I know I won't infringe copyright laws by giving you this small preview of a dozen-or-so pages from Gavin Young's excellent book "Slow Boats Home"; after all, there are another 440 pages and you are going to buy the book - aren't you? AREN"T YOU??? - after you've read these few notes about Bougainville Island and the mine:
Those of us who worked on Bougainville will never forget!
I'd love to get back to Camp 6 again and sit in the boozer under a moonlit sky, drinking 'Swamp Piss' and staring out to Number One island, arguing with my mates, "Look, there's a big ship coming in!"
Good ol' days! Of course, they were good ol' days because we were young then and not the decrepit old self of today, with false teeth, on the waiting-list for an artificial hip, and ready for a triple bypass.
Meri Krismas! Gutpela Nu Yia long yu!
P.S. Two books for your list: "Mr Pip" and "They Call Me Ishmael".
Set in the South Pacific and based on true events, this is a novel about war, gold, interracial friendship, and the emergence of a new nation.
Growing up in Bougainville, an island archipelago in the South Pacific, Ishmael always wanted to be a soldier. The Crisis—a brutal civil war with Papua New Guinea ignited by the gargantuan Panguna Mine—gives him his chance. As the guerrilla leader of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, Ishmael secures a peace agreement that provides his islands with a measure of autonomy and the future right to conduct an independence referendum. If the people vote affirmatively, Bougainville could become the newest nation on earth.
In the aftermath of the Crisis, Bougainville’s corrupt and inept government causes a vacuum. From its perch across the Pacific, China salivates. They covet Bougainville, both for its Panguna Mine and its strategic location, and are prepared to do whatever it takes to grab it.
When Ishmael and Bougainville’s chiefs ask Jack Davis, a pin-striped American investor, to help rebuild their economy, he is intrigued. Although primitive, Bougainville holds billions in gold and copper, and its people seem lovely. Jack’s life has been comfortable, but things are changing. His family members have moved on with their lives, and his country doesn’t seem to value people like him anymore. Maybe Bougainville would be different.
That two men—one black and one white—from totally different walks of life could meet on a remote island and decide they stand for the same things is a testament to Bougainville and its people, and shapes a story that anyone who believes in the innate goodness of humanity should read. The fact that it all really happened is truly inspirational.
You can order the book online at amazon.com.
After the trouble starts and the soldiers arrive on Matilda’s island, there comes a time when all the white people have left. Only Mr Watts remains, and he wears a red nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley; the kids call him Popeye behind his back. But there is no one else to teach them their lessons, and no books left to learn from—except for Mr Watts’s battered copy of Great Expectations, ‘by my friend Mr Dickens’.
As Mr Watts stands before the class and reads, Dickens’s hero, Pip, starts to come alive in Matilda’s imagination. Soon he has become as real to her as her own family, and the greatest friendship of her life has begun.
But Matilda is not the only one who believes in Pip. And on an island at war, the power of the imagination can be a dangerously provocative thing.
A dazzling achievement, "Mister Pip" is a love song to the power of storytelling. It is about belonging and losing one’s way, about love, grief and memory, and it shows how books can change our lives forever.
If you've lived and worked on Bougainville, you must read this book. Beginning today, I shall add a new chapter to this blog, courtesy of www.archive.org:
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