The Die Was Cast - My Journey to New Guinea

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For your listening pleasure: TAIM BILONG MASTA

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

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19 August 2019

Taim Bilong Masta

This book is freely accessible from the ANU Open Research Library - click here

 

Long after I had left New Guinea and on one of my frequent business trips from Saudi Arabia back to Australia, I was killing a bit of time in the ABC Shop in Adelaide's Rundle Mall when I found a set of twenty-four audio cassettes labelled "TAIM BILONG MASTA - Australia's Involvement with Papua New Guinea".

Of course, I bought them right away and for years I listened to them over and over again as, in the absence of any proper television or radio reception in the world's biggest sandbox, they had become my daily nightcap to drown out the howling desert winds.

I believe the creator of those tapes, ABC presenter Tim Bowden, is still around but not so those twenty-four precious cassettes which over the years, just like myself, had become warped and worn. In later years, I did buy the book by the same name but there's nothing quite like listening to those old familiar voices and I had been searching high and low for those recordings but without success - until now!

A kindly soul, Kieran Nelson, who grew up in New Guinea, worked for the Papua New Guinea Banking Corporation (PNGBC) and now lives in Brisbane, undertook the enormous labour of love of putting all twenty-four cassettes onto youtube for our continued listening pleasure:

 

mp3 files:

Episode 1 Never a Colony

Episode 2 The Good Time Before

Episode 3 God's Shadow on Earth

Episode 4 The Loneliness and the Glory

Episode 5 On Patrol

Episode 6 Sailo

Episode 7 The Boat Came Every Six Weeks

Episode 8 Masta Me Like Work

Episode 9 The Violent Land

Episode 10 Moneymakers and Misfits

Episode 11 Wife and Missus

Episode 12 Growing Up

Episode 13 Into The Highlands

Episode 14 The Promised Land

Episode 15 First Contact

Episode 16 Gold

Episode 17 The Good News

Episode 18 The Mission Rush

Episode 19 You Had To Be Firm

Episode 20 Across the Barriers

Episode 21 Courts and Calaboose

Episode 22 War

Episode 23 A Reason For Being There

Episode 24 Going Finish

 

P.S. ... and while I have your attention, I might as well give the 1950s feature film "Walk into Paradise" a much-deserved plug:


If the trailer whetted your appetite, then click here and lash out on this cinematic treat. At only $15 it's the best souvenir you're ever going to get from New Guinea.

Meanwhile, watch the full-length movie here, before it disappears again.