Bougainville's boom and the men behind it

 

Then There is Light

 

Blunder at Bougainville

 

A really great video clip of the "old" Bougainville by Bob Jackson

Bougainville Island is a place in Papua New Guinea where many Europeans came to live and work. The island was beautiful and its people were peaceful and friendly. The mining company was generous to its workers and supportive to the the islanders. In 1988 things changed but this video only deals with life before that. Many of the former workers still regard their "Bougainville years" as their best years.

 

Years ago, Bob Jackson had emailed me,

"Hello Peter I have looked for years for a web site featuring the "expat workers" view of Bougainville, it was a very pleasant surprise to find yours. I was in Spain at the end of a "too long" holiday, was bored and searching for something familiar, finding it brightened my whole day. I was a BCL "power house pom" originally hired from Kalgoorlie West Australia (after travelling out overland) . I went there as a single man in 74 to work as an instrument technician in the power house at Loloho, after a couple of years I transferred to Operations as an "assistant unit controller". I was in Loloho Camp 6 during the first night of the "74 rock festival" and electrified my donga window flyscreen in the hope of "staying alive". We had valiantly emptied our beer fridges to "save the amber fluid". The next night we camped in the power house smoko room after welding up all the doors (but one). We took up guard duty at the front gate armed with 24" stilsons and a length of water pipe, fortunately the riot squad were between us and the rioters so our weapons remained unused. After a little over three years I left, had a couple of cruises and ended up in Brazil (intending a big S.American trip) but after Bougainville I didn't enjoy it much. I went to UK got married and returned to Bougainville (after a two year absence) to the same job, and living in Arawa Section 6/28. My first child was born in the Arawa hospital in 82 my second child in 85 in Brisbane (after an emergency medivac from Bougainville). I stayed in the power house until Dec 88 ending up as a shift supervisor. I left before the troubles really got started and as such have few bad memories of Bougainville. Hash house harriers. I first ran with the Loloho Hash House Harriers and on my return joined the Arawa Hash. In the early days Arawa Hash hired a DC3 for a combined run with the Honiara Hash. Later we had 4WD trips to Sohano Island (the old Bougainville District Office) and every one slept in the old District Commissioner's House (or camped on his lawn). I was a shift worker and as such missed many runs but those I did gave me a buzz which kept me going until the next one. The adventure, the running, the beer, it worked for me! I moved to (and still live) in a house half way between Brisbane and the Gold Coast in a place that I bought on a five day visit from Bougainville. Since leaving Bougainville I've had about thirteen years in local government (working in electrical design). That's about it (apart from the inevitable divorce and re-marriage a few years ago). Keep up the good work with the web site!",

which I had placed on the Bougainville Copper Project comment page.

Bob has just now added this evocative narrative on YouTube, evocating all our love for a place and time long gone! As he said, "The adventure, the running, the beer, it worked for me!"

 

The Lure of Rabaul

 

The Lure of the Islands

 

Goroka Walkabout

To stay alive, this blog is undergoing a slow transformation from being a voice for those who built the mighty Bougainville Copper Project in the early 70s to a general collection of 'New Guineana'. Why? Well, many of those who worked on the project are already dead or - if past performances are anything to go by - in the process of drinking themselves to death. Some others who could still write can't because they never learned how - and you better believe it because as a tax agent in Camp 6 and later in Camp 1 I also became something of a scribe for those who wanted to communicate with their wives and sweethearts but couldn't. They came to me to read out their letters to them or to pen their replies - and I believe I kept many out of mischief by toning down their replies by several degrees! Anyway, here we go with another piece of 'New Guineana':

Click on image to enlarge

 

Marquis de Rays, the biggest conman of them all?

"The Phantom Paradise" gives a fascinating account of this extraordinary event in the history of New Guinea. Here's a short review of this long out-of-print and almost unobtainable book:

 

Tripela Liklik Pik

There were more than just three "pigs" on the Bougainville Copper Project but here's the official version :-)

And while you're in the mood, why not also listen to Little Red Riding Hood in Tok Pisin? Click here.

 

Fake news?

 

This controversial film has been the subject of much scholarly debate in the Francophone world, and even threats of legal action.

It was severely criticised by French anthropologist and PNG specialist Pierre Lemonnier in his academic paper A la chasse à l'authentique (In pursuit of the real thing) published by Terrain, the European ethnological review, in 1999.

In this paper, Lemonnier points out that the Toulambis of the film are really the Ankave-Anga people from near Menyamya. The records indicate that these people were visited by at least six Australian government patrols between 1929 and 1972: 1929 Middleton; 1950 Chester, 1951 Mathieson; 1965 O'Brien; 1967 Police patrols; 1972 Meikle. In fact Meikle found the people talking basic Tok Pisin learned at Menyamya.

Historical sources reveal that the so-called Toulambis had steel tools and western implements more than forty years before their encounter with Dutilleux, and were regular visitors to the administrative center of Menyamya, which was only a few days walk for them, in the early 1970s.

This familiarity with the outside world is confirmed by ethnography; in particular, one Toulambi man spent two months in prison in Menyamya in the early '70s. Admittedly, some remote groups may not have had regularly contact with the Australian administration before the 1960s, but they certainly did by the time Dutilleux encountered them.

When Lemonnier viewed the film for the first time he exclaimed: "I'm outraged!" (or should that be "Je suis outré!" ??? :-)) He described the Dutilleux production as "untruthful, racist, revolting". Apparently, Lemonnier recognised immediately the place where the fake "first encounter" had been filmed. The stream is known as New Year Creek, and the members of the "unknown tribe" probably walked for about a day from their settlement to reach the appointed well-lit meeting-place. This had been conveniently cleared for the filming, with a few logs thrown into the creek so that the people could emerge confidently from the jungle (most unusual behaviour) and move naively towards the camera crew.

Lemonnier adds: "At that spot, they were about a four-day walk from an administrative centre with a schoolteacher, airstrip, radio, nurse and Seventh-Day Adventist preachers. Nearby, the navigable river Vailala enables the Papuans to reach the coast, where they exchange bark capes for tools." For his criticism, Lemonnier faced a court case for slander in 1997, but the historical records support his case.

So how was the film made? Simple: the locals were paid for their performance and rehearsed in how to act their parts. In fact, they were enterprising enough to have done this for several other 'first-contact' filmmakers before and after Dutilleux. Interestingly, Jean-Pierre Dutilleux is also cited in the article, defending himself that: "If the Toulambis are actors, we should give them a César Award."

The domain name www.tribaljourneys.com cited at the end of the clip is no more - click here - although some of the old webpages are still archived on the wayback Machine.

For another article about this controversial footage, click here.