WORK HARD, PLAY HARD

In 1964 I was teaching in Port Moresby, P/NG. I had made a bunch of friends at the Judo Club and on weekends we would go on day trips together. During the week we worked hard and on weekend we played hard. That was the 60's.

This day we went to Idler's Bay. Most of us on our motor scooters but Bob drove his Mini Minor.

 Everyone arrived and it was time for a swim and wash off the road dust.

Charles boils the 'billy' (Oz for a can of water with a handle) for a cup of tea.

It was a small sandy deserted beach with corals on the bottom of the bay. I was sitting there imagining being marooned on a tropical island while Charles was taking a photo of me, when suddenly Graham rushed in behind me and gave me a hug. None of us had romantic relationships we were all just good mates.

While the BBQ was cooking someone turned on their transistor radio and tape recorder and played surfing songs. Del and Bob enjoyed a jive. (Ahhh the 60's) 

Before dark we would kick start the scooters and make our way back to town.

I had a room in Touaguba Women's Hostel. Sometimes I got homesick for my family and hugged my soft toy dog named "Woof Woof". It was actually a pyjama bag. It had a zip up its tummy where I stuffed my jammies. Do you remember pyjama bags, transistor radios and the Beach Boys?

FRIENDS ARE FUN

In 1964, after I had been living in Pt Moresby, P/NG for about six months, I had made some nice friends. I had met them at the Judo Club and at Touaguba Hostel where I lived. Many of us owned scooters to get around the town. Someone at Judo suggested we should form a Scooter  Club and go on outings on the weekends. From then on we had some great weekends exploring the beaches, roads and rivers around Pt Moresby. In the next few posts I will be showing you some of the adventures we had.

I can't remember the names of the roads or how long it took but we always ended up at a picnic spot somewhere. This is Brown River picnic area and some of my friends.

 The dare devils like Graham here, swung from  a rope attached to the bridge and plunged into the water. I was a scaredy cat and didn't do it. After a swim, Charles and Bob minded the BBQ.

After lunch we joined in a game of softball before climbing on our scooters to navigate the corrugated, dirt road back to town.

Another time we drove along the coast to Bootless Bay. We saw some locals catching their dinner from a dugout canoe.

The scenery was pretty where the river entered the bay.

Once again the boys found a rope in the trees to swing out into the unknown. Not for me though. No holding back Charles.

Another BBQ lunch and fun games before heading home on our scooters in single file stringing along the rough road with our arms vibrating and our teeth chattering.


When we got back in town in the evening we would buy fish and chips and go to one of our homes and sit on the floor and enjoy tea together. We were all single so we only had small houses to share or rooms in hostels provided by the government or the companies we worked for.

BILL'S BIRTHDAY BEAR

Although it was Bill's Birthday last month our birthday bear group only celebrated now because both he and George have a birthday in the same week. So they take it turns to celebrate a month later. Readers not familiar with our Birthday Bear tradition can find out more here.

We celebrated at Sunnybank Hotel, Birthday Bear was dressed by Helen and Paul this time. When we arrived there was bear engrossed in his computer. This truly reflects Bill's hobby. He is a computer addict. Even when we go away he has to take his computer or he gets withdrawal symptoms. Now Birthday Bear has caught the bug and is looking at a blog on his computer. Bill has also taken a lens out of his glasses since his cataract operation He has to wait a month before he can get  new prescription glasses. Bear has got the same problem.

 Sporting a cap similar to one Bill has, Bear can't be distracted. He also has a DVD on trains to play. Trains are another one of Bill's passions.

 Of course Bear has to have an Apple computer like Bill.

 Unfortunately our group photo enjoying a delicious lunch didn't turn out well. I had fish but others had steak with a lobster tail. Bear like that one best. After a fun time with our friends we took Bear home.

Now Bear is home with us and still I can't get him away from the computer. I like his cute sandals similar to ones Bill wears.

Bear has let his white beard grow so he can look similar to his computer buddy. The logo on Bear's shirt is the same as Bill's company shirt.

TIME TRAVEL

It was 1964 and it was my first year of teaching. I was teaching at Korobosea School in Pt Moresby, Papua /New Guinea. It was quite exciting having my own class and classroom. I was nervous at the beginning but with support from my colleagues I started to get more confident. I was keen to do the right thing by the children and their parents and I worked hard at it. However, at the end of term it was time to have fun and explore this new country. Some friends and I booked up for a day trip by charter aircraft to the Trobriand Islands. They are a group of tropical islands off the north east coast of PNG in Milne Bay.  See map.

View Larger Map

Early in the morning we arrived at Jackson's Airport and climbed aboard a trusty DC3 aircraft. These airplanes were used a lot in those days in PNG. They were tough old workhorses. Pilots were also very good, they had to be to cope with the towering mountains, the sudden tropical thunderstorms and the hectic turbulence. I was pleased to see that we had proper aircraft seats this time not like the last time I went on a chartered plane ride, where the seats were webbed garden variety chairs along the walls of the fuselage.
The Trobriand Islands belong to PNG but in the sixties the people were still living like they had for thousands of years in grass huts in villages and feeding themselves from native crops and the sea. The Australian Government were establishing schools, medical clinics, law and order, cooperative plantations and generally helping the people to learn to live in the 20th century. (Whether this was a good idea or not is still debated) Church missionaries were also bringing western style religions. They also built schools and hospitals.
It was a fairly smooth flight over the mountains as most morning flights were. We landed and a truck picked us up and took us to visit some villages and beaches. It was extremely hot and humid as it is every day of the year when you are so near to the equator. We had our swim gear with us.

When we arrived in the village many of the locals came to meet us. They came to look at us and we came to look at them. I thought the little ones were cute.

These islanders were known for their beautiful grass skirts and they were a sought after souvenir. The villagers were happy to sell them and other artefacts too. Carvings were also popular. I still have two grass skirts in a cupboard somewhere.

These buildings were storage houses for their produce such as yams, taro and coconuts.

The colour was so bad in this 50 year old slide that I had to take it out altogether. These are the houses where the people lived.

After the buying of artefacts we climbed back on our truck and headed for a swim at the beach. These shy teenage girls came to wave goodbye.

This old photo doesn't do this scene justice. It was a lovely tropical island beach. After we had a swim we were all thirsty so one of our tour guides spoke to the local boys in Pidgin English and the next thing we saw.........

  some boys climbing the tallest coconut trees.  They knocked the coconuts to the ground and another fellow cut the husk off the top with a huge machete .

Then holes were punctured into the nut so that we could drink the cool coconut milk. It is great when you are hot and thirsty.

After a picnic lunch we were back in the truck to visit another village.

Trobriand Is. village

Village food storage houses

In this village we were taken on a canoe ride along the river. It was wobbly and we had to be careful not to tip it over. Once we had all settled it was quite steady. One fellow sat in the front and one paddled at the back.

The children waved us goodbye and chased us into the water.

We passed some more villages nestled under the palm trees on the bank of the river. These children were playing on a canoe similar to the one we were on. It was if we had travelled back in time to see people living in such a simple, primitive way. All too soon it was time to head back to the airport for the flight back home to Pt Moresby. We were all hot and tired and it was nice to be up in the cooler air until we started to bounce around. In the late afternoon it is a bad time to fly. The afternoon storm clouds gather together over the mountains and the turbulence is bad. As the pilot manoeuvred his way along the valleys between the tall, menacing mountains we hung on tight like on a bucking bronco. Luckily we beat the storms home but I was glad to have my feet on the ground again.

THE BIG SMOKE

A slang term for "the city" is "the big smoke". We went into the big smoke to meet friends for lunch. We agreed to meet at the Gallery of Modern Art's cafe overlooking the river. Our friends had a meeting with their financial adviser first so we went to the new Apple Shop to sort a problem with our iPad, then we had to visit the Medicare Office to claim for TOH's cataract op. Unfortunately, by the time we met our friends and had lunch we didn't have enough time to spend in GoMA. It is our favourite gallery. However, I took some shots of the cultural centre of Brisbane using my repaired lens.  

 After our business was finished we walked over the Victoria Bridge to the cultural centre

 Then we walked along the bank of the river.

We passed the museum,

 the Digital Cultural Centre,

evidence that the Art Gallery was close by,

 

   

the Art Gallery's outdoor sculptures,

and the State Library of Queensland.

 We walked through the Library breezeway to the Gallery of Modern Art's outside cafe.

 There to greet us was an elephant standing on its head.

 After a delicious fish lunch we walked back the Queensland Performing Arts Centre where we caught the bus home.

The Cultural Centre bus station.

NEED WHEELS

I had been living in Port Moresby for a few months back in 1964 when I realised I desperately needed my own transport. The local buses were not very  reliable, clean or safe so I used to get lifts to work from colleagues. However, if I was to have a social life, I needed my own wheels. I didn't have enough money to buy a car as I had only been working a few months. However, I saw an ad for Honda motor scooters and fell in love with them staraight away. After, writing to my parents and discussing it with them via snail mail, I bought one and had a ton of fun with it. At last I was independent.

With my togs on and a towel round my neck, I would drive down Touaguba Hill to Ela Beach for a swim. Later I bought saddle bags to take my stuff to school and for carrying the shopping home. There were a few drawbacks. When it rained I wore rain gear but tropical rain is heavy and it managed to get inside the rain wear. It was also hot and sticky wearing plastic. Another nasty was driving under Poinciana Trees when grubs would dangle on silky strings down to my level. It was like driving through a curtain of webs with wrigglies attached. But the worst of all was driving behind an "olie" truck, that was a truck carrying a load of native passengers. "All or altogether" in Pidgin English is "olgeta" shortened to "ole" or "olie" or "oley". Anyway often passengers in the open "ole" trucks would spit big globs of red betel juice over the side of the truck which would come sailing through the air at me. I learnt to leave plenty of room between me and an an "olie" truck. Betel nuts were chewed together with lime and the juice was a stimulant drug but the remains were spat out anywhere. The streets were decorated with red splashes and so was I if I got too close to an "olie" truck.

Photo from Vanessa Simmons' collection

Swimming in the tropical sea at Ela Beach was lovely. Occasionally we would see pretty striped sea snakes which spooked me as they are poisonous.

I wanted to make new friends in my new country, so being sports mad, I joined a variety of sporting clubs and started making lots of friends. Archery was my first choice.

 This photo was in the newspaper with an article about the club.

I also joined the 303 rifle club. I entered competitions for women and did quite well for our club. I didn't stay long as it was too hot lying in the sun and often wet with millions of mosquitoes buzzing in my ears and eyes. It made it a bit hard to concentrate and hold the rifle steady. We were advised to take malaria tablets before we arrived in the Territory of Papua/New Guinea and to keep on taking them every day for as long as we lived there. I did take them religiously and I was lucky never to suffer from malaria.

I also joined the Judo Club of Pt Moresby and this is where I met some really nice people. We still have get togethers once a year. I felt this was a really handy sport in that it was learning self defence too. Women had to learn to throw heavier men to the ground.

My friend Del throwing a male opponent-photo Charles Betteridge

Idlers Bay

With my new friends, I travelled to different beaches along the coast. The roads were rough dirt tracks.

Having fun in the sun. One soon had a dark suntan in the days before we knew about sun bathing and skin cancer.

During the easter holidays one of my friends, Helene, from ASOPA college came to Pt Moresby for a break from her small village where she had been posted. We went for a picnic at Brown River.

With wheels, friends and a job that I enjoyed I was having a great adventure.