How many accountants does it take to change a tyre?

 

At least three: Brian Herde in the yellow top, yours truly wheeling the big tyre and doing all the hard work, and Des Hudson who, as always, avoided work altogether by being behind the camera.

 

 

This was the Bougainville Copper Project in 1971, where several thousand expats and indiginous laboured on the world's largest construction job to build the world's largest open-cut copper mine.

Our own small band of intrepid accountants and cost engineers were exposed daily to the risk of impaling ourselves on lethally sharpened pencils while overeating on strawberry shortbread biscuits as we tried to keep the project's $300-million budget under control.

 

 

On this occasion we had left our gruelling schedules and airconditioned offices behind and driven down from Panguna to Aropa airstrip, where we chartered a light plane to fly us to Buin for a look at some old Japanese war relics.

 

Yours truly on Buin beach ...

... and on a Japanese tank

Yamamoto's bomber

Des Hudson training for "Blitzkrieg"

Brian Herde (far left) and 'Goldfinger' (yellow top) lost in the jungle

After spending a night on Buin's black sand beach and being eaten alive by mosquitoes, we hired an old jeep to drive us all the way back to Panguna - well, almost all the way back to Panguna as the last river was in flood and couldn't be crossed by vehicle.

 

 

Rather than running the risk of heat exposure, we took our chances with the crocodiles as we cooled down in the river before those of us who survived hiked all the way back to Panguna.

All good memories! Thanks for those photos, Des; it's only taken you forty-five years to send them to me!

Peter Goerman
Blogmaster
riverbendnelligen[AT]mail.com

 

Ian Rummery emailed from Jamestown on St Helena Island:

 

Hi Peter

As your blog entry says ex-Bougainville employees are diminishing and last Saturday my father Richard Rummery passed away. He worked at the Loloho power house and my sister Kay and I went to Bovo primary. We were there 1972 to 1979. I am so grateful to my parents that I had a chance to grow up in such a wonderful place.

I now live on the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic. There is something special about living on islands and I am sure that I can trace a direct link between growing up on Bougainville and now living out here. Though a completely different environment there are some similarities and I hope in time our son Tobias will come to appreciate how lucky he is growing up on St Helena.

And one day I hope to take my wife Belinda and Tobias out to Bougainville.

I could not get back to Australia to see Dad before he died but I spent a lot of time last week going through your website because our time on Bougainville was so special.

A few years back Graeme Wellington came on a cruise ship that stopped by for a few hours. He was one of the few people we knew from Bougainville that we stayed in touch with as he lived fairly close to us in WA. But if any old BCL employees visit they are most welcome and I would be happy to show them around.

Take care

Ian Rummery
P.O Box 112
St Helena Island
South Atlantic Ocean
Ph: ++ 290 23744
Email: rummery.ian[AT]gmail.com

 

When the Rummery family first arrived in Australia:

 

and, yes, they do have television ...

... and since 2011 an airport:

 

Cargo Cult

 

Don't judge them too harshly. We have our own cargo cult in Australia: we call it Centrelink.

 

PNG's Independence Day 16 September

 

It was in the dying days of 1974 when I received an urgent telegram from TOTAL - Compagnie Française des Pétroles to fly to what was then Burma to take up a new position as chief accountant in their exploration office in Rangoon.

I was at the time living in Papua New Guinea which was heading towards independence the following year. When the then Chief Minister Michael Somare - soon to be Sir Michael and Prime Minister of the independent country - heard of my impending departure, he expressed his regrets that I wouldn't be there for this momentous occasion. "However," he said, "the least we can do is make our Independence Day the same as your birthday."

And so it came to pass that my birthday and Papua New Guinea's Independence Day are celebrated on the same day each year.

Blogmaster

P.S. Of course, if you believe this, you'll probably spend the rest of your life doing a convincing impression of a cabbage! ☺

 

 

First Contact

Watch the original upload on YouTube here

 

"First Contact" is a 1983 documentary by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson which recounts the discovery of a flourishing native population in the interior highlands of New Guinea in 1930 in what had been thought to be an uninhabited area.

It is based on the book of the same name by the same authors. Inhabitants of the region and surviving members of the Leahy brothers' gold prospecting party recount their astonishment at this unforeseen meeting.

The film includes still photographs taken by a member of the expedition and contemporary footage of the island's terrain. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

 

The full movie "Mr Pip"

Click here for a higher-quality screening.

 

Latest media release by RIO TINTO with regards to BCL shares:

 

Click here to open media release in separate window

 

 

Look what the scanner dragged in!

Remember those pre-glued photo albums of yesteryears? You pulled back that transparent coversheet, placed your photos on the sticky stuff, and rolled the coversheet back over it again. Almost fifty years later, the photos are still in almost-mint condition but there's no way of prising them off that glue again.

Having just bought one of those new print-and-scan CANON gadgets, I scanned a few of those glued-down photos to share with you. They all date back to 1970 and 1971.

Peter Goerman's audit office at Loloho

Ditto

With Bob Green (left) on one of the islands offshore from Loloho

Peter Goerman doing what he liked best:
cutting contractors' progress claims down to size

Ditto

Des Hudson stress-testing one of the girders for the new Loloho Powerhouse

Beach party at Loloho

On one of the offshore islands. From left to right John Gaskill, next one unknown, Peter Goerman having a laughing fit behind Jacko's back, Neil "Jacko" Jackson, and an Indian guy who's name I forgot

More of the beach party

And more. From left to right: Peter Goerman, Neil "Jacko" Jackson, Frank Joslin, the rest unknown

On the left Frank Joslin; "Jacko" Jackson with his back to the camera

More party-goers; the waving guy was Maurice Sullivan ...

... before he got caught.

Party, party, party ...

... and more of the same ...

... and then some more ...

... and more ...

... and more.

And here are a few more shots after I'd come back to Bougainville in mid-1972 as Office Manager for Camp Catering Services - see here:

'Beau' Player on the left; Roy 'Goldfinger' Goldsworthy on the right

No idea what the argument was about;
he was probably too drunk to remember himself

The guy with the cravat is Lloyd McChesney

The chap on the right was from Saskatchewan in Canada although considering the state he was in I doubt he was able to spell it;
in 1985 I bumped into him at the Blues Point Hotel in McMahons Point in Sydney and he was still (or again?) pissed

With his back to the camera is Les Feeney, always hard-drinking and always trying but hardly ever succeeding to light his pipe

Des Hudson in Bechtel's Loloho office

Des Hudson driving without a licence

Camp 6 at Loloho