It's a cold morning at "Riverbend" and I've just jump-started my heart with a strong coffee — "International Roast", of course; old habits die hard — and now sit by the window and look at the falling leaves and wonder what insanity made me settle in these forbidding climes. Roy in Penang, Grahame in Port Moresby, Hubert in Cooktown, Peter and Ida in Cairns, do you read me?
Having been sent, in reply to a question I had posed on the facebook-page "I used to live in Papua New Guinea", this evocative painting of what looks like the building of my first employers in New Guinea, the chartered accountants' firm of Hancock Woodward & Neil in Rabaul, but which was in fact an almost identical-looking building next to it, only increased my longing to be back in the tropics. As my best friend from those days used to say, "My spiritual home will always be New Guinea."
I am looking at two possible locations but am confused.
It was in that modest building in Park Street where in 1970 I had my modest start — on an even more modest annual salary of $2,000 plus free but very sub-standard accommodation — to an accounting career that took me all over the world and back. I will always be grateful to the manager, Barry Weir, who hired me, literally sight unseen, from my mundane job as a bank officer in Canberra to enter the world of Luca Pacioli and to learn to tell the difference between a debit and a credit.
I am also grateful to Stephen Dowling who sent me a copy of this very evocative painting. He is, of course, the son of John Dowling, who was then reverentially referred to as 'the uncrowned king of Rabaul', since his company Plantation Holdings Limited (PHL), in addition to several plantations, also owned a string of businesses around town. In fact, Plantation Holdings Limited was the main client of the accounting firm Hancock Woodward & Neil, for whom I worked in that modest building.
They were all good memories as I sat by the window and looked at the falling leaves. It's time for another strong coffee — "International Roast", of course. Like old memories of New Guinea, old habits also die hard.
