All,
Quite often I receive a very entertaining response to my sad notes. Going forward I will share more of these with you
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From: Nick Crawley <crawley.n@xtra.co.nz>
Sent: Saturday, 15 August 2015 2:33 PM
Subject: Fwd: Sad times.
Good afternoon, John and Chrissie,
A sad week to be sure, all brings back memories.
Corinne and I remember Photene well, helped us out of a serious embarrassment I might add. Please bear with me a tad.
Paul and Gabby went south to plant some rellie, and Mark, Danya and Petra were staying at our place in their absence.
At the time we also had an aged Dachshund / heeler cross called Meg who we inherited in the Western Highlands.
Young Mark was about 4 yrs old and had a generous disposition towards Meg to the extent he offered her a piece of toast from his mouth.
Totally overcome by this extraordinary show of benevolence, Meg lunged forward to gratefully gobble the tasty morsel offered.
In her excitement, Meg unfortunately also mouthed Marks chin along with the toast, which subsequently required medical attention.
The NS Medical Foundation was not around at that time, either the govt hausik or Photene who had a clinic under her house in Section 19.
It was a Saturday morning as I recall and we all toddled off at great speed to visit rudely interrupted Photene who was also eating her breakfast toast.
Mark was not what you'd call a co-operative patient, he was belligerent, in pain, bleeding and put succinctly, most out of sorts with everything and everyone.
It required a mass of very able bodied grown ups to hold him in a supine position so Photene could administer the local into his chin, marvellous performance.
The ensuing commotion was quite frightening and I had to rush outside a couple of times to have a quick smoke to calm my shattered composure.
Ended up a beautiful job done by Photene, only thing remaining was for me to explain how it happened to Gabby, and get the stitches out in due course.
Paul and Gabby were excellent at the news, Gabby actually suggested that Mark could classify the subsequent scar as a duelling mishap in his later years.
I distinctly remember making sure I was at Mananau when the 5 stitches were due to come out!
Martin Atobu was a very loyal member of the NS Agricultural Foundation who together with his wife Mary, did a marvellous job of managing the
28,000 bird layer project.
This became increasingly difficult when the troubles started to interrupt all BCL activities from Birempa to Empress Augusta Bay, and our Mananau facilities were very open.
The PNG Defence forces were located at Camp 10 and Kawerong/Karoona Haus, and not at all interested in putting a section in at our project for support.
We soldiered on there with Martin running the show, with all our workforce, until the PNGDF ordered us to decamp and move to Panguna with 24hrs notice.
I got 14 girls into Kawerong Haus, and they loved it - great tucker, 2 to a room and hot showers. The 8 men went into Karoona.
I had Martin, Mary and their 2 children plus the abattoir foreman and his wife and 1 child and they all moved into my place for a few days until we got accom. fixed.
I don't know how Mary did it, but the household was total harmony, kids well behaved, everyone fed and peace reigned - my Piggery supervisor lived 300 metres down the road in his house, and he came up the river bank to my place every night for a rum and coke with me. Martin was a man of God and settled for the coke, fine with me, grog was very hard to come by in those times. I showed concern about Pius coming in, but he ensured me the PNGDF up never showed after curfew unless in a large group, and then very noisy. All my Mananau staff were B'villeans except the abattoir man, and they had very little regard, respect or support for the Defence Force, police or army.
We all flew down in Horst's big chopper, subsequently fire bombed, to work each morning, and back mid afternoon, making work schedules with livestock very trying.
Pig carcasses were flown out every Monday to Panguna and the trucked down to Arawa - as pork demand lessened from SHRM, we were able to 'export' more to Lae.
Martin was shot through his LandCruiser door in the right ankle with a dum dum 12 gauge round which caused major damage, and he never regained full use of the limb.
The senior staff were all finally repatriated out of B'ville of course, leaving a lot of very fine BCL people to the tender mercies of some quite bad people.
Martin Atobu was a fine man, dedicated to his job, well respected by all and with the typical B'villean sense of humour - his wife Mary (a Chimbu, studied at Vudal with Martin) was an exceptional person in spite many hardships she had to endure, no doubt helped by her very devout adherence to the Catholic Church.
Davo, I digress as usual, appreciate your patience.
I recall both Trevor and Paul, both part of the great comradie we had on B'ville which we did not appreciate until we all left!
My best regards to you both,
Nick and Corinne.
All,
This was close to the end and I was required to visit Panguna and Arawa regularly to ensure that new hires were receiving the most up to date information as to what was happening on-the-ground there. I remember dining at Haus Fragnito and Haus Crawley in those distant days. One topic that dominated conversation at Crawley`s was around the quality of Nick`s rum. I picked up that he is more than handy in the kitchen. There is a variance from the above prose in that Nick`s utility was reinforced with steel plate and that it was Nick who "ran the gauntlet" to ensure that pig and chicken food made it through to Mananau.
Josie, thanks for your input.
Davo
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