It's probably too much of a stretch to suggest that they waited with the Bougainville Copper Project until the ring-tab beer can had been introduced in 1965, but by the time I had moved into my small construction donga in Camp 6 on beautiful Loloho Beach, the length of stay - not to mention the depth of drinking problem - of a donga inhabitant could be judged by the length of his "door curtain", composed entirely of hundreds of clipped-together beer can ring-tabs.
These "mine-is-longer-than-yours" door curtains were so common that I unfortunately never took a photograph of this "status symbol" in a camp otherwise devoid of any differences, as we all dressed in the same T-shirt and stubbie, all wore the same thongs, all ate in the same mess hall, all crapped and showered in the same ablution block, and drove the same clapped-out and dirt-covered four-wheel-drive company ute.
Is it coincidence that the end of the ring-tab beer can came at about the same time as the end of the Bougainville Copper Project?
P.S. Also read "Happiness is a red plastic chair".
