A former "inmate" from my Bougainville days, Bob Jackson, emailed, "I'm wondering if you could give my Bougainville website another plug. I have recently updated it quite a bit and would appreciate a few more visitors. It's not doing too bad (2400 visitors) but if you linked and mentioned it I'm sure it would help."
I never met Bob as he was one of the Johnny-come-latelies who arrived after the end of the construction phase of the gigantic Bougainville Copper Mine when things had become more "civlised" than in my time. He had travelled overland from England and arrived in Perth in late-1973. After a few months in Perth he went to Kalgoorlie to work for WMC for six months, before coming to Bougainville in July 1974.
Should I print and frame and hang this photo above my bed inside "Melbourne"?
The one similarity we shared is that he also lived in Camp 6 where he eventually occupied a donga in the much-coveted "Millionaires' Row" facing the beachfront. After thirty-nine months (were you counting, Bob?) he left to travel the Pacific and South America before ending up in the U.K. again. Then, in 1979, he returned, this time with family, and lived in Section 6/28 in Arawa until they finally left at the end of 1988.
Bob now lives in a southern suburb of Brisbane, and as he writes, "Our numbers are thinning out fast. When I went to my first Bougainville reunion, there were hundreds; the last time (last year) there were about ten. There were also three active BCL Bougainville facebook pages I knew about, but the last time I looked at the Panguna one, it hadn't had a post for five weeks."
All the more reason to give your website another plug, Bob! Here it is:
