left-to-right: Neil "Jacko" Jackson, 'yours truly', Bob Green
As we slowly shuffle towards yet another Christmas, it's timely to reflect on Christmases past, although we didn't use the word 'Christmas' then. That word came with too much emotional baggage. It reminded us of families and homes which we were far away from or didn't even have.
Of course, I'm speaking of Christmases many years past - decades, in fact - which I spent in construction camps, boarding-houses, company housing, hotels, and in isolated postings. Come Christmastime, those who had families and homes had gone away; those who didn't hadn't.
I had just turned nineteen and was the construction company's youngest paymaster
My last Christmas in the (c)old country was spent utterly alone inside a mobile "Baubude" which was both my office and sleeping quarters. I was the paymaster and had paid off the two-hundred-or-so labourers who then returned home for Christmas. With nothing more to do, I was set to work on copying stacks of technical drawings which gave the company an excuse to keep me on in the isolated location and act as an unpaid security guard to watch over all their construction equipment. It was a very lonely Christmas which prepared me well for what was to follow.
'Yours truly' in the red-and-black chequered shirt in the centre of the photograph
There was Barton House in Canberra, usually throbbing with life from its 300-odd - and some very odd - inmates, which turned into a morgue at Christmastime. The dining room was roped off except for one table next to the kitchen. That one table was big enough to seat those left behind.
It's hard not to be reminded of something when you're surrounded by half a dozen gloomy faces. So for my last Christmas in Canberra in 1969, just before I flew to my next job in New Guinea, I hitched and hiked to Angle Crossing where I spent a solitary weekend writing long letters which is the only activity that combines solitude with good company.
Years later, and just one day before Christmas, I booked myself into hospital on Bougainville Island with acute appendicitis . "You'd better get on the next plane out and into a hospital at home", the doctor told me. He was already deep into his medicinal alcohol and had trouble remembering which side my appendix was on. "This is my home", I said. He made one long incision just to make sure he wouldn't miss it.
What I had missed was that my best friend Noel Butler was coming over from Wewak to spend - ahem! - Christmas with me. He must have got there while I was still under the anaesthetic, because there he was standing at the foot of my bed. He'd gone to my donga and waited and finally asked the hous boi where I was. "Masta bagarap long haus sik".
We tried again the following year by which time I had moved to Lae on the north coast of the New Guinea mainland. By the time Christmas and Noel had come, there was just enough time left for a drink at the Lae Yacht Club and a game of chess before I left for my next job in Burma.
I was back from Burma for the following year's Christmas at Noel's place in Wewak but never had time to finish off all the food and beer Noel had laid in as I was due to fly out to Tehran in Iran for my next assignment.
And so it went on, year after year, either coming or going or laid up with something, always deftly avoiding Christmas. It's not so easy anymore!
