This memorial Bougainville Copper Project website is now more than fifteen years old. Quite soon after its first appearance on the web, Alan Wilson added his name to the "Honour Roll" which he followed up recently by emailing me,
"The location entry for Alan Wilson BCL Power Station Loloho (1971 to 1974) is shown as East Doncaster. I have moved twice since then; once to Ballina for 4 years, and now at Newlands Arm in Victoria, beside the Gippsland Lakes. I still read your blogs from time to time, with great interest. It seems that as time goes on the activity is slowing, which is to be expected. It is hard to believe that last month saw the 50th anniversary of my landing on Bougainville, which changed the rest of my life. I remember from a farewell party in Australia those 50 years ago, one of my friends said the only difference between a rut and a grave is the dimensions. I think that I have lived my life, after Bougainville, remembering those words. Keep up the good work. Alan"
To which I replied,
"Same here, Alan: fifty years ago it was when I went across from Rabaul to Bougainville which changed the rest of my life; and, yes, unfortunately, the contributions have slowed down as many of us have gone to the big mine in the sky :-) I guess you must've lived at Camp 6 which would've made us neighbours without knowing it. Same place, same time. Do you have any old photographs or anecdotes you want to share on the website and blog? Ballina sounds nice; why did you go back to the Deep South? Or maybe I shouldn't ask because I finished up down here near Batemans Bay despite my always having wanted to retire in the tropics. Life happens while you are making other plans, right?"
His response wasn't long in coming:
"I lived for about one week in Camp 8, then was assigned a house in Section 11 (I think). Then there must have been too many fully air-conditioned houses, so BCL decided that the Power Station Shift Supervisors should move into these and mine was on the other side of the Bovo River. I was not complaining as it was free accommodation with all the power that we needed to run the A/C. Went through a divorce 36 years ago and lost all of my old photos in the process, so all that I have is the memories. Managed to keep my BCL ID Tag which has a photo of some guy that I don't recognise these days. We decided to move up to Ballina about five years ago as we have our children scattered around the country and Ballina was a bit more central than a Melbourne suburb. Then the humidity seemed to become a bit of a problem as we were getting older. There was a fair bit of vegetation around our property and adjoining properties which seemed to attract the mozzies. So that was two strikes against living so far north. Then came the task of finding an alternative and we finished up beside the Gippsland Lakes. We actually started to look for somewhere to live south of Sydney and just could not find anything that suited us. Eventually, we crossed the border and found our new home with an outlook across the Gippsland Lakes. Never sure just how long we will live here. It could all depend on how long we have on this earth. Cheers Alan"
And he enclosed this print-ready story ...
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What a challenge for a young guy with a family to simply pull the roots out of Australia and move up to a tropical island. This is exactly what happened in August 1971, now fifty years ago. Then to get on my first commercial flight to get out of Australia, dressed in a three-piece suit and tie (what was I thinking?) Walking down the aisle of the plane after landing in Port Moresby was a wake-up call about life in the tropics. Off with the jacket, waistcoat and tie and up rolled the sleeves. Then onto the Fokker Friendship with thirty-five others and we were on our way to Aropa Airport, south of Kieta. The road up from Kieta was being improved and there were dozers there to pull vehicles up the hill, if required. The mud was pretty thick at the time. Remembered having to stop just out of Kieta (I think it was Kobuan) to be signed into the project, before we continued on towards Arawa and Camp 8, where I spent the first week on the island. The Power Station was headed up by Tom Worth as Superintendent, John Dutton the Operations Manager, and Henry Pearson the Maintenance Manager. The Operations Group was mainly recruited from Australia and the UK, which provided the experience required and was considered to be a really smart move by the management team (I was recruited as a Shift Supervisor after leaving Hazelwood Power Station with eight others). The first boiler/turbine/generator on line was Unit 2 and I remember the message that was sent by the Bechtel Commissioning Manager to Panguna saying that Unit 2 was on-line generating 2 MW with 43 MW available. My memory is that this happened on 13 November 1971. Life in Arawa was very different with no TV and Radio Australia until the sun went down. Sunset was at 6.12 pm, or so it seemed as there was no twilight. It got dark very quickly. We tried to amuse ourselves with the occasional party on a Saturday night when we would hang coconut palm fronds under a house to create walls to provide some sort of privacy. The music would be loud and there was always enough to drink. A boat trip out to Arovo island was always special with the snorkling providing a look down over the edge just off-shore. Shopping was at the trade-store in Arawa, or a drive to Kieta for something a bit different. The Post Office and Commonwealth Bank were set up and in the early days this was about all that could be found in the commercial area of Arawa. Then we could get newspapers from Australia even though they might have been one week out of date. The roads were all dirt with plenty of potholes. Then the company started to get the roads sealed from Kieta to Arawa and then onto Loloho. The mine access road was sealed and this made such a difference to everyone on the project. Schools were established, the hospital was operating, the Country Club opened up and we actually had a doctor living in Arawa (Fatini Weber was her name, I think). Bougainville provided so many people with the opportunity to get out of their ruts. I remember a friend saying at my Australian Farewell Party in 1971 that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the dimensions.
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... and a photo with the following description:
On Number 3 Island off Loloho. Some of the names of the people in the photo - which was taken by Theo van der Meulen *) - are:
Boat on the right: Irene Watts, Rosa van der Meulen, Mark van der Meulen, Nicole van der Meulen, Sian van der Meulen, Gavin Watts, Chick Healy, Eric Healy
Boat in the middle: Alan Wilson, Linda Wilson, Ian Wilson (with his arms up), Lisa Wilson
Sorry, but I can't remember the others.
Cheers
Alan Wilson
*) By the way Theo van der Meulen lives in Traralgon. We have maintained a group of four who left Hazelwood Power Station in 1971 and went to Bougainville. The group consists of Theo (Traralgon), Jim Watts (Geelong) Don Houston (Lara) and myself. We get together at least once a year, but this COVID-thing is providing quite a challenge to maintain the group.
