Hi
My name is Wade Green and like Sue I was a child when my family was on Bougainville.
We moved there from Broken Hill in 1972 when I was 3 my dad (Dave Green) worked for BCL in the Pink Palace as an accountant. My family is Mum Helen, brothers - Travis, Brodie, Aaron (born on Bougainville) and Joshua (also born on Bougainville). My grandfather Charles Francis Gardner (Frank) worked in the mine at Panguna and moved to Bougainville with his wife Molly and two daughters Dana and Jodie.
I have many memories of Bougainville such as playing with Jamie Brophy and Sues brother Mac (what we called him), swimming in the Bovo, traveling by bus up the narrow windy road to Panguna amateur swimming club and singing songs the whole way, waking up after the earthquake to find the contents of the pantry on the floor, walking to school barefoot, laying paper trails with mum for the hash house harriers (not sure of the name), the all night parties mum and dad used to have, finding the shell casing and giving it to Sue to use for her school project, the strange guy on Loloho beach who used to stuff seaweed down his speedo then swim out into the ocean and eat the seaweed, walking up into the local village and through the crops, seeing the locals as they had always lived, throwing stones at pigs and being chased by bush knife wielding locals (not proud), dad driving all over the road on the way up to Panguna just to scare us kids (it worked, just ask my shrink;->), dad driving over toads/frogs as we listened to them pop, dreaming about ice cream spiders, holidays on the Gold Coast, Christmas parties at the Sports and Social club and Golf (country) Club, getting my fingers stuck in the old Merry go round at the Country Club during a movie night, eating salty plumbs, getting boils, being stung by wasps, watching from the Bovo bridge as mums best bed spread (that disappeared off the clothes line months before) floated downstream, the girl from Canada who had chicken pox, great big black acid spitting centipedes, running down the road in front of the wall of rain as is rolled down from the mountains, surfing down the street after the rain, the smell of the rain, catching hermit crabs on Loloho, when the queen came for independence day....and so many more..
Great site, great to read other stories/memories from Bougainville.
Regards
Wade
email wadesipad[AT]bigpond.com
P.S. Amendment to above: grandfathers name was not Charles Francis Gardner it is Thomas Francis Gardner (aka Frank).
