This is the nearest I've ever got to seeing a photograph of the office in which I worked in Rabaul in 1970. It was taken eight years earlier by Leigh Stanistreet who worked for the Bank of New South Wales just up the road along Mango Avenue.
He had posted it on the facebook page "I used to live in Papua New Guinea (PNG)" which started a bit of a conversation. He arrived in Rabaul in 1962 and returned to Australia in 1964. I arrived in January 1970 and left the same year but stayed for another four years, first on Bougainville Island, and then in Honiara, and Port Moresby, and Lae.
We all lived, literally, under two volcanos, Mt Tavurvur and Mt Vulcan, which eventually destroyed the town in 1994. I worked in Park Street (yellow arrow) and lived in the PWD Mess in Malaguna Road (red arrow).
Red arrow points to my donga at the PWD Mess; yellow arrow to my office in Park Street
This photo of my old office mean a lot to me but probably nothing to you, so, to compensate, I include a videoclip of the movie "Under the Volcano" which is based on Malcolm Lowry's book by the same name and tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in Mexico.
In the years in New Guinea I never become an alcoholic but came close.
