PNG - Mi Kamap Niupela

When I arrived in PNG, for the first time, the country had been independent for about 8.5 years and my first job was to create and run a flying school at Port Moresby.  I didn't know it at the time, but this was a problem because there was a fair amount of ill-will because the South Pacific Aero Club had closed around the end of the previous year.  I soon detected a general feeling that, if flying training was to be offered in Port Moresby, SPAC should be doing it.

I tended to agree, but the for the fact that the SPAC had finished in something akin to bankruptcy, though I was smart enough to never venture that opinion.  After all, the thing that I had to create, above all else, was goodwill.  Thus, I suffered the slings and arrows of disquiet while going about my business.

The thing was that the SPAC had re-invented itself, before I arrived, as a pub where expats and the aviation fraternity - largely expatriate - gathered at day's end.  My bosses, Doug Valentine and the late Yorkie Mendoza, had discouraged me from going there but, as it was the only place on the airport to whet the whistle at the end of a long day, I finally disregarded their counsel and went there.

Well, for about the first couple of months, I was "tolerated" there because my money - across the bar - was as good as anyone else's.  One of the derisions I encountered as "bloody hell, yer bloody white!".  What?  Well, of course I am!  No, I hadn't been there long enough to get tanned by the tropical PNG sunshine.. and then there was the other interpretation, which only another expat from there would understand.

All I'll say about that latter interpretation is that, at the time, there were still enough white women in Port Moresby!

Anyway, I'd been making progress with the flying school and, among my trainees, were quite a few expatriates as well as a couple of PNG nationals.  As the score of "first solo", Restricted PPL and Unrestricted PPL grew (yep, it was THAT long ago!), I hit on an idea to hold a "Wings Night" at the Aero Club. If memory serves, this was held sometime in the latter part of 1984, so I'd only been in PNG about 6 months or so, by then.

Here's a couple of photos from that night - mostly taken by a bloke who became a very good mate, John Close, using my antiquated Russian-made camera :-

This is the group of recipients, together with a young, skinny and quite sweaty yours-truly!  Not all of them were recipients - L-R :- Simon Versluys, the Minister for Civil Aviation, an assistant to the Director of Civil Aviation, Joe Wal - Director of Civil Aviation, Reg Mason, Chief Engineer at PNG Aviation Services Pty. Ltd.  The other bloke has already been adequately described!

It had been such a big event that none other than the late, great Luke Sela of the PNG Post Courier covered it.  To his left is a bloke who was obviously sweating as much as I was, in the form of Darryl Grady (aka Radar O'Reilly), of the Spak Benk.  To his left is one Richard Hunting, one of "Regan's Rejects", Senior ATCO and all around good bloke.

From that time on, I had fewer aspertions cast upon me at the hallowed "Temple of Aeros", which was probably facilitated by my volunteering to work behind the bar.  There was an informal roster that was set up on a Whyte board, which can just be seen to the left of the photo, upon which club members could write their names for the night/s on which they would serve.  At first, I had to be coaxed into it, with the bribe of a drink or 2, by another good mate, Alan Dunley.

The aspect that became obvious pretty quickly was that volunteers were few and far between.  The one aspect of the job that was not made especially obvious - except to the sober observer - was that the bartender always had to drink his mistakes!  Now, I'm not going to say that I abused that rule, but I DID serve more than my fair share of the mistakes...

Flying?  Did someone mention flying?  Damn and blast, I just KNEW that someone would make mention of that!  Yep, there was indeed flying.  The infamous act of commiting aviation with felonious intent!  I'll save stories along THAT line for another time!

LEARNING TO DRIVE

My mother taught me to drive on a Vanguard similar in appearance to this :-

It's a car that was built between about 1953 and 1956, though I was learning on it around 1967 or so.  This was a car that was built at a time when cars were made of steel and, though human flesh wasn't any stronger in those days, it wasn't required to have seat belts.  So it didn't.

There were no red light cameras or radar speed traps... or even booze buses!  But the cops were allowed to hide!  The car had a column-mounted gear shift and the "trafficators" (what we call "indicators" today) were controlled from a switch in the centre of the steering wheel.  When activated, left or right, the appropriate "arm" would extend from the side of the car - this arm was lit at night.

The car was right-hand drive, as were all English cars of the time of course - much to the chagrin of my many friends in the USA and Canada, who insist on driving on the wrong side of the road.

Despite this modern technological marvel, drivers were still required to give the proper hand signal for "I am stopping" and "I am planning to turn right".  Many drivers became quite inventive about a hand signal for "I am planning to turn left", of course.  Some would even add aditional information in their hand signal, such as "after turning left, I'll be stopping for 5 minutes to pick up the kids"!

These were very confusing times indeed!

Out on the "open road", you went past a "de-restricting sign" which basically meant that you could travel at whatever speed you liked, as long as you could prove that it was safe.  WTF?  The premise here was that, if you survived the drive at the chosen speed, without causing any injury, death or damage along the way, all was well.  After all, there were no cops to pull you up for speeding.

I learned one valuable lesson from my experience of learning to drive... parents are not always the most ideal teachers for one's temperament!  After several lesson from Mum, she paid for my lessons with a driving school and I ultimately obtained my very own licence in New South Wales.  Had I actually learned to drive after all that?

No fucking way!

As the years went by, I began to discover exactly how much I didn't know about driving and I have to say that the "OJT" lessons sometimes came at a bloody high cost!  My first car was a Wolseley 15/60, not too dissimilar to this one :-

A big, heavy, gutless English-made car built between 1958 and 1971.  I bought it for a very reasonable price for the time, in 1969 or so, and it certainly wasn't one of the later models!  It ran well, though, and never broke down on me - perhaps because I didn't give it the chance.

Yep, I pranged it!  Got hit on the right-hand side having failed to stop at a "stop" sign.  I was on "P" plates at the time - they hadn't been in existence all that long then, but I was unlucky enough to be one them.  As the holder of a Provisional licence, being "in the wrong" in a prang meant automatic loss of licence for 3 months.  There was no such things as a "points system" at the time.

Yep, I learned something about driving from that exercise - and I also re-learned all the much-despised lessons about walking and catching the bus for those 3 intolerably long fucking months!  I resolved that I'd NEVER be in that situation ever again.

And, as luck would have it, I never was - at least, not so far anyway!  That isn't to say that I haven't had other "mishaps" along the way, but at least I was always able to "beat the wrap".

I'm pretty sure that the place where I learned the most about driving was in Papua New Guinea, where I spent a bit over 22 years of my life.  This is a place where one REALLY learns about "defensive driving"... at speed!  Yes, people are supposed to have licences there too and there's even reputed to be a book of road rules, though I never saw it.  I decided that most other drivers were in the same situation, or else they couldn't read anyway...

During my time there, roundabouts were introduced in the Natonal Capital District, within which one finds the country's capital city, Port Moresby.  There was some public information about the construction of these facilities, mainly because the work would interfere with traffic wihile the intersection was changed around.  The main reason for this was that the then Natioanl Capital District Interim Commission (NCDIC being the fore-runner of the NCDC) seemed singularly unable to keep traffic lights in service.

Was there a public education campaign about how to use roundabouts?
Nooooooooooooooo!

These roundabouts were all constructed to have 2 lanes, so guess what?  You'd be proceeding along in the nearside lane and a driver in the far lane would suddenly recognise his turn off.  Yep, straight across the front of you - if he didn't just turn straight into you!

Up to the time of roundabouts, I was averaging just about 2 hard stops in a week for people who were trying to kill me at intersections - even those controlled by working traffic lights!  After the implementation of roundabouts, my average for hard stops (and horn blowing which had no obvious effect) went up to 8 or 9 in each week!

About the only really funny thing about driving in PNG while I was there, was at intersections where traffic lights still existed.  In those times - and perhaps even today for all I know - power blackouts are not at all unusual and,naturally, these occurrence affected traffic lights as much as everything else.  Now, as most of the citizenry was accustomed to such power failures, they be confronted by a set of traffic lights that indicated nothing.

What did they do?  They sat there trying to work out the order in which the lights worked, when they were working!  Needless to say, the interpretation of these considerations varied so much, from one driver to the next, that collisions became even more commonplace than they'd been previously.

I was lucky enough to survive the drive on each occasion and the only time I was involved in a prang was when the bloke behind me didn't stop when I did.  The impact was so strong (the bloke had been really traveling at the time) that I cannoned into the car in front of me, while my foot was still firmly on the brake!

The cops arrived pretty quickly for once - probably because the prang was almost right outside the 6-Mile cop shop and there were staff on duty there for a change.  They took the customary statements, without writing anything down, and told all drivers to report back "next week" for the formal investigation result, for our insurance companies.  We finally nailed down a date and duly returned.

This time, statements were taken on a sheet of cardboard that had been unceremoniously ripped from a cardboard carton that had formerly contained a dozen cans of SP beer.  We could only wonder about that, of course!  Anyway, the cop decided that the bloke who ran into me was at fault for running into me - I was at fault for cannoning into the back of the car in front!

You have to laugh, I guess.  Still I learned such a lot about leaning to drive, over the years that I reckoned it was worthwhile creating a "Rambling" on the subject.