December 30th

Late afternoon yesterday I was told that there would be a medevac flight this morning.

At 6:00 a.m. Sebastian Kurz took off from Goroka for Karkar Island, just off the coast north of Madang. A little 5 year-old girl had been trapped in a landslide and suffered serious leg and lower abdomen injuries. She was flown to Kundiawa in Chimbu Province where there is an excellent surgeon.

As I followed Sebastian’s flight on our satellite tracking system I was relieved to see him land as the weather there was reported to be not all that good. The surgeon was waiting at the airstrip to take her to hospital where he and his team will be spending the rest of the day in major reconstructive surgery.

Our prayers are with the girl and with the surgeon and his team.

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Just a few weeks ago and the weather was very dry. For the last couple of weeks it’s been the reverse, with little sun and lots of rain. As I was writing this, and without knowing what I was typing, Nicki said, “I think it is going to rain again. It has that sort of feeling about it!” I agree. Consequently many of the airstrips are soft and slippery.

Dusin was so boggy that I had to close it for the time being on Friday. It’s only 450m long and has an 8% slope. Taxiing down to the parking bay after landing and needing a lot of reverse thrust from the props as the brakes are just locking the wheels that continue to slide, is not much fun. Repeated use by aircraft in these conditions only leaves wheel ruts and makes everything worse, so it’s much better to wait until there’s a chance for the strip to dry out.

Two minutes later: It has started to rain (and the time is only 12:51) …

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After injuring my ankle at the end of September and then not running for 2 months, it is taking a bit of time to get going again. Nonetheless, progress is being made and yesterday I topped the 12km mark for the first time since the injury.

Timon Kundig is a new pilot, but also an engineer. He’s come with a view to flying when there’s a training slot for him later in 2019, but until then he’s helping to supervise and mentor our national engineers. He’s also a keen runner and so yesterday we went for a run together.

It’s interesting when running with somebody else how you tend to push yourself a bit more. I still had to pause at the end of a couple of hills as my stamina isn’t back where it was, but along the flat roads at the back of town, if I’d been by myself I’d have probably had another pause, but with Timon there I kept going – and made it back to the house OK. Presumably that is why some professional long-distance races are run with pacers.

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We went a short way out of town as far as a village called Willya where some friends of ours, Jeffrey and Martha, live.

Martha brought Nicki some very nice sweet potato, the orange coloured variety that we like most, as well as some taro, this week. Taro is a very starchy vegetable that highlanders love and quite regularly claim that the produce from their particular garden has more flavour than anywhere else. I have never found taro to have anything much more than an insipid, bland taste, though I admit that like any starchy vegetable, it does fill the belly.

When experimenting with some taro we were given once before I chopped and pressure cooked it, mixing it with salt, pepper and some chilli peppers from our garden – ones with a high explosive, though not nuclear rating. Looking round our garden I couldn’t find any red chillis, though there are plenty of green ones that will be ready in a few weeks. Instead I put in a teaspoonful of dried red peppers that Nicki had in her stocks. After I’d put a teaspoonful in, she told me a recipe that only required half a teaspoonful. I’m just about to drain, mash and sample the taro, so wait for the official taster’s verdict …

… Half a teaspoonful would have been better, but the mix, with about 4 oz of cheese folded in, is certainly palatable. The next stage is to make the mix into patties and then lightly fry in oil. I can then guarantee that the taro will have a lot more flavour than when it is just boiled, or steamed in a mumu.

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Our first crate is very nearly ready for final closure. The larger items were in it from a week ago, but yesterday we filled in most of the nooks and crannies. Once the final gaps are filled I’ll open a dessicant pot that’s placed in the bottom of the crate and close it up. Hopefully the dessicant will keep everything dry and mould free on the journey back to the UK.

So that’s about it for the last letter of 2018. Where did the year go?

Happy New Year.

December 23rd

Saturday 22nd: I decided I’d done enough packing up and putting things in crates about half an hour ago. It was good timing as the rain has started now and although the crates are protected under the house, it still makes everything feel damp.

Two of the beside cabinets we had made for us are in a crate. Will we be able to fit in the other two, and the basketwork telephone table, and the basket work linen basket, and the trays, and … as well as the household items we want to send home as well. I foresee some hard decisions coming up.

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The last week hasn’t shown us the sun very much and I’ve had some fairly messy weather on the three days I was flying this week.

On Wednesday I was supposed to take some pastors to Bak, about 50 minutes flight time (= about 150 miles/240 km) west of Mount Hagen. I was flying with Glenys Watson and as we approached the Bak valley we could see it was covered with a layer of stratus cloud. After descending in the Strickland River valley, we could see the two characteristic V-shaped notches in ridge lines at the end of the valley, but beyond that it was grey, rainy and horrid. We both agreed we didn’t want to go there.

The nearest place to Bak is Tekin, in the adjoining valley, so we thought that they’d prefer there as a second choice. Climbing overhead Tekin a pilot on the ground from Central Aviation (Vern Bell, ex-MAF and with whom Nicki and I and the boys spent our first Christmas in PNG when Vern was based in Tari) heard us and called up on the radio to say not to bother trying. The weather was too bad for him to take off. He did get out eventually, but not until we’d left our passengers at Telefomin, refuelled and were well on our way back to Hagen.

Our next two rounds to Dusin were cancelled because of bad weather.

Thursday was a lot better, at least to start with. Glenys and I had to work quickly because the programme was a long one, but the good weather combined with quick turnarounds enabled us to get everything done. By the last round the weather had gone off.

From Tari we tracked north west to Wanakipa, more or less the opposite direction along the same route we’d just followed to get to Tari not much more than an hour before. This time we had to work around a thunderstorm, then climb above a layer of cloud, before finding a break to come back down in the valley near Wanakipa. Underneath the cloud was fine; it was just getting there that was hard work.

Back to Hagen was back up high again, above the terrain and a fortunately short bounce through some fairly active clouds with a couple of flashes of nearby lightning; then the rest of the way to Hagen in rain.

Come Friday the programme was supposed to be short because the MAF Hagen Christmas celebration was scheduled for the afternoon. The day started with fairly low cloud around Hagen, but easy enough to work around to get out, and to the north, where we were going, the ridges were clear. There was no problem reaching our destination, Gebrau, off-loading all the cargo and passengers and filling up with 34x50kg bags of coffee beans.

After a short turnaround and refuel in Hagen we headed back in much the same direction. Now the ridge lines and mountains were covered in cloud, though we were able to land at our first stop, Sengapi. From there to Simbai, only 10 minutes to the south-east. The airstrip was completely visible and nearly clear of clouds, but the approach up the valley had lots of puffs of cloud in the way. There was rain around as well, and while I felt for the 12 passengers in the back wanting to get home for Christmas, neither Glenys nor I felt inclined to find a way to get down low enough to see if we could, just, get in and land. It’s not just the landing to consider; there’s also the assessment of whether you can take off again afterwards. We went home to Hagen.

The next round to Kol, east of Hagen, was cancelled because of weather. First thing in the morning the agent reported cloud and rain. When we got back from Simbai he said it had cleared up and was fine. The load wasn’t completely ready and we thought it was too questionable to bother with, so we cancelled the flight, which was just as well because not long afterwards another report came through that it was raining and all closed in again.

It’s better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than in the air wishing you were on the ground!

It is, after all, the wet season at the moment!

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We’re having Christmas Eve as holiday instead of Boxing Day, so that staff can have a long weekend rather than two blocks of two days. Everybody has been working hard recently: the engineers have had a run of maintenance issues to deal with; for Finance, it’s the end of year audit; for pilots it’s the busy Christmas season. A bit of time out is welcome.

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Sun 23rd: Some more large items have been fitted into the crates – it’s now a case of making sure that they’re all properly padded to avoid damage in transit, especially the road journey from Hagen to Lae down the very rough and poorly maintained Highlands Highway. After that, providing nobody puts the prongs of a forklift truck through the side of any of the crates, there shouldn’t be too much of a risk.

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I’m aware that some people’s Christmas is a sad one. We’re sickened by the murder of the two Norwegian women in Morocco. Here in PNG the eldest son of a Lutheran pastor friend of ours was killed in a road accident last Monday. Two days ago a Wesleyan pastor died and last night and this afternoon I’ve been working out how we can fit in a flight to take his body back to his home community.

Peace and goodwill are part of the Christmas message and hope for the future, but in the meantime we have to work through the mess of human existence where they are far from evident. The banal Christmas decorations of Father Christmas and tinsel don’t do a lot for my sense of celebration. What does is the fact that God has intervened in human affairs with Christ’s first advent, and that there is a certain hope of joy and justice for the future which has infinitely more substance than glitter.

One of my favourite Christmas card banners is: Wise men (and women!) still seek Jesus.

May you have a very happy, joyous and peaceful Christmas.

December 16th

Nicki is rejoicing because her computer is up and running again, and she even managed to retrieve the data files between now and when she last backed everything up.

Great thanks and credit to the Apple support team, especially the supervisor, who spent hours, literally, on the phone at their expense talking Nicki through various processes to try and get it working.

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Apart from a flight in the C172, bringing it back from Goroka to Mount Hagen on Friday, all this week has been spent in the office.

The C172 flight turned out to be more interesting than anticipated. We have a young PNGian, Ricky, working in Flight Ops as a sort of executive secretary for Todd Aebischer, the Country Director (previously known as Programme Manager). Ricky is a licensed pilot but with not much flight experience, so when we have need to shuttle the C172, we try to give him the opportunity to fly under supervision.

All the way down to Goroka in the back of a Twin Otter I was looking at the mountain ranges to the north, and yes, it was lovely blue sky with the ridge lines clear. Rather than return by the most direct route I thought I’d give Ricky some experience navigating to the north of Mount Wilhelm and back to Hagen via the Jimi Valley.

That is what we did, but Ricky didn’t see many of the landmarks! By the time we’d done the daily inspection of the aircraft and left, the weather had changed remarkably and it wasn’t really ideal for a little underpowered Cessna 172.

We were able to work our way around the clouds without too much trouble, and weren’t even relying on the GPS, but Ricky was certainly out of his experience level and I was reminded of why I like IFR Twin Otters rather than VFR aircraft. Anyway, we arrived back without scaring me, but Ricky admitted he’d been a bit tense with his first encounter of having to work weather. While it wasn’t the navigation exercise and route familiarisation I’d planned, it was nonetheless a valuable lesson for him to see how not such good weather can be worked safely with options available the whole time.

I can remember when I was new in PNG being told by the then Chief Pilot that while you never like having to work weather, you do reach a stage where you know how to do it safely. Hopefully Ricky has taken his first step towards that, and I’ve been reminded that I still don’t like doing it, but can do it safely!

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One of the Otters has been grounded this week. During a routine inspection it was discovered that one of the engines had what is called Foreign Object Damage (FOD) in the first stage of the compressor. When a bit of stone (that’s what it usually is, though there was no debris this time to confirm) hits the compressor disk which is spinning at tens of thousands of times per minute, it doesn’t do much good! All credit to the engine manufacturers that it withstood the damage and the pilots had no idea it had happened!

The risk of FOD is one of those things pilots have to live with. Probably the most famous example in recent years was when a flock of Canada geese went through the engines of an Airbus A320 and Sully, the Captain, and his First Officer, put the aircraft down safely in the Manhattan River. Fortunately events like that are extremely rare; in fact that’s the only one I can recall. Most often damage is picked up, like ours was, on a routine inspection.

At one stage we thought the whole engine may have to be sent away for repair, but a specialist from the overhaul facility’s mobile repair team came up on Friday and has been able to dress out the damage and the compressor blades are still within acceptable limits. All being well the aircraft will be back in the air on Tuesday.

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Other news:

• The tomatoes I planted some weeks back look as though they are infected with blight. They’re the same family as potatoes and prone to the same diseases. Hopefully a few will be rescuable, though they’ll need to ripen from green on the window sill away from the infected plants.

• More progress has been made with the packing up. Our coffee table is now wrapped in cardboard for protection and in the first crate to be properly packed. The for sale list of everything we can think of at the moment that isn’t coming home will go out on Monday. 

• Having expected to have the best part of two months to catch up on emails (I have made good progress this week) and to make major progress on two major projects, a cloud has come up over the horizon. I wasn’t totally surprised when Doug Miles asked if I could cover for him while he’s on leave over Christmas and through January. I suspect my inbox will soon have lots of emails again, just when I was getting it under control.

I’ve been navigating MAF long enough to be able to see clouds like this coming up on the horizon. They don’t surprise me and I know I can navigate around them, but I still don’t have to particularly like doing so!

May you have a cloud free week, or if clouds do appear, may you safely and comfortably navigate your way around them.

December 9th

Time passes and Nicki and I are both acutely aware of it at the moment. Eleven weeks today and we leave PNG. Some mornings I wake up and wish it were over and we could go immediately. Other days, or even later the same day, the awareness of tempus fugit, time flies, makes me feel it is all happening far too fast.

All our crates are out under our house and ready to load. If I have time this afternoon I’ll start taking the first boxes full of belongings down to them. It certainly won’t be the final pack as there’s still too many things to decide whether they come home or not, and others that will be but which need boxing or wrapping, but it will be another move in the overall direction of departure.

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Dave & Karina Mills are staying here tonight on their way home to Australia for leave. Their second daughter, Ashleigh, is leaving with them to go to university, following behind their older daughter, Natasha, who is at medical school. Like when the boys were at Ukarumpa, we’ve seen these young people grow into adults and move into their own careers and lives. It’s wonderful to see, but at the same time, there’s a certain wistfulness due to time passing, which at the moment particularly fuels our own sense of tempus fugit.

The last time I wrote I said that last weekend we’d be in Kompiam with Dave & Karina. That happened as planned and on Wed Nov 28th we flew out from Hagen in the little Cessna 172. A short 20 minute flight in a tiny aeroplane save a 4½ hour drive over some not very good roads.

Originally Dave and I intended to walk from Kompiam to Lapalama on the Thursday, but the opportunity came up for us to be flown there instead in one of our Cessna Caravans. I was still in the later stages of a cold which had gone on to my chest (I’m still occasionally coughing a bit, but it’s virtually clear now) and didn’t feel 100%. A 4 hour walk when you’re not feeling great, versus a 5 minute flight. It wasn’t a difficult decision!

Admittedly the walk there is much more downhill, though that can be hard enough with the pounding it gives hips and knees, but when we walked back on Saturday I was immensely grateful I wasn’t in recovery from a walk in. More about that later.

The couple of days in Lapalama was quieter than expected with less fuss being made of our presence than promised. It turned out that we’d come in the middle of some intra-community and intra-church politics and power plays. The good thing was that it gave me some space to get over the cough. However, I hope that the politics are sorted out positively as one of the individuals primarily responsible for the airstrip being closed in 1995 is worming his way back into a position of authority in the community and church. While I got over the cough, Dave and a national doctor who’d come with us, ran some clinics in the local health centre.

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Pastor Nana is one of the Baptist pastors in Lapalama, and it was he who led the delegation to Kompiam back in 2009 to meet Dave and myself when Nicki and I were staying with them then. I estimate him to be much the same age as myself, possibly a year or two older.

On Saturday he walked to Kompiam with us, for most of the trek carrying my pack (about 8kg) with a rope of bananas on top (about another 6-7kg). While I hauled myself up steep slopes, reliant on a stick as a third leg, or using both hands in more precipitous places, he simply walked up making it look like an afternoon stroll. After a bit more than 4 hours of trekking we reached the new road that’s being cut between Kompiam and, eventually, Hagen. A Landcruiser from the hospital had come to meet us and after a 25 minute drive we were back; the drive has cut another 4 hours off the original trekking time.

While I collapsed, Ps Nana had a drink, did some shopping, was driven back to the head of the trail and walked back the same afternoon. The physical fitness, endurance and sure-footedness of highlands people never ceases to amaze me. When we walked out we met people with loads or children on their backs traversing the steep narrow trails, and pregnant women who seemed to think nothing of the exertion.

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In Kompiam we had a lovely couple of days with Dave & Karina. While Dave and I were away, Nicki had chatted with Karina about her offer to assist with Tok Pisin training for new MAF staff after we leave.

The local church gave us a lovely farewell on the Sunday, complete with a song sung by some young people especially for us, and in the afternoon we went for a swim in the local river accompanied by lots of local young people who climbed in the back of the Landcruiser for the short drive there and back.

The river was beautiful, refreshingly cool without being freezing and crystal clear with small fish in the shallows. A deep pool allowed the younger, braver people to jump off an overhanging rock. My best effort was to do a bomb off a lower rock, only to find the pool I jumped into wasn’t so deep. A bruise at the top of my rear end is still slightly tender – no jokes please about me being like a steam engine, it’s too old.

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Back to work on Monday, flying back to Hagen at about 10 a.m., after taking part in the school assembly. Karina runs the school and asked us to tell the children a bit about our time in PNG.
And back to work it was. There have been some major maintenance challenges this week, which I’ve not been primarily responsible for sorting out, but still needed to be aware of what was going on. And then on Thursday Brad Venter came to Hagen and it was a case of transfer of controls: “Handing over”; “Taking over”; words that pilots are very familiar with.

I spent slightly over half a day briefing Brad on various issues he needs to be familiar with. On Friday I did his recurrency training and checks so he can fly again. Tomorrow, Monday, he’ll have sent out an email saying to everybody that he is back in role as Flight Operations Manager. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the job, but after six years in post, it isn’t all that easy to walk away and leave it to somebody else. For the next couple of months I’ll provide whatever support Brad needs and hopefully finish some fairly major projects and tidy up other loose ends.

Tempus fugit.

November 25th

Okay, I admit it. Greg not getting his visa issued because of the APEC conference was great! I can’t remember when I last flew six days in a row and I have enjoyed it immensely. However, the first three days, spent in the Goroka area were more than just tinged with sadness as it is likely that it was my last time there.

Each area of PNG has its own unique beauty and the Eastern Highlands and Chimbu Province are no exception. Each area has its own blend of languages and cultures. If I do go back again I’ll have to face going through the farewell process all over again.

On the last day I said goodbye to Pastor Kimin at Karimui. He’s a leader in the local Baptist church and was a great help when MAF ran a series of concerts around the country featuring Steve Grace, an Australian gospel singer. Kimin’s eyes misted when I told him I most likely wouldn’t be back, and my FO, Glenys, asked if she detected a tear in mine. “Klostu” was my Tok Pisin reply which you can work out for yourselves.

I was working out what I carried during the week:

• Passengers, including pastors for the first ever Baptist Union of PNG National Pastors Conference.

• Trade store supplies – rice, tinned fish, oil, flour, crackers, sweet biscuits, sugar, salt, batteries and more.

• Coffee and peanuts.

• Big rolls of water pipe for a water project in one community.

• Medical supplies – at last some are being sent out.


• Body charter – taking a deceased person back to his home community
• Disaster relief – food aid to a community still affected by February’s earthquakes.

And I took lots of photos:

 Coffee at Owena

 Trade store supplies at Simbari

 Earthquake disaster relief supplies at Walagu

 Medical supplies at Bomai

 A deceased person returned home to Muluma

 A water project for Negabo

 Simbari: children

 Simbari: young hunters

 Simbari: elderly lady

Would you trust your child with a bush knife 2/3rds his height?!

Next week Nicki and I will be in Kompiam with Dr Dave and Karina Mills, so the next News will most likely be in a fortnight's time.

November 18th

Two nights in Goroka last week will be repeated this week as well.

You may have read or heard in the news that PNG is hosting the Asia Pacific Economic Community summit. Lots of money has been spent prettying up Port Moresby, while the rest of the country has experienced shortage or absence of medicines, cuts to school budgets and more. I may have mentioned this in a previous news and I’m not repeating anything that hasn’t appeared in the media here or overseas.

Another knock-on effect is that the immigration department staff have all been allocated to APEC duties. I mentioned last week that Greg Falland, who should be here flying, hadn’t been able to get his visa issued, well, that is true for this week as well. The most optimistic date of issue will be on or after Wednesday 21st.

In the meantime, I keep on flying. Dare I say that I’m not altogether sorry that his visa has been delayed! I’ve been enjoying flying around the Goroka area. Three days were spent in Goroka, and then two days in the Hagen area, which included a flight to the earthquake affected area.

The earthquake communities are hungry as their crops haven’t really recovered yet, and we learnt that provision of seeds and gardening equipment has not been done effectively. I flew a load of food to Dodomona which is just in Western Province.

Huya, very nearby and the same language and people group, has the misfortune to be in Hela Province. Because Hela Province is chaotic, anarchic and violent in places, such as around Tari, it has been categorised as a no-go area by US and UK governments, and by agencies such as the World Food Programme. The same category as places like Syria. This does seem somewhat extreme, especially when flying to Huya presents no more risk (which is negligible) than going to Dodomona a few minutes away.

In the meantime, because of politics and far away decisions, people don’t get the help they need.

Left: Unloading; Middle: Sally Lloyd, who has done a huge amount of work to help the people in Western & Hela Provinces affected by the earthquake, with Glenys Watson (my FO) and some local people; Right: Sheltering from the rain under banana leaves.

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A chunk of yesterday morning was spent preparing my sermon for today. It was hard work and I felt singularly uninspired. This morning I spent some more time preparing and all seemed to go OK in the end.

The Highlands Highway is under major reconstruction at the moment, and likely to remain that way until the end of next year at the latest. We discuss whether it will be more dangerous as a four-lane highway as far as the airport, than it was when it was full of potholes. The potholes are uncomfortable but do keep vehicle speeds down.

It is wholly within the realms of possibility that when there are four good lanes that a vehicle overtaking another, could be overtaken in the third lane, and that vehicle by another in the fourth, all the while with two vehicles coming in the other direction in sight.

For now, the road is rough and messy, but usable. It does make it necessary to wash the car regularly, which was one of yesterday’s chores, in order to avoid young people on the church compound drawing in the dirt during the Sunday service.

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We’ve made our first sales of things we don’t want to ship home: our BBQ, which we rarely used, has a new home in Goroka. Some power tools have gone to Brandon Coker who lives next door. Hopefully all our other surplus items will be disposed of as easily.

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Because of the delays with Greg’s visa, Nicki’s and my trip to Kompiam on Wednesday has been delayed by a week. Dr Dave Mills and Karina invited us out a while ago, and the people at Lapalama want Dave and me to trek in there again.

Back in 2010 we walked in and reopened the airstrip after 16 years of closure due to tribal fighting and serious dysfunction within the community. The encouraging thing is that the community seem to have learnt from the closure and are working together much better than they ever did before. Glenys Watson (in the photo above) and her family went to Lapalama on village orientation, which would have been unthinkable before 2010, and had a great time there. Dave has an effective health programme in the community, which again, couldn’t have happened until the people turned around.

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Other news:

My ankle is much better now and I’ve been for one short run, and a couple of walks with Nicki. Trekking from Kompiam to Lapalama is looking much more likely than it did a week ago.

Nicki’s computer died. As I write she is trying to reinstall the operating system, which will hopefully get it working again.

Have a great week …

November 11th

The Pilots’ Meetings are over, quite possibly the last I’ll go to; hopefully the last I’ll be responsible for organising. The latter task is not difficult, just time-consuming. For the former, there are very mixed feelings. The camaraderie and awareness that I’m among a group of first rate people will be very greatly missed.

I know, beyond doubt, that the mixed feelings are not going to go away; transition times are never easy, and big ones like this, particularly difficult.

And on the subject of transitions, the first cardboard boxes have been packed with books, DVDs and pottery.

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Catering at the hotel we were using for the meetings caused some concerns. Hagen town water supply was off, not an unusual occurrence. What surprised us was that the hotel didn’t have any back up supply, i.e. rain water tanks, for their kitchens or public area loos. We were due to have pizza there on Tuesday evening, but the thought of kitchen staff only being able to wash their hands with bottled water in a communal bowl, followed by hand sanitiser, didn’t really appeal.

The general opinion was that a decent restaurant would shut down if it didn’t have an adequate water supply. This one didn’t.

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My ankle continued to bother me during the week and after six weeks I was beginning to get concerned that it wasn’t healing as quickly as I expected. Although it potentially messed the programme up (I was due to fly to Goroka first thing to do another pilot’s routine flight checks), I decided it was time to see a doctor.

Nicki and I drove out to Kudjip Hospital fairly punctually, even though first thing in the morning is their busiest time. After not too long a wait, during which time some routine checks were done by a nurse, I saw one of the doctors.

He said that he was a runner himself, so could understand the self-inflicted nature of the injury. When he examined my ankle he knew exactly where to press: “Does this hurt?” “No”; “Does this hurt?” “No”; “Does this hurt?” “Yes!” – with the voice slightly higher in tone than that used for the “Nos”.

After a blood test to check for another possibly underlying condition and a second consultation to review the result, I was prescribed a couple of different anti-inflammatories and already it is much more comfortable, so much so that Nicki and I walked over 5km this morning. Running will sensibly wait a bit longer, though I was told that once the pain has reduced sufficiently, there’s no reason why not.

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There was still time after we got back to the airport afterwards for me to fly to Goroka (in our little Cessna 172 training aircraft, which is a very useful shuttle) and also to get Sebastian’s flight tests completed.

The following day, Friday, the weather was kind and I was able to do four routine flights out and back to different airstrips before coming home again in the C172.

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Saturday was a catch up day with some odd jobs, as well as a catch up day with myself after the busyness of the previous week.

One of the jobs was to make my favourite lemongrass and ginger cordial. Our lemongrass patch is thriving and has some really substantial stems now, worthy of any Waitrose store but costing nothing. Lemongrass stems (crushed), lemons, root ginger and some sugar make for a delicious and very refreshing cordial.

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PNG is the Land of the Unexpected, so it wasn’t entirely surprising when a relief pilot, who’s flying three week tours at the moment, didn’t have his new visa issued. As he’s not likely to be in country until mid-week at the earliest, I’m off to Goroka again tomorrow to fly the programme until he gets here.

Expect the unexpected and rearrange your schedule, and again, and again. As I’ll be in Goroka some meetings and tasks I thought I’d do on Monday will now not get done until Thursday, or more likely Friday.

There are times where not having anything to do, or not having plans keep on changing, seems very attractive, but I’m equally certain that I would get very bored very quickly.

November 4th

It has begun! This morning (Saturday) we started the process of sorting out our belongings. Quite a heap of paperwork has already been burnt. How much we’ll end up wanting to ship home, I’m not sure. That process, too, has made headway this week as we’ve accepted a shipping quote.

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After my ankle injury at the end of September I decided it had recovered enough to try a short run of only 2 km this week. It wasn’t a good idea as the swelling increased afterwards. Nonetheless progress is being made and almost all the discomfort has gone now. 

With no runs since the end of September, my level of fitness has fallen dramatically, despite a couple of hard sessions on our exercise bike.

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Our local eatery, the Sweet Spot, has a small book exchange library; bring some books you’ve finished with in, and take an equal number of new books away. Nicki and I have both been reading more than for a long time in recent weeks. John Grisham and Kathy Reichs thrillers have been particular favourites, the former with dramas focussing on the American legal system, the latter on forensic anthropology, the author’s speciality. Her books are the basis of the TV drama ‘Bones’.

I’ve just finished reading John Grisham’s book, ‘The Chamber’. It’s a fascinating and gripping story about an old man, an ex-KKK member, in Mississippi. It sounds like a morbid tale, and maybe in some ways it is, but it is very thought-provoking and extremely well-crafted. Highly recommended.

A few weeks ago I read a Clive Cussler thriller, having seen them on book stalls at airports. It’s an inferior version of James Bond, poorly written with an unbelievable story line. I will not bother with another of his books. Highly unrecommended.

 

**********

On Monday the three days of pilots’ meetings begin. I think that I’m mostly ready for the sessions that I’m leading, apart from finishing off the morning devotions which I’m taking. Usually I’ve asked various pilots to take these, especially ones who aren’t responsible for any other sessions. This time, as it’s my swan song, I thought I’d like to do them myself. I hope that they are helpful.

The whole of this week was spent in the office and it has been a useful time. Thursday and Friday became difficult days for all of us when we received news that the son of our Maintenance Controller (who is the person responsible for scheduling all our maintenance and ensuring that all service bulletins, airworthiness directives and so on are complied with, so a critical role) had been diagnosed with acute leukaemia. 

Brian, the young lad affected, and Becky, his mother, were in Brisbane where the diagnosis was made. They headed back to the States as quickly as bookings could be made so that treatment could be started as soon as possible. Clay, with the other two children, Seth and Taylor, follow on Sunday.

They are obviously reeling with the suddenness of everything: the diagnosis, having to leave at very short notice, the unknown future. At least the doctors say that it is a form of the disease that has a good response to treatment, but it is still a long road ahead lasting for months.

In the meantime, everybody here is reeling too. Clay and Becky and their family are very popular. I worked a lot with Clay and really appreciate him as a person, as well as a technically excellent professional, extremely good in his role. Of course, nobody knows at this stage what the likelihood of them being able to come back is. It probably errs towards the less likely than the likely.

It’s the sort of event that makes the other demands of daily life, the frustrations, difficulties and so on, seem incredibly trivial. We all know there is no answer to the question, “Why?”. That is never anything that we’re able to know. The one certainty is that rough roads are not walked alone and that Jesus will be alongside the Walter family. Clay’s faith and conviction of this is very evident.

On that rather subdued note I’ll end for this week.

October 28th

Here’s the first news for three weeks. No, we didn’t drop off the planet for a while.

Dave’s and Jane’s visit was, as expected very special. I didn’t have any holiday time to take, so after their arrival three weeks ago, Nicki took them around town and the Hagen area. They commented that people who complain about potholes on the army road that gives access to their house, really don’t have anything to moan about! As I’ve commented before, the roads around the town leave an awful lot to be desired.

Nicki took them with her to the market a couple of times, and also drove up the Kuda Ridge to Rondon Ridge tourist lodge where they enjoyed the view and a very nice salad. Then, on the Thursday of their first week, we all flew to Telefomin where I was covering for Richie Axon while he and Bernie went to Australia for the medical check on Stephen, who was scalded in an accident over a year ago. Good news on that front, the scar is healing very well and they don’t need to have another check for 12 months, and neither will he need to continue wearing a compression suit.

During this time I was having to be very careful with my leg. After my long run four weeks ago today, my ankle swelled up after a few days. It wasn’t at all easy to follow doctor’s advice and rest with my leg up. Subsequently I began to get major pain around the base of my big toe and was wondering what was going on. With hindsight, I think that Nicki’s suggestion that the swelling from my ankle, which also spread down to the foot, pushed the inside edge of my foot, and hence the big toe joint hard against the side of my shoe. While flying I wear work trainers with a steel toe cap, and as I flexed my foot the edge of the toe cap acted like a fulcrum straight on to the big toe joint causing bruising. Now after four weeks its about 90% better, with most of the swelling gone and the toe joint only sensitive rather than painful. Consequently, I wasn’t able to walk around Telefomin at all and spent weekends and evenings sitting with my leg up.

Nicki was therefore the one who introduced Dave & Jane to Telefomin, which they enjoyed immensely. They wandered around the community, admiring the lovely views and talking with people they met. As they commented, it was lovely being on the inside of the society, rather than a tourist on the outside looking in.

 Evening in the Telefomin valley looking towards the west.

As well as the flights to and from Telefomin, which did include two stops on the way out and one on the way back, I was also able to take them on a couple of other flights, one to Tabubil and back, and then one to a couple of lowland airstrips to the north. One of those lowland strips is Blackwara, or Blackwater, which is, of course, where D&J and ourselves live in the UK. The local people were amused at the fact our home community had the same name as theirs.

On the way out to Telefomin Dave, Jane and Nicki waited in Tari while I did a round from there which involved me landing for the first time at a new airstrip, Ambi, located on the side of the spectacular Strickland Gorge. What price would real estate like this be in a western country?

I loved being out and about flying again, and Tele is one of my favourite areas. I was very aware that Nicki and I will probably only be out there one more time.

Dave and Jane left on Wednesday this week for a few days in Hong Kong before returning home. Hong Kong is quite literally worlds different from Telefomin. Of the two, I know which I prefer.

*************

After the best part of two weeks out of the office, Wednesday and Thursday were inevitably spent playing catch up. There were several important and time limited tasks that needed my attention, and several more that cropped up during the course of each day. I came home one afternoon feeling that I’d been juggling, after trying to work on four different tasks simultaneously. The important thing was that I did complete them all!

Yesterday was catch up at home: the car was washed, tomato plants staked and the hedge cut, the second to last time that the hedge will be done, so we’re definitely in countdown mode.

I’m also in countdown mode to the annual pilots’ meetings which start on Monday 5th Nov. There are still several outstanding organisational jobs to do, and I haven’t started working on the sessions I’ll be taking, so the prime task for the coming week will be to get those in hand.

September 30th

I had some good news this week.

During initial captaincy training and occasionally during periodic checks and recurrency training in the Twin Otter, we shut down an engine in flight and go through the process of an airstart. I’ve done it many times over the years and most recently during Volkher’s and Greg’s recurrency training that I’ve mentioned in recent weekly letters.

Following Greg’s training the engine we shut down showed some signs of deterioration on the daily engine trend monitoring we do. Exactly why was the major question that we were all asking. I could think of nothing that had been done that was different from any other occasion. The engine had to be removed, split and its hot section, where the fuel is burned to produce the power, sent off to the overhaul shop. At one stage we thought it might be necessary to replace all 58 turbine blades, at about $2,000 US dollars each. Ouch.

It was with great relief that we learnt this week that while there had been some rub on the blades, they weren’t seriously damaged, and that the problem has been seen by the overhaul shop resulting from other airstarts. The blade rub was the result of differential cooling after the engine was shut down. If we’d waited a couple of minutes longer before restarting, the problem would never have occurred.

With the Otters being phased out it is unlikely that anybody else will need to do a practice airstart, but in the meantime I am very, very relieved that nothing wrong was done, the risk of a recurrence is easily prevented, and that I am not responsible for over $100,000 of engine damage!

*************

This week was entirely an office week. I’ve caught up on quite a few tasks, but never quite caught up completely. There were some other maintenance issues this week (not with the Otters) that unexpectedly took up quite a lot of time, and those are still ongoing. In contrast, I’ll be flying every day this coming week, Monday to Wednesday down in Goroka again.

*************

Looking ahead to next year, I’ve entered for the Milton Keynes Half-Marathon again. I hope that it won’t be as hot as last year, but I also hope that it won’t be pouring with rain and blowing a gale. I’m not sure which would be worse.

Unfortunately, by May I will probably have lost most of the benefit of altitude training: 18.89 km this morning, my longest for a long while. The time of 2 hours 13 minutes is not brilliant, but the 536 metre altitude gain (and back down again), that’s 1,759’, provides some excuse. On the flat I think there’d be a reasonable chance of breaking the 2 hour barrier on a half-marathon, which is my goal for next May.

After mostly cloudy skies for the last couple of weeks, with some very difficult weather for some of our pilots to work, yesterday and today have been gloriously sunny.

Running (interspersed with walking spells) up Rondon Ridge this morning gave stunning views of the Hagen Range and Mount Giluwe (over 14,000’ high), with golden morning sunshine making the mountains glow.

A new road is in the process of construction up on to the ridge, so rather than come down the way I went up, I explored new territory.

The views as I ran down continued to be stunning. For the first part of the descent the road was excellent, well graded and smooth with bridges over the streams. As I got closer to town, construction is still underway.

I had to slow down, find a way around muddy patches and also to cross some larger streams. I chickened out of walking across one substantial chasm on two fallen tree trunks, preferring to climb a bit higher and find a track that the bulldozers were using. Local people invited me to cross another, smaller stream along a thick bamboo. They would cross it without even slowing; I went down to the stream, jumped across and climbed up the other side. Fortunately, the dry couple of days had made the mud firm, but I wouldn’t want to follow that route after a lot of recent rain.

All along the route there were friendly greetings from the local people. In some places the people have seen me before, but down the new road I am quite likely the first white runner they’ll have seen. Good fun and great to be out on such a lovely morning.

*************

Dave and Jane arrive next Sunday, which we’re very much looking forward to. After a few days in Hagen we’ll all be off to Telefomin for ten days. I’m not sure how much weekly news will be forthcoming during this time.

September 23rd

Plastic noise.

Lying on my back in the grass on the edge of a meadow in spring. The sun warm on my face. Wind rustling young leaves in the hedgerow behind me. The bleat of a sheep. The bark of a dog in the distance. The cawing of a crow flying overhead, and high in the sky, the melody of a lark …

Mist obscuring the horizon as waves gently lap the shore. Chill, with slight moistness in the air. Hidden in the gullies between the beds of cordgrass, the bubbling cry of a curlew, the whistle of the oystercatcher, the sharper call of the redshank.

Peace, though not silence. Uplifting. Soothing. Rich. Glorious.

Public attempts at acapella close harmony, best kept for an audience of private enthusiasm. Bulls-horn speakers blasting a message in 360°, so the world, not just the gathering in front of the platform has to hear, like it or not. “What was that you said? I couldn’t hear you.” …

Drunken revelling into the small hours of the morning, or even the not so small hours. A stereo with a volume control disproportionate to the size of building. “It’s ear plugs again tonight!”

Blaring. Invasive. Intrusive. Aggravating. Abrasive.

Noise pollution, like plastic, man-made. At least once the source is disconnected it doesn’t hang around for centuries.

************

Catching up has been the outcome of this week. Catching up, but not feeling caught up. There’s always another something-new that arrives, or an unexpected outcome from one of the tasks you thought you’d complete quickly, or the meeting that goes on longer than expected and now needs another meeting to complete.

Progress made, at least. The To Do list is shorter than it was.

************

Familiar territory is underwater. Conway, our home for 20 months in South Carolina is feeling the effects of the massive amount of rain dumped by Hurricane Florence. Ironically perhaps, Florence is a major town in South Carolina to which I often flew to practise instrument approaches.

We’re wondering how friends are getting on there. Nicki has just downloaded photos from news pages showing streets familiar to us completely covered by the flood. Waccamaw, Pee Dee, Crab Tree Swamp, all those low-lying, twisting rivers and creeks that sinuate their way across Horry County have burst their banks and flooded not just Conway, but other nearby towns as well.

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One-way tickets home. It’s a strange idea after 25 years of return tickets. In 1994 one-way Thai Air tickets, the now obsolete paper variety, took us from Heathrow, via a refuelling stop in New Delhi, to Bangkok and then to Melbourne. Our first experience of really long-haul flight, and Philip being swooned over by lovely Thai stewardesses. In those days he was blonde and beautiful and very cute.

Since then it’s always been return tickets, even if the exact return date wasn’t known. But now, the one-way will complete our full-time service in PNG. Even if we do return for short-term assignments, a topic still under consideration, the return tickets will be UK to here and back, rather than PNG to there and back.

Mind you, the one-way tickets we’re considering aren’t exactly direct. The abbreviated version looks like this:

Hagen-Moresby-Cairns-Brisbane-Auckland-(then by car)-Tauranga-Napier-(back to the air)-Christchurch-(then car again)-Queenstown, Invercargill and Dunedin-Christchurch-(back to the air)-Melbourne-Heathrow (via wherever whichever airline we fly lands at to refuel).

Whatever we do, we do intend to be in the UK by early April at the latest, having caught up with some friends and seen parts of New Zealand that are on our bucket-list of places to visit. This will be several Christmas and birthday presents combined with our Ruby wedding celebrations overdue from last July.

Anything else we do in the future will have to find an equally good justification, but this trip looks like using up all the current credit vouchers we’ve stored up by not being very good at organising presents for each other.

************

Yes, I did kill my rhubarb by subjecting it to a sudden decrease in temperature. In retrospect I should have tried hardening it off by short periods in the fridge first, rather than plunging its ambient temperature by 70°C. That wouldn’t have done me much good either.

Before attempting to resurrect the rhubarb I did cover the bed with well-rotted compost. It appears that the well-rotted compost still had lots of seeds in it, many unidentified and now removed, but others that are definitely tomatoes. I therefore now have a bed with ten or so healthy tomato plants that I hope will yield fruit in their season.

May you have a great week unpolluted by plastic noise.

September 9th

Most of this week was spent in the office, so not much news of interest. I had been scheduled to fly Monday to Wednesday but unscheduled maintenance as a result of an engine problem meant the aircraft was in the hangar rather than out flying.

What I hope will be the last of the crates I need to build has been assembled, and all four have had the base and sides varnished. Just the tops to do, probably next week, then metal corners and some wooden ‘skids’ on the base, and the job is done.

I hope that we don’t then decide to take vast amounts home that won’t fit into what I’ve built! I don’t think that is too likely.

Dave & Jane are coming to stay for 2½ weeks in October, which we’re very much looking forward to. I’ll be covering for another pilot in Telefomin during that time, so their visit will be set out there rather than in Mount Hagen.

The club up the road has been very noisy again the last few nights, so it’s back to using ear plugs. After going all night there is still music playing there now, at just after 2 p.m. If it’s the same clientele, then I have to admire their stamina, but I think that a group of drunks rolled past our compound somewhere around 7 this morning.

Have a good week.

September 2nd

It’s been a long week, with several things not going as planned or anticipated. The sort of week where you just have to keep on going. The aircraft I’ve been using developed an engine fault, which has resulted in the engine being swapped out with one in our third Otter that has been parked for a while pending sale or a ferry flight to Mareeba. As a result the flying programme at the end of the week and the beginning of next has been badly disrupted.

Another aircraft, a GA8 this time, had a fuel pump problem, so on Monday I need to fly an engineer to Goroka to get the aircraft flying again.

Then there have been some admin issues that resulted in misunderstandings, which have fortunately been sorted out positively and quickly, but they all took time and energy.

************

The week started off fine with Greg Falland and myself flying to Goroka and working the programme there for three days. Greg was based in Goroka for four years and so he was greeted as a long-lost friend at several of the airstrips we flew to.

An uncommon event was to take a young couple with baby twins back to their home community of Aziana (which has the shortest and steepest airstrip in the country) from Aiyura. That was rather special and lovely to see both husband and wife looking after the babies.

Greg did well and on Wednesday I was able to let him fly with Glenys Watson as FO. That was good for Glenys who hasn’t had much flying recently because of me training Volkher and then Greg, and good for me to have a few hours to catch up with some emails.

Glenys couldn’t fly all day as she had a dental appointment in the afternoon that she couldn’t change at short notice. I am absolutely certain she would have preferred flying to having a root canal done! I took over from her soon after midday, finished the day’s programme and then Greg and I returned to Hagen.

************

Today has been nicely different. I needed to deal with some emails first thing, but after that I’ve been able to set my own pace for what I’ve been doing. What I hope is the last crate is ready for final assembly, after which it will only be the task of varnishing them all to seal the wood.

Years ago I bought a saw-bench from somebody who was leaving. While I haven’t used it every week, when I have needed it, it has been a huge blessing. As well as making the task of cutting plywood and battening to size very quick and easy, today I found I was short of a small amount of battening, so I was very quickly able to rip cut some pieces of timber that I had to the right width, and then hand plane them to remove a couple of millimetres to bring them to the right thickness.

I commented to Nicki that now I’ve finished building the crates, I hope that we use them all! We haven’t sorted out all our stuff yet, so don’t really know just how much we’ll sell and how much we’ll ship home. Ideally, the amount sent home will be kept to a minimum. But we have been here a long time … ! We’ll see.

Whether we use them all, or not, I’ve enjoyed making them.

************

Other tasks on the horizon are to make inquiries of some shipping agents and to get some quotes. Then start thinking about flights home, via a holiday in Australia and New Zealand. There’s quite a lot to do and the time remaining is decreasing rapidly; we’re now into our final six months.

As I’ve flown around I’ve been aware for a while that for some of the lesser visited airstrips, any landing may be my last one. Places that I’ve loved going to in the years past, and interacting with the local people in the Finisterres in the east of the country are almost certainly memories as we rarely go to those places now, and certainly not from Hagen.

Change is a challenge, and leaving a country like PNG, and a ministry such as we’ve had here is hard.

************

In October we will spend ten days in Telefomin, covering for the Axon family when the go to Australia for what we all hope will be their son Stephen’s final medical check. Stephen is the child who scalded himself very badly when he pulled boiling water over himself. He has healed up extremely well and it will be lovely if this does prove to be the last check.

************

There’s no sign of the rhubarb I planted yet, and I wouldn’t be at all surprise if I killed it by trying to harden it off in the freezer. Since it wasn’t producing usable stalks it won’t be a big deal.

Everywhere is very wet again with plenty of rain after the few weeks of almost total dry after we came back. The hedge is certainly growing again.

************

We’ve been watching a DVD lent to us by some friends produced by the Discovery Channel and about volcanoes around the world. As PNG is on the Pacific so-called Ring of Fire, volcanoes are relevant here, especially off the north coast. Manam volcano recently started erupting again, and earlier there was one not far from Wewak that resulted in all the islanders being evacuated.

It’s interesting, but rather repetitive and sensationalised. The general scenario for each programme is the question: “Will such and such a volcano blow up and plunge the world into darkness and destroy all the nearby major cities?”

The answer is always, “It could do”, but on the other hand, it might not. Or it might not for a very, very long time. We don’t know and even expert volcanologists don’t know.

Whether one or other of them, or all of them simultaneously, do explode, the one certain fact is that the BBC Natural History Unit produces much better documentaries than Discovery Channel!

August 26th

Context makes so much difference. Just before I sat down to type this there was a series of what sounded like gunshots. No hue and cry like there normally is with a ‘normal’ PNG highlands riot, but almost certainly gunshots, or at least tear gas being fired by the police. It’s sufficiently common not to cause an adrenaline rush, but certainly a heightened state of alert. So far, nothing unusual and people walk up and down the road unconcerned. Return to normal alert level.

Back in Blackwater we regularly hear the sound of gunfire. The ranges at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst are regularly in use. Sometimes there are army exercises on Yateley Common, occasionally supported by the big boom of artillery. It produces no sense of heightened alertness at all; just a comment, “Oh, the army are up to their games again”.

I wonder what it is like in places like Syria, Palestine, Iraq or countries in Africa and elsewhere where local warlords exercise power. That must be so much more than just a heightened alert level. Compared to these places, PNG is still well down on the alert scale.

*************

I read a while back that rhubarb likes to have a period of time in sub-zero temperatures to do well. My plants were spindly and unproductive, so I thought it was time for kill or cure, dug them up and they spent three weeks in a freezer, and then a week in our fridge during the day and room temperature overnight.

Yesterday they were replaced in nice warm, moist, freshly dug and fertilised soil, so time will tell whether it has been a kill or a cure. I’m quite certain that any of the little snails that made holes in the leaves will have met their demise, but I hope the plants have survived.

*************

I mentioned in a recent newsletter that I was flying with Volkher Jacobsen to get him current on the Twin Otter again, so that he can help keep the aircraft operational while we’re short of crew. This week I’ve been flying with Greg Falland, like Volkher a previous MAF DHC6 captain, who is alternating tours with Volkher, and who also hasn’t flown the aircraft for several years.

We’ve flown every day Tuesday to Friday this week, including one day down to Madang for some instrument flying on Wednesday, and ending up with a long day of programme flying on Friday. By the end of Friday both Greg and I were feeling pretty tired after eleven landings, and roughly five tonnes of building supplies or trade store goods outbound, and the same amount of coffee or peanuts coming back.

At one airstrip, Dusin, I sold 37 bibles. The desire people in these communities have for their own copy is remarkable, and is in contrast with many western churches these days where people often don’t bother to take theirs with them on Sundays.

*************

The town water supply has been more reliable again recently, so the car had a thorough wash. Nicki had done a good job with a bucket and cloth before Peter, Gilly and the boys came, but it’s not possible to remove all the mud and debris without a hose. Afterwards I gave it its first coat of polish for several years, so it is definitely looking the best it has for ages. With the roads in such poor condition it won’t stay pristine for long.

*************

While I’ve been out flying Nicki has been working at one of the desks in my office revising an orientation document. Several new families are expected in the near future and it’s always a challenge to provide them with all the information they need, but in a form that’s easy to assimilate, and in chunks that aren’t too daunting.

She’ll continue the project while I’m away in Goroka for three days this week, continuing Greg’s training.

That’s all for this week as I need to get on with some other emails and communications.

August 19th

It’s been a busy couple of weeks.

Having Peter & Gilly, Tim & Ben here was a real delight. We were so grateful that the passport issue didn’t delay them any more than one day. I couldn’t take any time off work, so Nicki showed them around the delights of Hagen during the week – the market, the second-hand shops, the different MAF compounds with their various types of play equipment and so on.

One afternoon after I had finished flying they came out to the airport and I showed them around ‘my’ aeroplane and introduced them to the little one that they’d fly to Madang in a couple of days later. During the weekend we drove out of town towards Enga Province to give them a taste of the countryside. The time with them was over all too quickly.

 They flew down to Madang on Wednesday morning for a couple of days at the Resort before flying on to stay with friends in Brisbane for another couple of days before heading back to the UK later today (Sunday). In the meantime, also on Wednesday, I flew to Tokua, on the northern tip of New Britain, one of the large subsidiary islands that make up PNG, for a conference organised by the aviation regulator, CASA PNG, for the rest of the week.

Like any conference, there were some presentations that were very good and particularly relevant, and others that weren’t. Nonetheless, it was extremely worthwhile and PNG is fortunate in having an aviation industry that is small enough for there to be very good interaction between the regulator and the different operators.

One afternoon after the sessions had finished the MAF team went for a drive out to Rabaul with John Bromley, an ex-MAF pilot who now heads the PNG Rural Airstrips Agency. Rabaul was almost totally destroyed by a major volcanic eruption in 1994, our first year here. I’ve flown to Tokua once, but this week was the first time I’d been outside the airport.

After paying a small fee to local people just outside Rabaul town, we had a closer look at Mount Tavurvur and the stream of boiling water running across the beach and into the sea. Jets of steam bubble up from the bottom of the stream and the local folk cook eggs and other food in the free supply of boiling water.

The conference itself was held in Kokopo, the town that expanded as the new provincial capital of East New Britain after Rabaul was destroyed. Although Rabaul still exists, it is only a fraction of what it once was. Huge amounts of black volcanic ash are still piled up in places, and buildings with ash two-thirds or more up their walls poke out in places.

There’s a lot of WW2 history in the area as Rabaul was a huge Japanese base. Caves have been carved into the hillsides were submarines were pulled out of the sea so that they could be serviced and supplied out of danger of allied bombing attacks. On the lookout over the harbour there are smaller caves where presumably personnel could shelter.

A war museum close to the hotel provided more historical background, now curated by an elderly gentleman whose father was in the PNG government prior to independence.

There is a line of volcanoes just off the north coast of the PNG mainland and this extends up through the island of New Britain, forming part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Rabaul harbour is a huge volcanic caldera with the active volcanoes of Mt Tavurvar and Vulcan, which caused the destruction in 1994, and the former erupting again to a lesser extent in 2014.

On the flight back on Saturday morning a break in the clouds enabled a brief glimpse of Lolobau Island and Mount Ulawun, both active volcanoes and Mt Ulawun producing a bit of steam or smoke in the same way that Mount Tavurvur still is.

Back to normal this coming week! I’m doing a pilot’s recurrency training on the Twin Otter, so will be busy flying, especially during the second half of the week. When possible I’ll also be catching up in the office.

August 5th

After enjoying a few weeks of flying regularly, the latter part of this week saw me doing penance back in the office. I lost one day of scheduled flying because two of our GA8 aircraft, very inconveniently, broke down. One was at its home base in Goroka, so convenient for the pilot, Dave. The second, in Madang, with Sebastian, also a Goroka-based pilot.

The only way to retrieve Sebastian and his passengers (another pilot with her family who were returning from a few days leave) was for Volkher and me to fly down in the Twin Otter and pick them up. Fortunately, we organised some loading so that we covered costs, but it was a time-consuming exercise. As Sebastian is also a DHC6 pilot it made sense for him to come to Hagen with us after delivering his passengers so he could fly instead of me the following day. Although the outdoors beckoned, I did need time in the office to catch up.

The good news is that one of the Airvans is flying again – two engineers went and sorted it out on Friday, and the other will be tomorrow as the part required arrived unexpectedly quickly.

***********

Water in Hagen is in short supply at the moment. The situation isn’t helped by one of our water tanks springing some leaks, so we’re presently running it down completely so it can be either lined, or replaced, hopefully tomorrow.
The need to conserve water means that our car is in dire need of a wash as the dusty roads have given it a thick coating. Young hands have rubbed it along the sides, so it’s a good thing the car is old and we’re not too concerned about the paintwork, even though we do discourage the practice when we see it.

UK temperatures have been matching or exceeding PNG ones of late, and neither country has had much rain, or at least not in the Hagen area. Further south the south-east trade winds are still packing in the cloud and rain so airstrips in that part of the country are pretty wet.

***********

Peter, Gilly and the boys set off on their long journey to stay with us today. Needless to say we are very much looking forward to having them with us for a while. Nicki will introduce them to some (or all!) of the other young MAF families at the various compounds, and give them the chance to explore some of the play equipment. I’m wondering if the boys will like to see inside my aeroplane later in the week.

Another crate is ready for final assemblage, and a further one, maybe the last, not far behind. Six months remaining; it is beginning to feel very strange, but we are also starting to plan our trip home via South Island of New Zealand.

July 29th

The weather remained very good all this week, and what a superb week it has been. All bar one day, that is, which I’ll explain later.

I mentioned last week that Volkher Jacobsen has come to PNG in order to help with the Twin Otter programme. Flying with him is a pleasure – he is an excellent pilot in every way. On top of that, both of us have flown a lot in the Eastern Highlands, so while we flew out of Goroka this week, we were warmly greeted at several airstrips by people we’ve known since the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It has been so much fun being out flying and doing what we both originally signed up to do rather than sitting in the office!

We’ve flown teachers to remote communities, a couple of medical evacuations out for treatment, building supplies for schools and health centres, coffee out to market. The slightly smoky haze has given rise to some spectacular views of so many shades of blue and grey as the mountain ridgelines recede into the distance.

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We came back to Hagen from Goroka on Wednesday afternoon. The programme had gone well and we arrived home earlier than expected, which was useful because we had a guest coming for the evening meal.

Kate Forbes is an SNP Member of the Scottish Parliament, the youngest MSP. She grew up in India where her father worked with VP (short for Varghese Philip), one of the MAF team here who is helping MAF PNG develop special focussed projects that have a particularly high impact for our work. Wondering what to do with her holiday, she contacted VP and Nimmi (his wife) and asked if she could come and stay and do something useful while in PNG.
While here she has visited some of the bases around the country, seen a couple of rural hospitals and helped with some of VP’s projects.

We had a really enjoyable evening with Kate.

It was extremely interesting to hear her assessment of British politics at the moment, what the political climate is in Scotland and her take on Brexit and other topical issues. It was also somewhat salutary to hear how the media represents what she says, taking statements and remarks entirely out of context in order to put their own slant or bias on the topic. I guess that we know that happens, but it has more of an impact when the person affected is telling you about what has occurred.

“What is truth?” is both one of the saddest questions ever recorded (by Pontius Pilate), but also one of the most relevant to western societies.

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As I said, one day that didn’t work out so well. Over Monday night my back was so painful that I couldn’t stand up without Nicki supporting me. Quite why the problem I’ve got is worse at night I have no idea. Being in Goroka had the advantage that I was able to get an appointment with the doctor at the New Tribes Mission headquarters. If my back hadn’t improved, let alone got worse, I’d been planning to go to the Nazarene hospital at Kudjip, 45 minutes drive outside Hagen, on Friday when I had an office day.

After a thorough examination he reckoned that it is a strain of the sacroiliac ligament and gave me a local anti-inflammatory injection. It’s improved since then but is still not 100%, so I hope it won’t be too long before it settles down completely.

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Having seen the doctor in Goroka on Tuesday I didn’t need to go to Kudjip, so Volkher and I flew three rounds out of Mount Hagen on Friday, including the one to Kol, about 15 minutes flying time to the north-east, but a good day’s journey by road when the road is open, which it currently isn’t.

The flight was to deliver school supplies, including food, to the rural high school. I doubt that many western children would be so pleased to see bags of rice as the primary diet as the youngsters there were.

We’d departed from Hagen just as morning fog rolled in and closed the airport for a while, so we needed to wait at Kol until the fog lifted and we could return, which gave us a chance to talk with the local people more than we usually have time to do. The community is mostly centred on the Lutheran church, and Volkher comes from the German Lutheran church. What I hadn’t realised was that his brother was a missionary at Kol in the early 1990s, and people there remembered him, so there was an immediate rapport.

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Janine Bland, wife of our Property & Vehicles Maintenance Manager, completes her 6th decade this weekend. While I’m writing this, Nicki has gone out to a surprise celebration for her. A special Indian meal has been organised with the owner of the Sweet Spot, a restaurant in town. Nicki has been supplied with a sari, though I haven’t seen her wearing it yet, only a photo of when it was tried on earlier.

(… Now Sunday morning and I saw her when she arrived home after a really enjoyable evening and she did look really nice in her sari, which had lovely colours. I’m sure she will have sent out some photos by the time you read this!)

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Our rhubarb has been looking very poor for quite a while. I read once that it is a plant that requires several weeks at sub-zero temperatures to do well, and certainly it grew much better after several weeks in our fridge a couple of years ago.

Today I dug it all up, wrapped it in newspaper, then in a rice bag and put it all in a freezer in an unoccupied house on the compound. I’ll leave it for a couple of weeks and then put it in the fridge for another couple of weeks, and then see how it does when I replant it. If it survives maybe it will do better. If it doesn’t, then nothing has been lost.

Another trip to the hardware store was also made today, returning with a couple more sheets of plywood and some battens in order to make the next couple of crates. When they are done I’m hoping I may not need to make any more, depending, of course, on how much stuff we do decide to ship home at the end of the year.

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I ran this morning (Sunday) for the first time in a couple of weeks. My back is a bit niggly, but definitely better than it was. My fitness for running at altitude has taken a serious hit with me being more static and I expect it’ll be another few weeks before I’m able to run any distance. But I’m going again, and that is the most important thing!

July 22nd

It’s a very special day for Nicki and myself: 40 years of marriage! We’ll go out for a meal together this evening to celebrate. I am grateful for those 4 decades more than words can ever express.

:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

This week I’m writing for Goroka. Nicki and I came here on Friday afternoon and will stay until next Wednesday afternoon so that I can retrain Volkher Jacobsen on the Twin Otter.

Volkher flew in PNG from the late 1990s to the late-2000s and is currently the MAF International Flight Training Manager based in Cairns. We’ve known each other a long time! In order to keep the Twin Otters flying while we’re short of captains, Volkher will come to PNG for three tours, the first of which, this one, is focussed on getting him used to flying the aircraft again.

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It’s been a saga getting him here. For reasons not entirely known to us the application for his PNG visa wasn’t made as promptly as it should have been. The result was that instead of arriving last Monday and starting his training on Tuesday, he finally arrived on Thursday. The flight schedule was pushed around to make things work so, providing the weather cooperates, his training should all work out in the end.

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Since I couldn’t fly with Volkher, on Wednesday and Thursday I did some flying at Mount Hagen. On Wednesday I completed Glenys Watson’s (she’s our newest First Officer) routine base check and then we did some charter flights. It should have been more flights than it was, but the weather didn’t cooperate. All around the mountains there was a lot of cloud and rain, which stopped all bar one flight. Back in Hagen, this is on Wednesday, we prepared the aircraft for an early departure on Thursday morning – a load of building materials for a new teacher’s house for the primary school at Ambuluwa. So far so good; everything was ready.

On Thursday morning, also so far so good. The weather was OK and the report from the community was that it was good there also. We arrived overhead, landed and started to unload. During this time cloud came up over the airstrip and later on it started to rain. Having landed before 8 o’clock in the morning, it was at 4:52 in the afternoon that we were finally able to take off. The rain eased off and the cloud dispersed enough so that we could see the mountain ridge off the end of the airstrip that precludes anything other than a strictly visual take-off.

Nine hours waiting at an airstrip because of weather is a new personal best. I’ve been caught later in the day and stayed overnight before, but never on the first flight of the day and then had to wait nearly until it was too late to leave. If we hadn’t departed when we did, then we only had a maximum of another 40 minutes before it would have been too late and we’d have had to stay overnight.

Glenys and I had made arrangements with the community to have somewhere to stay overnight, and were fully expecting to stay there. Getting back was not only nice since a night in a bush hut isn’t as comfortable as we’re used to, but it did mean I could start Volkher’s training on Friday.

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Yesterday, Saturday, and today has been brilliantly hot and sunny in Goroka, quite a contrast to earlier in the week. I hope that the good weather will continue so that I can complete Volkher’s flying during the next three days while we’re here.

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We’ve let relevant people in MAF PNG and MAF UK know our intention to return to the UK next year, though details still need to be talked through. We don’t know yet whether there’ll be any requirement for short visits back later in 2019 or not. My flight schedule at the moment isn’t giving me enough time on the ground to sit down and discuss any of this with Todd Aebischer, our Country Director. Hopefully that will be possible soon.

Already when I fly over areas I don’t go to that frequently I am very aware that it could easily be the last time I’m there. We are well aware that after 25 years leaving is not going to be easy.

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During the week I had Tuesday off so that I had duty time available to fly with Volkher on Saturday. I completed the second crate for shipping our stuff back home. Probably another two or three to go. We’ve also begun mulling over our trip home via Australia and New Zealand; at only 7 months away it is coming up quickly.

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Looking at the UK news the weather there is as hot, or hotter than here in the tropics. I’m sure that our garden, like everybody else’s, will welcome some rain when the heatwave does eventually break.