BIRTHDAY BEAR HITS THE ROAD

Our Birthday Bear Group is on a road trip north to Woodgate Beach and Bargara where we will celebrate George's big 70 birthday. Unfortunately bear has to be kept hidden in a bag until he is allowed to come out and surprise George in a few days.
We stopped for morning coffee to keep TOH happy. Later we stopped for lunch at Sexie Coffie to keep us all happy.(see my Facebook page). Then we arrived at Woodgate Beach in the late afternoon. It is a beautiful quiet place. We booked into some cabins and went to discover the beach. TOH and I have never been here before but it is where Ann played when she was young. She has enjoyed showing us around.

Ann, George and Mary

After a late afternoon stroll on the beach we returned to our cabins and then we walked to the Bowls Club for dinner.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

In 1964 I had just started a new career. I was working for the Australian Government, teaching in the Territory of Papua/New Guinea. I was posted to Pt Moresby and I lived in a hotel until hostel accommodation was found for me. I was looking forward to having my own place. 

 One weekend I was invited to look over a survey ship which had docked at the wharf.

(Once again I have been scanning 50 year old coloured slides and sometimes I just can't get back the original colours)

From the wharf I could see where I lived. It was Touaguba Hostel on Touaguba Hill overlooking the harbour. In the red loop you can see the buildings. I lived in the block at the far left.

It was a windy steep hill to climb up to the hostel. You can see one of the blocks sloping down the the hill. I made friends with Jan when I lived there and we are still in touch after 50 years. She let me use her photo from her website here, where you can see more. She also has a super memory and is helping me write these posts via emails as she lives in Adelaide in South Australia.

There were three accommodation blocks nestled into the side of the hill following the lie of the land. The views were spectacular. Here we are looking down the harbour inland.

Looking back we see over the wharf to the sea.

This is the bottom half of my block. There were 10 rooms for ten girls. There was a  kicthen, laundry and bathroom to share. We hardly used the kitchen because there was a dining room where we had our meals provided. The government provided the accommodation and meals. There was a fourth block below ours. So there were 40 single girls living there altogether.

I used to watch the Catalina plane land and take off from the water and admire the tropical plants. The paw paws were hanging outside the window and there were banana trees and many colourful leafed plants.

There were often beautiful sunsets over the harbour. Sometimes pink  and.......

sometimes orange. I loved the way the water changed colour too.

There wasn't a lot of places to go after work in the evenings. I didn't like to frequent hotels and it wasn't sensible for women to go out by themselves at night. So just for fun some of the girls would climb on the roof of our block and sit there watching the sunsets and chatting. I obviously took my camera and played around.

In the wet season we had a tropical down pour every afternoon. Sometimes you could see it coming like a wall of water.

It would thunder down on the metal roof. (We didn't stay on the roof at these times). It was so noisy we couldn't hear each other talking. However, we devised a great way to cool off by standing under the open gutters. It was always hot and steamy in Papua/ New Guinea all year long.

It felt like I was on a vacation not here working. 

The staff who worked in the kitchen and dining room. They spoke Motu which was a lingua franca for Papuans as there were many local languages. On the northern New Guinea side of the island the lingua franca was Pidgin English.

AM I REALLY AT WORK?

In January 1964 I had been in the Territory of Papua New Guinea for a few months working at the District Education Office in Pt Moresby, while I was waiting for the schools to reopen after the summer holidays. It was very easy work shuffling papers and trying to look busy as well as watching the tropical fish swim below the office which was built over the water on stilts.

On the weekends I was taken on trips to places around Pt Moresby. I didn't have any transport of my own and I can't remember who I went with. I didn't know anyone other than those I had met in the office, so it must have been someone from the office.

Looking back down the road from Rouna towards Pt Moresby.

Rouna Falls

 There weren't many sealed roads but the road up the ranges north of Pt Moresby was fairly well graded. This was because it led to the Rouna Falls Power Station and Sirinumu Dam.

 There was always plenty of water flowing over the falls coming from the rainforest clad Owen Stanley Mountains.  Power was generated here to supply Pt Moresby.

After stopping to view the falls and listen to the thundering water we drove further up the mountain to the native village of Sogeri, where there was a market selling fresh fruit and vegetables.

Rubber plantation near Sogeri

 Then I was taken to see a rubber plantation. Something I had only read about in school text books. I could see how the white, milky sap was being collected in a little metal cup from a 'v' shaped gash in the trees.


There was a worker cutting new strips of bark off to release more sap. Just like I had seen on the pages of my Geography book at school.

I was really here in the tropical jungles of TPNG. It felt like I was on a tourist vacation but no, I was really here to work.

Latex sheets ready to be fired.

I saw how the sap was turned into latex sheets and then fired or smoked and turned into rubber sheets ready to be exported.

It was all very interesting but the day was getting late so we headed back to Pt Moresby. We stopped on the way down the mountain at Rouna Hotel for a cool drink in the gardens.

We had to keep a watch on the sky and leave at the first sign of the afternoon storm clouds arriving. The road turned into a muddy slippery slide when it rained.

Roana Hotel garden

Every week that I worked in the office, I would ask," Which school will I be at and who will be the head teacher?" Finally a week before school was to start, I got an answer. I was told that I had a position at a brand new "A" school at Korobosea. "A" stood for Australian Curriculum School to differ from a "T" school which stood for Territory Curriculum School. In general "A" schools were for European children which was a term used for Australians and any other expat people from all different countries. "T" schools were for native children but it wasn't apartheid it was more beneficial to teach native children together because they had to learn English and a curriculum more suited to their culture where as the expat children followed the Australian NSW curriculum. However, if native parents wanted their child to go to an "A" school they could and in some smaller villages expat kids went to the 'T" school because it was the only school there.

Korobosea 'A' School Jan 1964

 A few days before school started I met the principal, a very young fellow, who said, "Let's go to see our new school and start preparing our classrooms."Off we went and what a surprise we found. Workmen were still building. There were no steps up to any of the buildings and there was a bulldozer bogged in the mud which was supposed to be the playground/school yard. There was no way children could move in here in four days time.

We headed down the new muddy road and back into town to the office to tell them the situation.
When school started for the year the children had to return to their old overcrowded schools in Boroko and Ela Beach. I was told to report to Boroko East School.  Although disappointed that I wouldn't have my own class and room yet for a few weeks, it was good to help out in a classroom with an experienced teacher to see how things were done in an "A" school.

THE FOREST CHORUS

I went for my morning walk in the forest.

I liked how the light danced on the plants.

Mother  is camera shy but not Joey craning his neck out of the pouch to see what I was doing.

As I walked along the cicada chorus entertained me. The noise is deafening. Turn your volume up to get the idea. there is a crescendo in the middle

NEW JOB, NEW COUNTRY, NEW LIFE

I had finished my last prac teaching session in Nov,1963 in Lae, in the Territory of Papua/New Guinea. I had passed my final exams with surprisingly good results so I wasn't sent back to Sydney to do more study. Instead I was to start teaching in Pt Moresby in Feb 1964. Other students were sent to other towns , villages or outposts all over the country. I was happy to be in the biggest town and not in an isolated place, others were more adventurous than me.

All the photos have been scanned from 50 year old slides. They are discoloured with scratches, dust and fungus on them.  I have tried to eradicate marks and rectify the magenta and blue hues but not with total success. Bear with me.

Pt Moresby 1963

PT Moresby is on a small peninsula with the ocean on the left and the harbour on the right, The CBD stretches from one side to the other. Today there are highrise buildings and much wider and better roads.

Policeman directing traffic at the main intersection.

 There were no traffic lights in those days. The native policeman is hard to see under the clock in the shade of his stand. You can see his white gloves.

The police station 

A policeman on the right is wearing the traditional navy uniform laplap, a red belt, cap and no shoes.

There were quite a lot of churches and missions operting in TPNG.

Purple Bougainvillaea cascades down the hill

 All the above shots were taken in the main street which stretches from the harbour to Ela Beach across the peninsula.

 My friend Val, was being sent to Daru Island, near the western border with Dutch New Guinea then, now it is part of Indonesia. However, Val's accommodation wasn't ready in Daru so she had to stay in Pt Moresby for a few weeks. Neither was my accommodation sorted, so we were both put into a room to share in the Boroko Hotel. It was a tiny room and I dearly hoped I would have a better place when I actually started teaching. Boroko is an outer suburb of Pt Moresby.

 Boroko Shopping Centre 1963

Photo Charles Betteridge

The children were on end of year, school holidays and the schools were closed. We were told to report to the District Education Office in town. The office was an old building built over the water on stilts, seen here at the end of Ela Beach at low tide.

The District Education Office in the background. photo Charles Betteridge

The District Education Office in 1963. It used to be a hospital and then the Officer's Club during the war.
Photo: PNGAAA

We walked along the jetty to the office where there was very little for anyone to do because schools were on holidays for 6 weeks. We did a little bit of filing and spent most of our time pretending to be busy. The posts that held up the building over the water came through the floor to the roof. Where they passed through the floor I could see down into the clear water. There were many colourful tropical fish feeding off the seaweed growing on the posts. It was beautiful, like visiting an aquarium. I can remember leaning on the post looking at this exotic scene and thinking to myself........"I'm getting paid to do this." (And we were paid well)

Ela Beach 1963

I thought Ela Beach was an idilic tropical place. The water was crystal clear and palm trees hung lazily over the white sand.

Beer garden of the RSL Club on Ela Beach

We often spent Saturday mornings here.

Cute little children enjoy cooling off 

LAST DAYS IN LAE

In Nov 1963, I spent two weeks in Lae, P/NG doing the last session of practice teaching for my teaching course. I was with a small group of girls. Some boys went to Rabaul and others went to Pt Moresby to finish their prac teaching. After this we would all be sent out to our teaching posts to start real work. We would have to say goodbye to the friends we had made at college (Australian School Of Pacific Administration).

Besides prac teaching we did a lot of observing of how schools operated there. We were all accommodated at the Hotel Cecil and we were transported to schools in a variety of vehicles.

We passed a Lutheran Mission on the way to visit some different types of schools.

We arrived at the first school just as they were having morning assembly.It was already very hot.

We drove out of Lae into the countryside and crossed over the wide Markham River. The water was low this day but it becomes a surging torrent when it rains.

The bridge was a timber construction and it was very long and bumpy.

We arrived at a small bush school. It was a hot day as every day is so I think the smoke is from the cook house. Some of the girls have scarves on to stop their hair blowing about in the back of the ute. 

Inside the children were working quietly . The classroom had a dirt floor and half a wall. Often parents would come and hang over the wall to join in the lessons.

In the playground, our lecturer tries to encourage a little Prep student to put on his pants.

We were taken to a traditional village to see how the children lived. Here there is woman carrying a load with a some pigs following her. She may be going to feed them. The wealth of a family was ascertained by the number of pigs they owned. Brides would be bought with pigs. Their houses are made from grass thatch.

Helen and me.

We stopped for lunch by a cool creek. We waded through the clear cool stream and kept the sun off by using huge leaves that were growing nearby.  Helen was one of my best friends at college. She was on a scholarship from the Lutheran Church. She was going to teach at a mission in the highlands. I never saw her again. Unfortunately, she had passed away by the time we had our first reunion in 2002.

We stopped by another school on the way back to Lae.
This one had a concrete floor and a more substantial wall.

From the school yard we could see the afternoon storm clouds rolling down the mountains ready to drop torrential, tropical rain. This was a regular occurrence most afternoons. The plane was lucky to be landing before the storm hit. We also arrived back at the hotel before getting wet. Not that it mattered getting wet. It cooled you down and you soon dried out.

The main street in Lae 1963

Soon I would be leaving my friends and winging my way to another adventure on my own.