-6 ended up burning out in a creek while I was pushing up gravel and then I started operating a Caterpillar D8 for Utah - ??? - for the rest of my time there.

 

P.S. from Webmaster: Bill phoned me again in late October to say he's sending me a USB-stick full of Bougainville stuff to put up on the web. Stay tuned!

---

And here's his final write-up, warts and all:

"I'll start here to get my years right, this happened between 1965 to 1967.

I came home from New Zealand in 1965 and went to Mt Isa mines operating machinery in the old open cut. In 1966 Delta Construction were hiring operators to go to the Highlands in New Guinea. Four of us got the positions and flew to Moresby, Lae to Mt Hagen, where I saw my first sing-sing - very colourful, very primitive and dangerous; we were scared. Went into the Villages of Minj and Banz and did roadworks in the mountains. Delta Construction lost their contract, and we were laid off as the new American company brought in their own personnel.

On my way home I had to stay in the Moresby Hotel a few days waiting for my flight and I met up with the Manager, Matt Martin. He employed me as a helper with accommodation thrown in. The government had just allowed locals to drink in a boi bar, and we would fill the bar floor with lots of sawdust. We had two fire hoses either side the bar. They couldn't hold their liquor, and at closing time 4pm, we'd hose and skid out drunken locals, broken glass, piss, shit, etc. It was dangerous as they threw everything they could pick up back at us, before we could close the big doors. I got plenty of stiches at the hospital. I'm just glad they never had machettes.

While working there a Frenchman saw me (the name Gubbay rings a bell; I only met him once for a short time) and asked if I would operate his new dozer at a new mine on Bougainville Island, and I took the job. There wasn't much at Kieta then. I remember a small hotel and a big hall, plenty of coconut, palm trees, lovely beaches, and the place was full of natives, with villages down the beach.

I was put up in the hotel. The managers of the hotel (his name was John but I can't remember this surname - Williams or Miller - nor his wife's name) came from Charters Towers Qld, not far from where I was born in Home Hill, and we became friends straight away. I was there for about a week before the engineer, Matt, turned up. I'm pretty sure the contracting company was Utah Construction (but I also worked for Utah in NZ so maybe I'm mixed up). The engineer took me to a hill behind Kieta where I could see an old zig-zag road that had been cut some time but was in bad shape. He told me to clean it up to a drivable state so he could get to me with fuel etc.

When I finished, I started on the road that followed an old track. I noticed the natives cleaning up and stacking mortar bombs on the side of the road, I heard later on the army took them away and blew up some of the live ones. I was lucky as I could see where my dozer plates had scored some of them. Lucky they didn't blow up under me. I carried on till I run out of the old road, clearing the jungle and forming a goat track road.

The engineer said, "Keep going until you run into two old thatch huts called Nairobi camp, and wait there for me." I carried on using some of the flagging that was left. Anyway, the locals knew where the huts were. When I reached there, we went back to Kieta for a few days. A small ship had come in with lots of stuff and a few more personnel.

I got an old truck, and with four locals loaded it up with materials, drums of fuel, oil, a wood stove, bedding, table and chairs and other stuff. We went back to the camp and unloaded all the stuff. The stove, table and chairs went into one hut, bedding in the other. There were locals repairing the roofs, clearing the tall grass from around the huts, and cleaning out all the rubbish from inside.

I was then told to stay here as there was no accommodation in Kieta. I shouted, "You want me to live here with the rats, snakes etc. in these fucking disgusting huts? What about food? Mate, fuck this!" After he had talked me into stayings, he said, "Carry on, mate, until you run into a wide creek and push up as much gravel as you can, as we are going to need tons of it."

So we started to clean up my hut. The beds were old army style with a very hard mattress, one pillow. I only had two pairs of shorts and three black singlets, and two pairs of thongs. I didn't bother shaving, I had a toothbrush but no toothpaste; instead, I used salt. Had no boots or shoes; worked in thongs. With no fridge, most food was in cans and tins, although there were plenty of eggs. The truck would go down to Kieta every second or third day, so bread would be brought back then. It wasn't that cold at times, and after the first couple of nights I had a mosquito net brought up quickly as the fucking insects tried very hard to eat me alive.

I started on the road again, clearing and putting in the goat track until I reached the creek he told me about, and for a couple of days pushed up plenty of gravel, and went back and cleaned up a lot of the road back to camp. I'm not sure now but I was pushing up gravel when the bloody brandnew Euclid C6 Dozer went up in flames. It flared up that quickly, I barely made it out in time. I sat and watched it burn out. I sat on the side of the creek in the middle of the jungle dumbfounded for eight bloody hours, with a banana leaf over my head as the locals boys do to keep the rain off, until the truck came back to pick us up.

Back to Kieta, John the publican tried to call the owner many times for about a week. He said he knew him very well and that he was a good bloke and would pay my wages and everything else, accommodation food etc., but no booze. He would take that out of my wages when the money came in. He gave me a bed in a lean-to just out of the rain and attached to the hotel.

Matt said, "I've got two nearly new Cat D7 Dozers here with no operators. You ain't got no job, so why not start with me, Bill?" So I started with Matt and walked one of the dozers up to the camp and onto the creek, where I looked at the Euclid a lot closer. It had burnt out completely. Worst I had ever seen.

Started clearing and pushing up the mountain again and it was getting very steep and dangerous. I was working on a bench all the time cutting into the side of the mountain, up hill and then galloping back fast when I thought some of it would slip and fall into and on top of me. It was getting bloody dangerous as at times the slip was really big and with big trees and rocks it would envelope my track and push the dozer right to the edge. I could see down into the abyss and it scared me shitless as it skidded closer to the edge. Luckily my local workers were very fleet of foot, with that big betel nut red grin they always seemed to have, and so we went on day after day.

A few weeks later the other dozer turned up with John, an Aussie, and things worked a lot better as he could do the slips and pull me out with his PCU winch when a big slip bogged me in. It save me shitting myself trying to back out. I also now had someone to talk to and have a beer with after work. We kept the beer chilled in a very small creek near the camp. John didn't like it and was ready to quit. He kept saying, "This is too dangerous, Bill. Something is going to happen, mate, trying to push a road uphill in a mountain full of mud. Fuck it, there is plenty of work around. No use living here like a black snake, and scared all the bloody time. Fuck it, mate!"

The very next day it happened: I'd run into a very steep sharp part of the bastard, no way to drive up it let alone side cut into it. I tried this way and that but nowhere to get a track hold. There was one area that was very steep but if I could get on that ledge I could cut downhill. So I talked to john and told him what I was going to do. He said, "It won't work and can't be done; it's to steep for your PCU, Bill, and fucking dangerous, mate."

There was a high corner at right angles about 20 meters from the bottom of the hill and it dropped down to the left on the way down the mountain. John went and waited round the corner watching, shaking his head. I backed up to it, got the locals to take my wire up the hill and tied it around four or five big trees and started to back up. I got about a quarter of the way up and it dropped away. I waited a bit, thinking one of the trees had pulled out. I thought I should get out of there and started to back up again. Then I felt the hair on my head stand up, my skin tingled, everything stood still, even the air smelt different. I knew I should've listened to my body signals as they had saved me before. Then I heard the noise of the mountain falling in on me. I galloped for the corner. My wire was still attached, so I pushed the PCU into gear, screaming at myself, "You fucking idiot! You're not going to make it!" I had to get around the corner. The noise was deafening. The avalanche was screaming past me a little to my left. Something hit the back of the dozer smashing the PCU and pulling the wire out which straightened me up for a straight run out.

It took me a while to settle down with John, saying "You fucking idiot! I'm finished! I'm taking the dozer back to camp and quitting, mate! You can do what you like but I'm finished!", and walked the dozer back to camp.

I'm sure we had Christmas 1966 at the pub. We went down to Kieta, and I told Matt I'd quit as nobody can push a road up that bloody mountain of mud. I said I didn't mind working for him but I wasn't going to die for him. "I'm finished! Matt said to me, "Bill, don't go quitting on me. I've got a surprise for you: I have 22 choppers on the way here from Australia, called 'Helicopter Utilities', and we're going to dissemble the dozers down here and reassemble them at Panguna, and you can push downhill from there", and with a big smile the bastard roped me in again.

I went back to my lean-to room at the pub, then I went back to the Nairobi camp, thinking I had finished there. Matt called me back and said we are going to Panguna. We flew up there and he showed me where to cut some roads. The dozer was nearly finished.

He said, "I'm sorry, mate, but you will still have to live at the Nairobi Camp as there is no room for you at Kieta, and no accommodation yet at Panguna. A chopper will pick you up in the morning, drop you at your dozer, and pick you up in the afternoon. It will be easy now pushing down hill ha-ha-ha."

Well, I pushed a goat track opening up the road. It was a lot easier now with helipads along the way for safety. The worst part was, if it clouded in, the chopper couldn't fly in to get me out as he couldn't see, and some nights I slept in the dozer and then flew down to camp in the morning for breakfast, and straight back again. Threequarters of the way down, another dozer turned up, so there were three of us then, but those two operators had a truck and drove back to Panguna every day, as they had accommodation up there.

It's all a bit hazy from here in, as I can't remember everything properly, but I do remember finally breaking out to where I'd left off pushing uphill, to where that bastard avalanche had tried to kill me. I helped push the first loaded truck up the goat track, lifting the back end of the trailer up and around some of the sharp corners. I left that very day and flew down to Kieta and finished up with Matt. I think it as around March 1967.

That was my first time on Bougainville. I went back one more time in 1971 on a 3-months contract with MKF. I still feel I'm part of that Bougainville job. I can still see that dreadful bloody mountain vividly in my mind. I left lots of shit running out of my pants on different parts of it. It was the most dangerous job I ever did in my life, even worse than a blow-out on a offshore drilling rig. I have been through an offshore oil rig blow-out, climbed a rig derrick, and cut a boy's arm off with my pocketknife slipping in his blood on the monkey board. I also jumped out of a helicopter to save a boy from drowning in Indonesia, but he was already dead. I got nearly killed being chased by the kooka kooka tribe in the New Guinea Highlands, being shot in the mouth in Nigeria, and a lots more, but I still feel Bougainville was the worst. It tried its best to kill me.

I worked for 20 years in offshore drilling, 28 days on and 28 days off. I came home from Nigeria in 1996 after three years for "Nicotes" as Manager/Co-ordinator, for the Onne Port Vacillates, and then had a year off, spending too much, of course. I then worked all over Australia, mainly mining, living in Brisbane, then on the Gold Coast. Then in Perth for seven years on five acres which caused a marriage breakup. She was a good girl but a town girl and she hated it. She wanted a house built inside a shopping centre as she was there so much, and I lost it. We also lived in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and in Kota Kinabalu in Sabah for three years as a family with three kids. I now call Brisbane home."

 

The Largest Gold And Copper Deposit In The World

 

The gigantic FREEPORT Erzberg job in Irian Jaya.

I was still with BECHTEL on Bougainville when they began recruiting.

What a job! What an experience!

 

Not Bougainville but this soundless 1957 footage is worth a look

 

Gerardus Mercator has a lot to answer for

 

New Guinea is the world's second-largest island, and with an area of 785,753 km², the largest island in the Southern Hemisphere. The U.K. is a mere 242,495 km². And yet, on most maps of the world, thanks to the socalled Mercator Projection, the two seem almost the same size.

If you want to know why this is so, read Simon Garfield's rivetting book "On the Map - Why the World Looks the Way it Does".

You can read it online at www.archive.org. Simply SIGN UP (its' free!), LOG IN and BORROW, and go straight to page 125 to read all about Mercator Projection. Here's a simple illustration what a map of the world would look line without the inflated Mercator Projection:

 

Tales of Papua New Guinea

Christopher J. Eastoe

 

Chris Eastoe has written this engaging story of his short six-week stint on Bougainville Island in 1974:

 

To enlarge for better readability, click on each page.
Alternatively, hold down CTRL and repeatedly click on + - sign

To continue reading Chris's interesting tale, click here.

 

 

P.S. I did write to Chris seeking his permission to publish his story. He promptly replied, "Dear Peter, I've just spent a wonderful time looking at your blog. I am so glad that you located my stories, and included them in your blog for others to enjoy -- in the same spirit as I included Harold Elliott's story about his bombing raid on Rabaul. The stories are not in a very accessible place at present -- although you seemed to have managed to find them. My stay on Bougainville was very short compared to yours, but it was a time that has influenced the rest of my life, and not just because of the scientific research. I sometimes wonder what happened to all the Bougainville and New Guinea people I met. For the Bougainville men, the civil war must have been very difficult. The ones I knew seemed to relish the independent existence the mine had offered them -- even if the operation was wrecking their island. It would have been hard for some of them to go back and wokim gaden. I wonder if we ever crossed paths in Panguna? It sounds as though you were there when I made my visit in 1974. As you will have realized, life has taken me on a long road since those days. As part of my studies, I was able to spend a year in Nancy, France, to work on my Panguna quartz vein specimens. Eventually, a job in Tucson, Arizona came along, and I spent my professional career there. In retirement (since 2015), I have been able to spend a couple of months each year in Chinese universities, at least until the pandemic happened. I gather from your story that you originated from Germany. Where in Germany did you live? I have had a few connections with Germany over the years, mainly in the area around Frankfurt."

 

 

Adam Constanza's visit to Panguna in 2018

In 2018, after a couple of years living in nearby Arawa, Adam Constanza had an opportunity to visit and explore Panguna mine, which closed its operation in 1989, nearly three decades earlier.

As an old mate from my construction days on Bougainville said, "Could never see the mine opening again - far too much damage and cost would be mind-boggling - all the infrastructure would need to be rebuilt - including the slurry pipeline over the mountain. Everything that could be looted - has been to pay for the war Just had a look at Google map; all that is left of the power station are the rusty oil-storage tanks. Nothing left of the concentrator - such a change from when we were there!"

 

Pity the mine didn't last that long!

A Canadian reader, who toughed it out on Bougainville during the early construction days, on TUE 16 emailed this photo of a "SEIKO BELL-MATIC 17 Jewels" wristwatch which he had purchased at the Kieta shop of Green & Company.

Half a century later, it's still working! Pity the mine isn't!

 

10,000 blokes, 10 single women

There was none of that "sophisticated, high living" in Camp 1 or Camp 3 at Panguna, or in Camp 6 down the coast, or in any other of the single-men's camps. If you were early enough at meal times, you might be able to eat your meal before the long table - and the floor underneath - was littered with food left-overs and the air was thick with sweaty workers in singlets yelling at the top of their voices.

As for women, the only ones seen in the camps were waxed-to-the-point-of-martyrdom PLAYGIRLS OF THE MONTH, depicted on centerfold posters torn from PLAYBOY magazines and stuck to the inside walls of the dongas - and ceilings, too! High living indeed!

 

P.S. As one "old-timer" wrote after reading this (WARNING: Strong language!): "That brings back memories!!! I am not sure where the photo was taken, but more in line with the nobs in the Pink Palace. Before that there were a bevy of single girls, just after there were reports in the Aussie papers about the conditions in the mine and the huge number of well-paid men working there. There had always been adverts for female staff, secretaries, medical, and the like, but after the report in the papers the positions filled quickly, not by beauties but ranging from Plain Jane to awful, all at the end of their tether and looking for a "good catch". They lived in the wire-fenced and guarded compound just above the Bechtel office known as the "Fur Farm". Don’t know how they amused themselves; we saw them at the odd hash house harrier do but never in the camp boozers. Just above them and below the helideck on the hill were the contractors' married quarters. The rubbish boys would go through all their rubbish - after all, they had nothing and expats threw away a lot of stuff - and when they found used sanitary pads they'd wrap them around their arms and act like wounded soldiers in the movies. It used to send the women crazy who complained to the maintenance foreman."

 

Flashback

 

 

Perhaps it is the result of having read Robert Louis Stevenson, Louis Becke and Joseph Conrad at an impressionable age, but the South Pacific islands have always evoked a powerfully romantic image with me. Mention the South Seas and I conjure up a vision of waving coconut palms and a dusky maiden strumming her ukelele. Silhouetted against the setting sun, Trader Pete (that's me!) sits in a deck-chair in front of his hut sipping a long gin and tonic while a steamboat chugs into the lagoon, bringing mail from home.

 

Rabaul circa 1970

 

In truth, I came to the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea as an audit clerk with a firm of Chartered Accountants in Rabaul (and thereby hangs another tale). When the local newspaper, the POST-COURIER, began carrying ads for audit personnel on the Bougainville Copper Project, I applied and was invited to fly across for an interview in October 1970. In those early days, all incoming traffic stopped at the transit camp at Kobuan where one had to wait for transport to Panguna where Bechtel's "top brass" had their offices.

 

Transit Camp at Kobuan

 

The road to Panguna was still something of an adventure and it was some time before I could present myself to Sid Lhotka, Bechtel's Manager of Administrative Services. He hired me on the spot and I returned to Rabaul to give notice and get my things and within a few weeks I was back "up top" only to be told that I would be working at Loloho, senior auditor in charge of several large contracts such as the construction of the harbour facilities (built by Hornibrook), the Power House construction (built by World Services), the Arawa Township (built by Morobe-ANG), and the haulage services (provided by Brambles-Kennellys.) Des Hudson and a string of time-keepers, amongst them Neil Jackson ("Jacko"), Bob Green, and "Beau" Players joined the team later.

 

Camp 6 at Loloho

 

We all lived in Camp Six which was idyllically situated on Loloho Beach. Every day (and often even before going to work), we would go for a swim in the beautifully warm and clear waters of Loloho Bay. Except for one: Bill Avery, our telephone operator who was ex-Navy and claimed he had a pact with the sharks: they wouldn't come onto his land, and he wouldn't go into their water. I'll never forget the day when we had a prolonged power failure and no running water in camp, and the whole camp population washed and shaved in the surf! Ever since I've been keeping a cake of soap which lathers in seawater. The camp had a certain hierarchy with "oldtimers" occupying the front row of dongas facing the beach, also known as "Millionaires' Row." Twice a week was film night to which viewers brought their own plastic chairs and victuals and liquid supplies and watched whatever was being offered (the Natives were crazy about Cowboy movies), against a backdrop of stars twinkling through swaying palm fronds and with the surf as background music. Payday was the big night in Camp Six with gambling tables such as Snakes & Ladders doing a roaring trade. Flick shows (with little to be seen across the tops of a dozen boisterous guys, all drinking and smoking, crammed into a 6-by-10ft donga) were also highly sought-after.

The "boozer" (or Wet Canteen in the official language), set right on the beach of Loloho, was a great place for an evening out! Offshore, across the dark waters, several small islets marked the outer limits of the reef. We named them "Number One Island", "Number Two Island", and so on. On some night, after a sufficiently large intake of SP (also known as 'Swamp Piss'), heated debates would develop as to whether they were ships coming into port!

Sometime in 1971 I transferred to Panguna where I was put in charge of the General Accounts Department with Brian Herde doing the Accounts Payable and John Gaskill keeping the General Ledger. Neil Jackson somehow found his way "up top" as well and became offsider to Brian Herde, imitating one of the Three Musketeers by attacking all passers-by with a long wooden ruler until the day the booze got the better of him and he didn't turn up for work at all. Sid Lhotka visited him in his donga at Camp 3 and rumour has it that "Jacko" told him to f%@# off! He was on the next plane out!

 

Panguna mine site shrouded in clouds

 

Another auditor wasn't quite so outspoken to get off the island but did so even more quickly: Frank Joslin was given the monthly "perk" of hand-carrying a batch of punch cards to Bechtel's Melbourne office where he presented himself, never to be seen again thereafter. His neat little trick became known as "doing a Joslin" and was much talked about but never imitated. Some of the new recruits to the audit team were less than delighted with their posting to muddy and rain-soaked Panguna and started counting the days to the end of their twelve-month contract - literally! They ran up an adding-machine strip list from 365 days down to zero and pasted it to the office wall, ticking off one day at a time. Needless to say, not many survived that kind of mental torture. There were some others who never left Aropa airstrip: they had seen the mountain range shrouded in clouds from the aircraft and, refusing to leave the small airline building and spending a fretful night on a hard wooden bench, reboarded the same aircraft for its morning flight back to Port Moresby.

Others took to the wild camp life with gusto, spending what little time was left after a 10-hour working day, in the "boozer" and even investing in their own 'fridges outside their dongas. The nights were punctuated by the squeaking of 'fridge door hinges and the squishing sound of rings pulled off beer cans. A common "status symbol" amongst serious drinkers were door-frame curtains constructed from the hundreds of pull-top rings collected from empty beer cans. Les Feeney was put in charge of the audit group but more often than not was in charge of the carousing going on in the "boozer" and endlessly stuffing his pipe but never succeeding in lighting it. He and Peter the "Eskimo", a lumbering polar bear of a man hailing from Iceland, ran a constant "throat-to-throat" race as to who was the biggest drinker. "Bulldog", a likeable Pom, tried hard to catch up with them! On one occasion he also tried to learn how to play the electric organ. He never did but the speakers and amplifier which came with it, were put to good (and all-too-frequent) use when he played his favourite Neil Diamond record, "Hot August Night." The whole camp rocked when "Bulldog" plugged in that organ! I shall always associate "Hot August Night" with nights at Camp One!

During my time on the island I became a Justice of the Peace and also obtained my registration as a tax agent (Registration No. TTA322, dated 26th April 1971) and assisted many in the camps with their tax returns. I even made successful representation to the New Zealand Inland Revenue to have the then 18-months "world income rule" set aside for the Kiwis working on Bougainville. Had I not obtained this particular ruling, they would have been liable to pay New Zealand income tax on their Bougainville earnings. I became something of a scribe for many in the camp who wanted to apply for a passport or needed documents authenticated or who - surprisingly - couldn't read or write and asked me to handle their correspondence - including some pretty red-hot love letters!!! I always toned down their replies which must have kept quite a few guys out of troubles!

After Bougainville came stints in the Solomons, back to PNG (setting up the Internal Audit Department for AIR NIUGINI in Port Moresby where I run into Brian Herde again who'd taken a job with Tutt Bryants), Rangoon in Burma, Samoa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, PNG once again (setting up the tug-and-barge operations for Ok Tedi; Bechtel was back in town to manage this project and with it came Sid Lhotka with whom I had dinner at the Papuan Hotel in Port Moresby to talk about "old times"), Saudi Arabia (where I met up with Des Hudson again), Greece - but none of those assignments came ever close to the comraderie and esprit de corps of the years on Bougainville!

Over the years I repeatedly ran into "ex-Bougainvilleans" and "ex-Territorians" in Australia and elsewhere. We would swap yarns which always ended in a great deal of nostalgia and a hankering for a way of life that would never come again. Like myself, many had found it difficult to settle back into an "ordinary" life and, like myself, had moved from place to place in an attempt to recapture some of the old life style.

 

 

Another top story

 

It's probably too much of a stretch to suggest that they waited with the Bougainville Copper Project until the ring-tab beer can had been introduced in 1965, but by the time I had moved into my small construction donga in Camp 6 on beautiful Loloho Beach, the length of stay - not to mention the depth of drinking problem - of a donga inhabitant could be judged by the length of his "door curtain", composed entirely of hundreds of clipped-together beer can ring-tabs.

These "mine-is-longer-than-yours" door curtains were so common that I unfortunately never took a photograph of this "status symbol" in a camp otherwise devoid of any differences, as we all dressed in the same T-shirt and stubbie, all wore the same thongs, all ate in the same mess hall, all crapped and showered in the same ablution block, and drove the same clapped-out and dirt-covered four-wheel-drive company ute.

Is it coincidence that the end of the ring-tab beer can came at about the same time as the end of the Bougainville Copper Project?