They Live is a 1988 American science fiction film in which John Nada, a drifter, discovers that the ruling class are humanoid aliens with skull-like faces who manipulate people to spend money, breed and accept the status quo with subliminal messages. With a special pair of glasses he sees the dictatorship in democracy, the invisible order which sustains our apparent freedom.

Obey. Submit. Consume. Watch TV. Do not question authority. Money is your god. No independent thought. No imagination. They live. We sleep. Lucky for us all, John Nada is a man of action and so begins the fight (including perhaps the longest fistfight in cinema’s history) to save humankind.

Of course, we now know that there are no humanoid aliens and that this is not science fiction. This is a documentary of the world we live in. And the year 2025 is only ten years away - click here.

"David Kilcullen" by Australian Civil-Military Centre
Flickr. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DavidKilcullen.jpg#/media/File:DavidKilcullen.jpg

Last night I listened to ABC Radio National's 'Big Ideas' program and was absolutely blown away by what David Kilcullen had to say about the rise of terrorism, ISIS, and the things we did (and still do) wrong in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

David Kilcullen is a former Australian army colonel, with a PhD in insurgency movements. He has been a counterterrorist adviser to the US and worked closely with Iraq War supremo, General David Petraeus, and US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Kilcullen is critical of many aspects of the West’s strategy, post 9/11, which, he argues, led to the rise of Islamic State. He warns the global terrorist threat is now the new normal and poses the question, "So how do we defeat ISIS?"

He gives some of the answers in his essay Blood Year: Terror and the Islamic State which is a must-read for anyone interested in this the greatest challenge of our times (well, apart from legalising same-sex marriage and whether public servants should be allowed to wear ugg boots and onesies to work ☺)

I'm not into ebooks and ordered the hardcover from Penguin - see here.

So Sepp Blatter. the 79-year-old Swiss FIFA president for 17 years who had only been 're-elected' on Friday, has resigned. It's certainly a stunning capitulation to critics as a mounting corruption scandal engulfs world football's governing body.

However, as The Onion reports, "FIFA officials assured the public Friday that the ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation will in no way affect the 2022 Qatar slush fund. 'While our organization takes these allegations very seriously, we can guarantee with total confidence that the charges will not hinder or restrict the 2022 slush fund in Qatar', said FIFA president Sepp Blatter, adding that the unreported personal expenditures and under-the-table government kickbacks will take place at multiple venues throughout the Middle Eastern country as scheduled. 'Regardless of this ongoing probe, our officials are committed to accepting bribes in exchange for FIFA media and marketing rights, redirecting construction funds to personal expense accounts, and offering lavish gifts to Qatari political ministers in order to sidestep government regulations exactly as originally planned. These accusations of wrongdoing will not be a distraction as we prepare for what we all hope will be the greatest FIFA slush fund yet.' Blatter added that the indictments will also have no effect on the 2018 slush fund in Russia, noting that the country’s framework for corruption is already firmly in place"

Qatar, whose only national sport is flaunting their wealth, is currently spending some US$200 billion - that's 'illion' with a 'b' in front! - on infrastructure to stage the 2022 World Cup. Far be it from me to suggest that they may have spent a few millions of those many billions on bribes to get the games. However, if they were found to have done so, they'd be hard pressed to find another use for all those stadiums (or stadia, take your pick) although public stonings and beheadings spring to mind.

As for understanding Blatter's machinations, you have to read one of my favourite little books, Machiavelli's The Prince (strange! his successor is a Prince ☺). Here are a few Machiavellian quotes (which sound even better in Schwyzerdütsch):

“Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”

“…he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.”

“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”

“It is safer to be feared than loved”

“For, in truth, there is no sure way of holding other than by destroying”

“Men are so simple, and governed so absolutely by their present needs, that he who wishes to deceive will never fail in finding willing dupes.”

“Verträge bricht man um des Nutzens willen.”

Notice at the Uniting Church op-shop in Ulladulla

They obviously made a bad career choice when even op-shops no longer accept encyclopedias. We do live, after all, in an age when we have GOOGLE - or at least wives who know everything.

I've always liked Christopher Hitchens' writing and the world is poorer for his untimely death in 2011 at the age of only 62. His conviction “... that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit” closely matches mine.

I was very pleased to find another one of his books, God is Not Great - How religion poisons everything, ironically at the Uniting Church's op shop. To give you a taste of what awaits you, here's an excerpt.

read the full Daily Telegraph article

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has told a Polish-born Australian citizen who wants months of welfare back-paid to pack her bags and go home if she is not happy.

Agnieszka Swiatlowska, 38, receives $530 a fortnight as part of single parenthood payments. Permanent residents must wait 104 weeks before they can access welfare. Ms Swiatlowska, who is now eligible to be paid welfare having become a citizen in March, wants to be backpaid from that date.

Mr Dutton had a blunt response, "If you’re not happy then pack your bags and off you go", he said. "When I read the Daily Telegraph this morning I thought it was April Fool's Day, I thought it was a joke." Mr Dutton said Australia had very generous welfare schemes, but would not be taken advantage of.

Thank you, Mr Dutton. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Did you know when a disposable battery stops working, there is still close to 80 per cent of its power remaining?

The team from the Batteroo office in Silicon Valley certainly did and now they have created a new device to ensure batteries are operating to their full capacity. Known as Batteriser, the device — crafted from .1mm thin stainless-steel — slides over a range of battery types and promises to increase their life by 800 per cent.

Founder Bob Roohparvar, a computer science professor at California State University, likened the technology to a tube of toothpaste, “If you just squeeze from the top, you’re only going to get so much out of the tube”.

The Batteriser will be available on Amazon later this year to fit AA, AAA, C and D-cell batteries. It will retail at under $US10.00 for a pack of four sleeves.

Some time ago, I was searching GOOGLE for the The Sheltering Desert about two young German geologists who sat out the Second World War in the Namib Desert when, by sheer serendipity, I also came across a reference to The Sheltering Sky. Reading on, I was immediately hooked by what I had discovered and it didn't take me long to get the book and the movie, both of which have become my favourites (well, my favourites among many other favourites ☺)

You know, the most fundamental delight which literature can offer has something to do with the perception or discovery of truth, not necessarily a profound or complex or earthshaking truth, but a particular truth of some order. This "epiphany" comes at the moment of recognition when the reader's experience is reflected back at him. This is what happened to me when I read this book. For example:

“Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus. It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth—” She hesitated. Port laughed abruptly. “And now you know it’s not like that. Right? It’s more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don’t even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it’s nearly burned down to the end. And then’s when you’re conscious of the bitter taste.” “But I’m always conscious of the unpleasant taste and of the end approaching,” she said.”

“Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.”

...

“Whenever he was en route from one place to another, he was able to look at his life with a little more objectivity than usual. it was often on trips that he thought most clearly, and made the decisions that he could not reach when he was stationary.”

...

“And it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time.”

“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

Namibia was a German colony from 1884 to 1919, then administered by apartheid South Africa until 1990. It is still home to a small German population which I was a part of in 1968/69. The town I then lived and worked in was called L&uumlderitz, named after a German tobacco merchant, Adolf Lüderitz, who bought the town while it was a German colony from 1884 to 1919. Naturally, he named it after himself.

South-West Africa, as it was called then, became independent Namibia in 1990 and has been making efforts to break with its dark colonial past and adopt names that reflect the local people and language. The government now wants to change the name of the small harbour town Lüderitz to something that'll test the mettle of any GPS: !Nami≠nüs.

Spelling the new name is bad enough. For those who are not speakers of the local Nama language, this click-like tongue-twister requires quite a bit of verbal gymnastics - try it yourself here.

Like a dog returning to its vomit, I have in recent years revisited a number of my past 'abodes' but I may have to pass on !Nami≠nüs. I wouldn't even be able to ask for directions let alone understand the local tourguide if he told me that, "Nē ǀkharib ǃnâ da ge ǁgûn tsî ǀgaen tsî doan tsîn; tsî ǀnopodi tsî ǀkhenadi tsî ǀhuigu tsî ǀamin tsîn; tsî ǀkharagagu ǀaon tsîna ra hō" (In this region we find springbuck, oryx, and duiker; francolin, guinea fowl, bustard, and ostrich; and also various kinds of snake).

The Queen’s Birthday is celebrated on Monday 8 June in all states and territories except Western Australia. There, the Queen’s Birthday 2015 will be celebrate on Monday 28 September.

Actually, Queen Elizabeth II was born on 21 April 1926 but her birthday is celebrated on a separate date. She has been Queen since 1952 and is currently the second-longest reigning British monarch, the longest being Queen Victoria who reigned for 63 years.

In Britain, the monarch’s birthday has been celebrated since 1748 and, in Australia, every year since the First Fleet arrived in 1788. The birthday was always celebrated on the actual date of the monarch’s birthday until 1936, the year of the death of King George V, Elizabeth’s grandfather. His birthday was 3 June and the date has since stayed around early June (well, except in Western Australia where it is celebrated in September and in Queensland in 2016 when it will be moved to October).

I've been waiting to be awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honour's List ever since I became "naturalised" on 9 December 1971 (I must've been somewhat artificial until then ☺). I can't wait any longer and shall arrange for my own OBE (Out-of-Body Experience) on Monday by indulging in a few-too-many drinks raised to Her Majesty's good health.

The Australian Catholic University last week announced it would introduce scholarships in the names of executed heroin smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran - read more here. We’re in for some awkward conversations thirty years down the track if this deification process continues. Just imagine:

“Daddy, why is it called the Chan-Sukumaran Stadium?”

“Well, princess, back in 2015 two young Australians were put to death in Indonesia after they got caught smuggling heroin. So we named the stadium and some schools and libraries after them to honour their memories.”

“Oh. So they were good people?”

“Not really, princess, but that isn’t the point. They got caught doing something bad, but they didn’t deserve to be killed.”

“Hmm. But they must have done something good, right?”

“Well, one of them learned to paint. Except it was mostly the same painting over and over again. And the other one liked Jesus a lot.”

“And that’s all they did?”

“You’re being too cynical, dear. They were young men who didn’t deserve to die for their crimes.”

“Daddy, have any Australian heroin dealers ever been shot by Australian police?”

“Why, yes, princess, I suppose some of them have.”

“Then why haven’t we named anything after them?”

“These questions are very complicated, little one. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“I’m 25. Anyway, can you please drive me into the city? If we take the Khaled Sharrouf Freeway across the Ivan Milat Bridge, we should arrive at the Russell Brand Centre in less than thirty minutes.”

Ian Paterson with donkey (the donkey is on the left)

We didn't exactly play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey but my old mate Ian Paterson and I had lots of fun meeting up again after more than forty years - see here (well, 'old mate' might be a little presumptuous: Ian’s more of a professional acquaintance but that just sounds so stuffy…).

Memories came back thick and fast of our times on Bougainville Island, of the people we have known, and of the things we have done. We seem to have swapped sides since: when we first met in 1973, Ian was married and I was footloose and fancy-free. Forty years later, I am married and he is footloose and fancy-free (just how fancy-free he demonstrated by always leaving the toilet-seat up, a habit I had beaten out of me during the last fifteen years of domestic bliss ☺)

The three nights he stopped over at "Riverbend" went all too fast. He left this morning after breakfast ...

... for Canberra where he wants to do a bit of sightseeing and visit some of the new government buildings:

Thanks for dropping by, Ian! I hope you enjoyed our little reunion as much as I did. Whenever you are at a loose end, come again!

P.S. SURPRISE! Just discovered Ian's message in our guestbook: "Thank you, Peter and Padma, for one of the loveliest times in my life. You are both very generous, welcoming and genuinely nice friends. I felt totally relaxed and enjoyed every minute of my stay. The food prepared by Padma was simply delicious. The tranquility, beauty and peace of Riverbend Cottage is just wonderful. Magnificent trees, lovely river, billabong, wildlife - first time I have fed a donkey!! Your invitation to visit, Pete, after 40-plus years working together on Bougainville Island was a golden opportunity to reminisce about that outstanding time in our lives which left us all thankful for that exciting journey and experience of a lifetime. Much love and good wishes. Ian Paterson, Coolangatta, Queensland."

Way back in 2006 I travelled to the tiny Kingdom of Tonga to live for what I thought would be two weeks of tropical bliss with a German couple on the even tinier island of Fofoa in Vava'u.

In exchange for allowing me to camp on 'their' island, I lugged with me some 30kg and $600 worth of presents which they had requested: electric angle-grinder, spare parts, tools, books, some foodstuff, right down to several packets of tampons (she had ordered "extra large!").

They stripped me of everything on the very first day; it took a few more days before they had also almost stripped me of my sanity. Under the heels of their German jackboots and within earshot of their 'domestic bliss', I was not only hungry for pleasanter company but also for more food and drink than had been sparingly dished out to me (remember Oliver Twist's “Please, sir, I want some more”?)

When after only four days I almost begged to be returned to civilisation, their raised-eyebrow response was, "Vat, you not like it vis uns?" Maybe they read this blog and finally get their answer ☺

I was reminded of this little misadventure when I discovered the above video clip and these photos of the Von Engelbrechtens family and their Tonga Beach House:

Karyn and Boris Von Engelbrechtens and their three kids built this amazing clifftop house "next door" to the German couple on an abandoned building site which at the time of my visit looked like this:

What an inspiration to anybody who ever wanted to live on a remote island in the South Pacific! Their friend Susie Moss thinks so, too, as she writes here.

Lo and behold, she even met my "friends" whom she describes thus:
"As expected, Elkie was sharp, loud, and bossy and barked orders to her long-suffering conveniently half death [sic? half dead or half deaf, or both?] husband. When the waters got tricky and we had to negotiate crossing the reef she stood bodicea [sic] like in the boat firmly directing the way, which sometimes Werner chose firmly to ignore. I have grown to be very fond of them both and their amusing Germanic ways." - read the full article here.

Very fond? Amusing Germanic ways? Ah well, Susie, you didn't have to live with them 24/7 - or rather 24/4 because I ran away after 4 days.

Translation: At last the right kind of refugees!

I have written to the Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, the Hon. Peter Dutton MP, requesting that, for purpose of the arrival of asylum seekers, "Riverbend" be excised from the migration zone of the Australian mainland.

This should allow this boatload to be landed here before they freeze to death which would be a terrible, terrible waste.

left-to-right: Ian, Kathy, Padma, moi. The pink ladies in the back are raising money for Moruya Hospital; we're still waiting for the call
to say that we're holding the winning tickets.

But that's only because they find the word 'acquaintance' too difficult to spell. However, I think I can rightly claim that Ian and I are good friends and our friendship has endured the test of time, perhaps because we don't meet all that often.

Today was one of those rare days when we met for lunch at the Tuross Head Country Club. We talked about everything and anything and time just flew.

Now I'm back at "Riverbend" and ready to start on another book, Rorting - The Great Australian Crime by Malcolm Brown. It's all about travel rorts and other financial abuses by Federal politicians (what? corrupt politicians? never! I mean, you can rent them by the hour but you could never buy them, could you?); a salted gold mine in Borneo (read Kerry B. Collison's book "Indonesian Gold"); the Fine Cotton Affair(one of those alleged to be involved, Peter McCoy, was my client in Canberra when he ran the highly successful night club, the "Private Bin"); tax evasion in Australia (a national sport, second only to Greece, the pinnacle of which were the bottom-of-the-harbour schemes); the life and times of Christopher Skase (watch "Let's Get Skase"); corruption in the justice system; the corrupt practices in local government and the building industry; and the grasping for insurance pay-outs and other windfalls.

More to talk about next time Ian and I meet up again!

Robert (70) celebrating the 13th anniversary of taking care of business (his words, not mine - click here)

Ever since I met real estate salesman extraordinaire Robert Bryce in Tonga in 2006 I have kept an eye on Tongan real estate which is subject to its own laws, or rather, no laws. Read more about it here.

Let me get one thing straight: I have never bought anything from Robert but I like the guy. I mean, anybody who's been around for as long as the Beach Boys and writes prose like this and even invokes the world's greatest maritime disaster to sell his wares must be dedicated.

In his own way, Robert is a dreamer which eminently qualifies him to sell his dreams to other dreamers such as Charlette and Barry from Manitoba in Canada, and Nicolas and Candice from Wyoming, USA, to name just a few, who want to spend their winters in shorts and T-shirt.

There's nothing wrong with dreams (they're better than nightmares ☺). I dreamt my own when I bought a block of land on tropical Magnetic Island off Australia's Queensland coast in 1979. Dreaming of one day building a house and living there kept me going while I kept going through dozens of jobs in fifteen different countries.

I eventually sold the land twenty-five years later, with the house still unbuilt but with a tidy profit (an investment should at least double in value every ten years; if it doesn't, call it anything you like but not an investment), because I was lucky enough to discover, before I had succumbed to relentless mosquito bites, cyclonic winds, heat rashes, intellectual and dietary privations, and sheer bone-breaking hard work, that I no longer needed the dream.

$3,850 up front and an annual $348 (the numbers jump around a lot, depending on which of Robert's websites you read) is small money to keep your dreams alive in order to keep yourself alive during the cold Northern winters, so go ahead and dream your dreams. Just don't expect them to come true!

P.S. No tour-guide exists yet of Cocomo Village because Cocomo Village doesn't exist (not yet; and perhaps it never will) or of Hunga Island which is so remote it may as well not exist. The nearest to a "tour-guide" would be the story of "Charles I, Emperor of Oceania" in James Michener's book "Rascals in Paradise". Ignore it at your peril! ☺

But he's not on the island of Hunga. And that anonymous patch of sea in the background is not in Tonga. Nor has he ever been to Tonga, if his suggestion that it's 'just a plane ride from LA' and the way he pronounces Hunga and Neiafu are anything to go by.

Needless to say, those "outstanding medical and dental facilities" and "great restaurants" don't exist nor www.mybestplacestoretire.com. Anyway, if his pronounciation of Hunga made you hunger for more, here it is:

If you want to see the real Hunga, here are some authentic photos:

Anyway, if you're really into serious bullshit, here's the full 'sales pitch', straight from the Marquis de Rays who was a much better bullshit artist than Dae Payton ever will be:

"Food? Nouvelle France was composed of land that ached from its burden of succulent riches. A man had merely to call and the natives would rush the produce of the fields to him. The ugly days of buying things from mean shop attendants were ended. Food was everywhere.

Money? The seas abounded in trepang, a crawling slug which could be gathered even by children and which sold in China for $750 a ton. The softly rolling land in from the beach was crowded with mahogany and teak. Copra could be made with almost no effort, since Chinese would do all the work. Vessels of all nations would put into port, hotels would florish and the citizens of Nouvelle France would reap an enormous profit.

Amenities? When the adventurous colonists reached this paradise they would find schools, churches, stores, factories, a railway, docks, and a lighthouse which would aid large European vessels putting into the colony for trade. There would also be fine roads not less than fifteen feet wide between properties."(You will have to read the rest in James Michener's book "Rascals in Paradise" but I think you get the general drift.)

The antediluvian patriarch Noah would've loved this weather: water, water everywhere; enough of it to sink (up to the top of my gumboots anyway).

"And after the flood, Noah became a husbandman and he planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and was uncovered within his tent."

With the watertanks overflowing, I may follow Noah's example, 'uncover' and, with a glass of my favourite Pinot Noir in hand, slip into a hot bath. Cheers!

A year or two before I travelled to Tonga for the first time, a German television producer asked for two volunteer families to live for three months on the tiny island of Ha'ano in Ha'apai which is just six kilometres long and has 400 inhabitants spread over four villages.

Some 400 families volunteered from which the producer picked Steffen Kinder's and Uwe Armbruster's families, with altogether five children and even a grand-dad. They lived on the island in primitive conditions, cooking on an open fire, working in a neighbour's plantation, and, of course, there was no fridge, no TV, no supermarket. Constant rain for the first three weeks, in the constant humidity the smallest cut becoming a festering sore, and an invasion of lice and fleas and cockroaches were some of the downsides of living in a South Sea Paradise.

Their experiences were documented in the film "Traumfischer" which ran on German television and is also available on DVD. Gabriela Kinder's final comments, "Wir wären gerne länger geblieben, aber dorthin auszuwandern stand und steht nicht zur Debatte. Ich würde viele Dinge, die ich sehr schätze, vermissen, zum Beispiel klassische Musik, Konzerte, Theater, Museen und auch Kneipen. Deswegen würde es uns auch eher nach Italien ziehen, falls wir einmal aus Deutschland weggehen sollten." ["We would have liked to stay longer but to permanently settle there was out of the question. There are too many things I would have missed, for instance, classical music, concerts, theatre, museums, even our corner-pub. Should we ever consider leaving Germany, it'd be to some place such as Italy.&quot]

Of course, I immediately ordered the DVD from Germany. Now that it is also available on YouTube (well, parts of it), you can enjoy the beautiful scenery and background music free of charge even though you may not understand the language. Mind you, we might be lucky third time 'round when 've vill haffe our vays to make you dummkobf sbeak it'☺

When facebook first came out, I started an account but realising how little editorial power I had over it, I immediately closed it again. Ever since that time facebook has kept asking me to come back.

But I no longer need facebook. I now make friends outside of facebook by applying the same principles: every day I walk down the street and tell everyone I meet what I have eaten, how I feel, what I did the night before, and what I will do for the rest of the day. I also give them pictures of my family, of my two dogs and of what I have done in the garden. I also listen to their conversation and I tell them that I love them.

And it works! Already I have three persons following me: two police officers and a psychiatrist.

Graham Ward and Peter Logan at the Royal Papuan Yacht Club in Port Moresby

Peter Logan, a friend from my days in Rabaul in 1970, recently travelled back to Papua New Guinea to meet up with another friend of ours, Graham Ward.

Rabaul had been my jumping-off spot in the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea when I arrived there in early January 1970. It was everything I had expected of the Territory: it was a small community settled around picturesque Simpson Harbour. The climate was tropical with blazing sunshine and regular tropical downpours, the vegetation strange and exotic, and the social life a complete change from anything I had ever experienced before! And to top it all, I loved the work which offered challenges only available in a small setting such as Rabaul where expatriate labour was at a premium.

I worked for Hancock, Woodward & Neill, a small firm of chartered accountants: the resident manager, Barry Weir, his wife as secretary, and two accountants, Peter Langley and Graham Ward, plus myself. Graham was a real character who was destined never to leave the Territory. For him the old aphorism came true that "if you spend more than five years in New Guinea you were done for, you'd never be able to get out, your energy would be gone, and you'd rot there like an aged palm."

He and an accountant from another chartered firm and myself shared a company house (which was really an old Chinese tradestore) in Vulcan Street and a 'hausboi' who answered to the name of Getup. "Getup!!!""Yes, masta!" Each of us took a turn in doing the weekly shopping. I always dreaded when it was their turn as they merely bought a leg of lamb and spent the rest of the kitty to stock up on beer! We spent Saturday nights at the Palm Theatre sprawled in our banana chairs with an esky full of stubbies beside us. The others rarely spent a night at home; their nocturnal activities ranged from the Ambonese Club to the Ralum Club to the RSL. When they were well into their beers, mosquitoes would bite them and then fly straight into the wall! Then, next morning, they were like snails on Valium. How they managed to stay awake during office hours has always been a mystery to me!

When the tradestore lease terminated, Graham and I moved into adjoining flats above New Britain Bakery in Mango Avenue until the stale smell of bread and the noise of the nightly baking drove us away. We next took up quarters at the mess hall of the Public Works Department along Malaguna Road where Graham Ward, Peter Logan, an alcoholic spray-painter by the name of Brian, and I shared a 'donga', each of us occupying a separate room connected by a long verandah, with the ablution block at one end.

On that verandah, right next to my door, stood an old beer fridge beside an old wicker chair which was always occupied by Brian, the alcoholic spray-painter, as night after night he worked his way through the fridge contents. I will always associate the sound of creaking fridge hinges and the soft popping of beer cans with those tropical nights in Rabaul!

Unfortunately, I have no photos of that period in my life as I didn't own a camera then. Maybe I ought to have bought one instead of the worthless mining shares which my fellow-accountants had talked me into "investing" in - read more here.

The address says it all: Box 187 P.O., Rabaul, New Guinea, T.P.N.G.

During my time in Rabaul, advertisements began to appear in the local POST-COURIER for the Bougainville Copper Project. I applied to the project's construction managers Bechtel Corporation for the advertised position of Senior Contract Auditor and was invited by the Project Administration Manager Sid Lhotka to attend an interview at Panguna. It was a case of vini,vidi,vici and within a month I was flying back to Bougainville to start work with Bechtel (but thereby hangs yet another tale.)

Graham Ward was never to leave Rabaul - well, not until September 1994 when the town was totally wiped out by a volcanic eruption. By that time Graham had already got married to a PNG citizen and had become a PNG citizen himself and moved to Port Moresby. He remains there to this day, little changed in looks and still just on the verge of making a lot of money with some newly dreamed-up scheme.

I wished I could've been a fly on the wall and listen in as he and Peter Logan talked about the good ol' days.