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!
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!
