My Valley Is Changing

 

 

The building of the giant open-cut copper mine on the island of Bougainville brought profound change to the locals. Despite royalties, training programs and extensive development, their concerns eventually escalated into conflict, which resulted in the closure of the mine in 1989.

These issues are already clearly evident in "My Valley is Changing", which was made shortly after the mine opened in 1970.

 

 

I spent altogether three years on the Bougainville Copper Project, on three different occasions and with three different employers, and the experience gained during that time set me up for the many and varied jobs in a dozen different countries afterwards, and I shall always look back on my time on Bougainville Island as my most formative years.

Lukim bihain yu, puk puk! (See you later, alligator!)

 

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The end of an exquisite daydream

 

 

A blue sea sparkling under a blue sky, palm trees bending in a warm breeze. A picture of perfect paradise, virtually everybody's dream to escape. And yet, people here face the same pressures as elsewhere. Whether you're in a big city or in a tropical island paradise, the pressures of being alive are always there, always weighing you down. And for expatriate Europeans, it's loneliness and the narrowness of their isolated existence. Once you're educated, once your mind is expanded, subsistence on a remote little island is simply unacceptable.

And yet, Villa Mamana on the remote tropical island of Telekivava'u in the Kingdom of Tonga has been a most exquisite daydream for all involved: the original creator Joe Altenhein, the odd island-sitter (which included my friend Horst Berger who first told me about it), and the subsequent owner for the last dozen-or-so years, Matt Muirhead, who sent me this email in 2015:

 

Aloha Peter, Well old chap we have come to the end of the line with Villa Mamana. We tried for years to make a go on a very limited budget. We made some progress when there, but suffered when not there. This past year our houses and property were ransacked. Locals stole everything they could fit in boats. We don't know who it was but have our suspicions. The loss is too much to overcome. The jungle and culture wins. We are trying to dispose of what is left and will turn the page. Tonga is impossible to do business in. The culture sad to say is not trustworthy and without a trusted local no one can operate. Someday we will visit Australia and hope to see you on the porch. Or if your travels take you to Hawaii or Santa Cruz let us know. Thank you for your faithful friendship and support. Aloha nui loa a ka Ko and Malo e lele. Matt Muirhead Hawaii Telekivavau

 

 

The domain name villamamanatonga.com will soon expire but I will continue to look after its pages and blog here and here in memory of a wonderful dream which has run its course. As Joe Altenhein wrote, "We all had the best time of our lives on the island, and will always miss it".

 

Villa Mamana after Cyclone Ian in January 2014

 

Joe and Matt, visit the website whenever you want to shed a quiet tear.

 

 

The case of the unsold lightmeter

 

 

My best friend, twenty years after he had come back to Australia, still wore the same shirt and shorts he had worn in New Guinea. Wearing things out until they could be worn no more was what we both did. As the older one, he had been shaped by the Great Depression, and I, the younger one, by the desperate post-war years in Germany, but let me get back on board my train of thought before it leaves the station without me.

We recently bought a new refrigerator which, given its amazing energy ratings compared to what the thirty-year-old one used to consume, will have recovered its low MADE IN CHINA sticker price in less than two years. And that's not even considering its many improvements, such as its self-defrosting freezer compartment, unlike the one packed solid with frozen ice we and another friend in New Guinea used to have.

That other friend, a very careful spender, had just one hobby and that was photography. Those were the days before automatic cameras when you set the time exposure speed and aperture using your own trial-and-error experience or you used one of those newfangled photographic lightmeters which my friend had discovered in a photographic shop.

In those days when credit cards were not as ubiquitous as they are now, every shop in the then Territory of Papua New Guinea accepted cheques because everyone knew everyone, but my friend had neither a credit card nor a cheque book because, as I mentioned before, when it came to spending money, he adhered to the part of the Lord's Prayer where it says, "Lead us not into temptation". So where did he keep his money?

I found out as soon as we had got back to his flat and he opened his refrigerator's freezer compartment which was, of course, frozen solid. It took several hours of hammer-and-chiselling to transfer all that solid ice from the freezer to the kitchen sink where it was left to thaw before he could extract from all that melting mess a plastic-wrapped roll which contained - yes, you're well ahead of me! - a sizeable wad of money!

Did we drive back into town to buy that lightmeter? We didn't! By the time he could peel off a few moist banknotes, he had listened to the Lord's Prayer again, rolled up the money and put it back in the freezer.

We were all supplied with furnished housing (plus free utilities and domestic staff) and fully serviced and fuelled company cars, so that we could be both generous and stingy in equal measure without appearing to be either. We would generously share our free amenities with any guest arriving on our doorsteps, and what we still had to pay out of our own pockets was so little that there was no need for any stinginess.

In this manner, my friend, who was a stayer in one place rather than a drifter like me, visited me in my many other contract locations: in Lae in New Guinea, on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait, Honiara in the Solomons, Apia in Samoa, Penang in Malaysia, and Piraeus in Greece.

He never brought anything other than himself which was fine as he was good company and always welcome to share the free amenities my employers supplied me with, but I began to question his true motives when, never having been to Singapore before, he arrived in Penang after having slept at Changi Airport and without his beloved BRONICA camera because "I no longer take photos. It's become too expensive!"

After a few years, having kept in touch by letter, he wrote to say that he was just then in between jobs and could I use another accountant in my office in Greece? Yes, I could, and I offered him three months' employment on a tax-free salary paid in Australian dollars and free hotel accommodation plus air fares and, to keep things simple, I asked him to buy his own ticket which I would reimburse him on arrival in local drachmas to give him some spending money for the three months.

He had to borrow the money for the airfare from his stepfather as all his own money was not frozen solid this time but earning high interest on term deposits. When he arrived in Piraeus, I immediately reimbursed him the airfare and then we got down to some work in my office. Everything went well - he was a good and steady worker albeit without motivation - and soon the three months were up and I gave him a few days off to prepare for his departure. In those days, Greece still had restrictions on how much money could be taken out of the country and I was not surprised when the bank phoned to confirm that my friend had been employed by us and was allowed to convert drachmas into dollars. What did surprise me was the amount of money he wanted to convert: it was almost all of the money I had reimbursed him for his airfare. He had spent three months in Greece almost without spending a drachma!

After his last uninvited visit to my home in Canberra in 1992 - or was it 1993? - we lost contact and our twenty-five-year-long friendship had seemingly come to an end. During all this time we had never discussed financial matters other than those pertaining to our work, but you can't be a good friend with someone for all that time without having at least some inkling of his financial position, and my inkling of his financial position was what's described in the vernacular as being "filthy rich!"

 

 

Which made it all the sadder when I found on the internet this death notice. He had died just two years past his retirement age - although I doubt he had actually retired - without ever enjoying all that money!

If this post made you think because you may find yourself in a similarly 'unfortunate' position, please contact me and I shall happily furnish you with a bank account number to which to remit your unwanted money.

 

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About 'Kopfkino' and other things

 

 

As I sit here on a very early Saturday morning, suspended in this halflight between night and day, a lot of thoughts run through my head. In recent years I had rekindled an old friendship with a very dear friend from my youth in Germany. She called this 'Kopfkino. 'Kopf' means 'head' and 'Kino' means 'cinema'. Can you guess this word's meaning? 'Kopfkino' is what happens when you use your imagination to think of something in a very detailed way. You then lose track of time for a few seconds and really feel like you are watching a movie that is happening in your head. She was my very first girlfriend and she died three years ago. It came as quite a shock to me when her family emailed me the sad news, and I didn't need any 'Kopfkino' to imagine that I, too, was on borrowed time.

By now you must have been wondering about the photo on top of this post. It depicts the armrest on my favourite armchair in which I read and write and think and watch television or let my 'Kopfkino' run wild, as I did in this case when the dark smudge on the upholstered armrest reminded me of a retired old neighbour in Far North Queensland. His favourite armchair was hard up against the wall, and after he had leant his head against the wall while watching television year after year and night after night, it had left an oily smudge on the wall. Every time I visited him, my eyes were involuntarily drawn to that smudge and I remember feeling slightly disgusted by it. Now I have my own smudge.

None of this disgusts me any more or even matters. Sure, clean if you must, but I rather use my time to take a walk, visit a friend, sip a cold beer, take a swim, or lie in the sun. Fight the dust if you must but remember that one day you will become dust too. And no one will remember how spotless your house was. They'll remember your laughter, your kindness, the joy you shared, and the things you taught them. I've done my job for the day. I have taught you about 'Kopfkino'.

 

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P.S. In stark contrast, my expensive Moran leather sofa and chairs which were a tax-deductible purchase for my "Canberra Computer Accounting Systems" business in Canberra, are still totally "un-smudged" for several reasons: I never had enough clients to sit in them; they are now upstairs and I don't go there very often - out-of-breath and dodgy knees and all that - and, unlike me, leather is longer-lasting and harder-wearing.

 

 

They are now included in my "home-made" real estate advertisement on realestate.com.au to impress prospective buyers but it seems none are.

 

Letter to my Friends

 

 

A to you all! We have had several prospective buyers and one firm offer for "Riverbend" which prompted me to take a trip to see what property we in turn could buy for ourselves in tropical Far North Queensland.

I left very early on Monday, the 10th of November, to catch the bus from Batemans Bay to Sydney from where I had booked a Virgin Blue flight to Cairns. The bus stopped over at Nowra for a breakfast break and to take on additional passengers, one of whom was a Jimmy Morrison who turned out to be from my old "home" Thursday Island. He had left TI in 1964 and now lived in Cairns which meant we were going on the same plane. He knew Brian Pearson who had skippered the MV TI which supplied all the islands in the Torres Strait when I lived there in 1977. And he had taken the trip back to TI on board the "Trinity Bay" which I plan to do next year.

Not having been near an airport for a few years, I would have got off the bus at the wrong terminal had not Jimmy stopped me at the last moment. And I had never flown with Virgin Blue which only started flying in Australia at about the time ANSETT Airlines had been bankrupted by its new owners AIR NEW ZEALAND. What was that old gag about Virgin's name: "Who wants to fly with an airline that doesn't go all the way?"

I arrived at Cairns airport after a three-hour direct flight, jumped into my hire car, a cute little Hyandai Gertz, and drove the short 25 kilometres into the mountain ranges behind Cairns to Kuranda, the Village in the Rain Forest. Checked into the Kuranda Hotel and enjoyed my first cold beer of the day. Later I went for a stroll up the main street of Kuranda and passed the Faraway Tree Building which I remembered from the real estate website as being the location of the two strata-titled flats for sale in town. As I looked around the building, a voice from above bailed me up. No, it wasn't God but Marshall, one of the tenants, who works at "The Ark" and who wasted no time in familiarising me with all the local gossip and introducing me to the only owner-occupiers in the building, the retired couple Pat & George Mcfarlane.

Next morning I awoke to the sound of rain! Inspected several properties with some of the real estate agents around town none of whom impressed me with their professionalism. They ranged from "hopeless" to "bloody awful" - who was it who said that 99 per cent of real estate agents give the rest a bad name? If a secondhand car salesman wanted to sell me a $4000-car, he'd have to present me with full details of the car's make and model number, the year in which it was manufactured, and the odometer reading - AT THE VERY LEAST! These estate agents are trying to sell a $400,000 house with little more than a casual "Jump in my car and I'll show you the place." Not one could give me all the required details such as the year in which the house was built, the type of construction (if it wasn't obvious from the outside), the floor area (or, better still, a floor plan), the size of the block of land it stood on (or even better, a copy of the survey map), the amount of annual council rates payable, etc. Any other group of professionals approaching their work with such lack of knowledge would be liable to be sued for malpractice!

 

Ray Mullins on my return trip in 2007 sitting at the cash register in his junk shop

 

Visited one of Kuranda's several internet cafés whose owner happend to be an old PNG-expatriate. We talked and talked and I added a great deal of information to my growing fund of local knowledge. Ray Mullins had spent half a lifetime in New Guinea and we shared a common knowledge of many of the other expatriates and local identities. I forgot to ask him whether the famous A.W.O. "Mull" Mullins who in 1927 flew a DH37 biplane in New Guinea was a relative of his.

On Friday morning I went back for a second look at a house in Kuranda and did the same on Saturday morning after which I had the weekend to myself. With nothing else to do and not having made much use of my hire car, I went for another drive inland, this time farther than Mareeba, and I was rewarded with a much greener landscape around Atherton and Yungaburra, and Lake Tinaroo.

 

 

Met Bruce Dowling of Bruce Dowling Real Estate in Atherton who turned out to be distantly related to the late John Dowling of Rabaul (he died on 26 August 1994 at Kenmore in Brisbane) who had been a client of mine when I worked there with a firm of chartered accountants in 1970. He took me for a drive around Atherton and surroundings without ever mentioning the words "real estate". I happened to tell him that I had last been in this area in 1977 when I was invited by Roche Mining at Mt. Carbine to visit their operations with a view to becoming their accountant. I never took the job but Bruce knew all about Mt. Carbine as he had sold off the mining village when the ore had been mined out. It's a small world indeed!

 

 

My flight back south was booked for Monday afternoon and I spent Monday morning in Cairns around the Esplanade where the beautiful Cairns Lagoon has been built which is a 4,000 square metre saltwater swimming lagoon overlooking the Barrier Reef and Trinity Inlet just across the road from all the shops and hotels in Cairns City.

Cairns - inexplicably called "Cans" by an increasing number of people even though, despite having its own annual film festival, it is still far from being Cannes - has an international airport which brings in half a million visitors a year, mostly from Japan and Korea. Backpackers and clove cigarettes abound on the esplanade (which is so full of Japanese that it is known in some local circles as The Ginza), but the culinary speciality of the region is Tropical Toast - sirloin steak, grilled banana, bearnaise sauce and toast. The local beer is called Cairns Draught, which adds to the confusion as you can buy it in cans or draught.

So much has changed in Cairns since I last saw it in 1977 and yet the Hides Hotel is still there and the old "Central Hotel" hasn't changed at all and I could still recognise the "Great Northern" where Cec Burgess interviewed me for my job on Thursday Island over 25 years ago.

It's now Tuesday evening, the 18th of November, and I am back home! It will still be some time before we have sold "Riverbend" and can move up north but this trip has given me a good idea of the area and what real estate is available. There were no 'bargains' to be had: real estate prices are at an all-time high and there is no point in rushing in when all indications are that the overheated market will come down to more sensible levels as soon as the higher interest rates are beginning to bite. In the meantime, we shall keep looking."

 

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Before you get too excited, please click here. Yes, this is a reprint of a "Letter to my Friends" dated this day exactly twenty-two years ago.

Since then, Marshall, the tenant in the Faraway Tree Building, has moved on as has the retired couple Pat & George Mcfarlane (the latter to "a better place"); Ray Mullins at Kuranda and Bruce Dowling of Bruce Dowling Real Estate in Atherton have also died; and real estate prices, which were then at an all-time high, have not come down but gone even higher; the handful of properties I inspected during that trip have, of course, since been sold (and I shall look at one or two of them in a later post); and we have had no more offers from prospective buyers on "Riverbend" and are still living here. I just thought you'd like to know.

 

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