February 18th

It’s just over two weeks since I last wrote; life was simply too busy last week and we were out for lunch during Sunday afternoon, our usual correspondence time, with Satish & Sonali Moka, a new pilot and new HR Manager from India. They and their two boys are a lovely family and a tremendous asset to MAF PNG.
What an amazing couple of weeks it’s been. My last operational flight, and almost certainly my last Twin Otter flight ever.

I’ve accrued 7116.9, let’s round it to a nice palindromic 7117, flight hours in this aircraft type, 11,341 total flight hours, with over 10,000 of those in PNG. It’s been a good innings and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

The two airport fire trucks were on the apron as I taxied in for the last time, spraying an arch over the aircraft. I was very moved that nearly all our staff were out on the tarmac to welcome me back. I choked up on my final checklist!

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The final day of flying was a really good one, visiting some communities for the last time that I’ve built up a close relationship with. I was flying with Brad Venter, my successor as FOM, which was really nice. We had a bit of weather to work first thing in the morning, including an instrument descent through cloud to reach an airstrip that I’d never been to before – a personal first landing on my last day!

When communities I know well heard it was my final flight there were some impromptu speeches, handshakes, and at Dusin, where we did our bush orientation in 1994, a bilum and a spear, the latter with Matthew 28:20 written on the blade: “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.”

My last bush landing was at a relatively new airstrip called Pyarulama. It’s located in what is referred to as The Baiyer in Enga Province. The Baiyer has always had a reputation for being disorganised, pushing the limits of load, how much to pay and so on. My very last landing proved the point admirably: large amounts of unbooked excess cargo, the agent telling me that they never paid the excess rate, requests to pay on arrival at Mount Hagen (I’ve had that told me too many times before). While I had to be firm, in the past I would have got cross with the continual pushing, this time the ironic humour of the situation made me smile – this was how I cut my teeth in PNG flying, working The Baiyer in the Cessna 206. I finished as I began.

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After the final landing at Hagen and the welcome by the fire trucks and staff, there were a couple of celebratory cakes to cut, one provided by Nicki, and enough to share with base staff and also operational staff and engineers at HQ.

The following day, Friday 8th, was the last office day, at least for me as Nicki has continued tidying up ends of her orientation work. My inbox was empty and my desk clear, and it’s strange, unreal, that I no longer have input into the operational decisions that have been so much of my day to day life for so long. I will, however, manage to cope with not having 50 or more emails a day to deal with!

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During the morning I had a phone call from a journalist at RadioNZ. He’d heard it was my last flight after 25 years, and would I be willing to do an interview? Then was as convenient as any other time, so we chatted for a while and he later sent me the link to both the news page and the interview, which I thought came over well.

I asked him how he’d heard about me, and he replied it was through a friend of his. When I asked who that was, he told me it was Watna Mori, a young woman whom Nicki taught at Mount Hagen International School and whose mother is a friend at church. We saw Watna a couple of years ago when we met her as we passed through Moresby, and then in church when she visited her mother more recently. She is a qualified lawyer now, working in Moresby. Her younger sister, Amber, is one of our qualified aircraft engineers.

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Packing up, selling or giving away occupied last week, along with some time spent with friends. All bar one crate and some trunks are now closed and sealed. The house is empty, the cleaning very well-advanced thanks largely to Irene. How we will miss her, friend, advisor and helper for so long.

On Wednesday we moved to Godfrey & Glen Sim’s house as they are on leave. They suggested that it would be easier for us to finish the selling and packing if we didn’t have to use our own stuff right up to the last minute. That was excellent advice and we’re glad that we took it.

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Yesterday, Sunday 17th, was our last service with Mount Hagen Baptist Church. There were some lovely speeches of thanks, one from Gloria, a young woman who was born the year we arrived and whose family we’ve had quite a lot to do with. Then her father, Kambowa, a delightful and godly man who works for MAF as well as being an elder in the church. Finally, Maureen, Watna’s mother, and Maureen’s sister sang a farewell song to us.

After this the church secretary presented us with a gift, which when we opened it back at the house, was a lovely sand picture from Enga Province. We’ll very much enjoy having that on our wall in due course.

I gave the sermon, after which Nicki beautifully sang a song about God’s faithfulness.

Cake and coffee followed the service, and the chance to interact with a lot of people. Special memories!

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In the afternoon we drove out of Hagen and up to Rondon Ridge lodge for the second time in two days. On Saturday night we’d been invited to go with a small MAF group, including the MAFI CEO, Dave Fyock, who was visiting for the MAF PNG Board meeting. This time we drove up for a couple of days by ourselves, and hopefully to fulfil a long-term ambition to see a Blue Bird of Paradise.

On arrival at the lodge we found that Bob Bates, the owner and somebody again that I’ve known for a long time and whose flight checks I’ve also done, had allocated us the premium Presidential Suite and the couple of days as his guests. The generosity and kindness of him and so many others have been somewhat overwhelming; we’re not used to having a fuss made of us and usually shy away from it. But it’s been nice and very much appreciated.

This morning, Monday 18th, we were up early to go bird watching, and most of them had heard we were coming and decided to go elsewhere, except for … one young male Blue Bird of Paradise. Yay! Long-term bucket list item ticked! Tomorrow we’ll go again and hopefully get some better views and maybe of some other species that live around here as well.

Bel bilong mitupela i pulap tru; pen na amamas i bung wantaim. Sometimes I revert to Tok Pisin in my thinking, and this expresses the last couple of weeks: “Our hearts’ are full; sorrow and joy are mixed together.”

Later this week we’ll complete the packing, have our formal farewell on Friday, and finalise some of the arrangements for our time in New Zealand. This time next week we’ll be in Cairns.

February 3rd

Writing a letter each week at the moment is a sort of catharsis. Putting into words what has been going on helps process the emotions that accompany the goodbyes, or getting rid of ‘stuff’, whether it’s the car, a piece of furniture or whatever, that has been part of our home for years.

Maybe it’s not helpful, but I’ve fuelled the sense of melancholy with my choice of music that I’ve listened to: “Into the West” sung by Annie Lennox from Lord of the Rings, and Pachelbel’s Canon.

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Telefomin, like Goroka earlier, was a special time. The scenery there is so spectacular, so beautiful, that it was particularly special that on my last day of flying there the weather was superb.

First thing in the morning I flew from Telefomin to Tabubil, taking Nicki so that she could catch up with two people in particular, and as we flew over the Hindenberg Wall, the 1,000’ and more nearly sheer escarpment that runs east to west for about 80 miles, the view was breath-taking. All the mountains were clear with the ridgelines receding into the distance in multiple shades of blue and grey. On the horizon was Mount Bosavi, the extinct volcano in the Southern Highlands, over 100 miles away.

Apart from some rather irritating hassle at one airstrip where the local people couldn’t see why I couldn’t take 18 passengers as well as about 1 tonne of freight, the whole day went well.

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The two people Nicki particularly wanted to catch up with were Tracy, the base manager, whom Nicki has helped with computer issues over the years. The other was somebody whom we hadn’t seen for years. When we went to Ballarat in 1993 the first Papua New Guineans we ever met were pilot Elijah Elit and his wife, Rhonda. Elijah left MAF later and was tragically killed in an air accident, and since then we hadn’t heard anything of Rhonda.
She is now living in Tabubil where her daughter, a tiny baby when we knew her, is now an engineer at the Ok Tedi mine. Rhonda had heard that we were leaving and came to the base to see me, and came back on Wednesday when I told her Nicki would be there as well. It was very special to see her again.

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On my final flight out of Tabubil and back to Telefomin, the weather was still beautiful, and forms the backdrop to some history and the rest of the day.

How God speaks to us is a common theme in churches. Some people I’ve come across seem to have a chat with him every day and know with absolute certainty what he’s saying to them and what he wants them to do. My experience is not that definite, and certainly much less sure as I’m cautious about putting my own preferences in the mouth of the Almighty. The number of times I’ve felt that confident that God has spoken can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand and certainly two hands.

Now to go back to 1994. My first year of flying in PNG was extremely difficult. The flying itself wasn’t the challenge, it was the weather, and I started off in a particularly bad south-east wet season. I probably haven’t told too many this before (and certainly never my mother!), but for the first three months I thought I’d die just about every day. The only thing that kept me going was the conviction that God had brought Nicki and myself to PNG, and the words and thought taken from a song that I felt God gave as a very clear and definite promise: The song is: “God will make a way, where there seems to be no way.” The promise was: “I will make a way through the clouds for you.”

Climbing up out of Tabubil on Wednesday afternoon, those words came into my mind from nowhere, followed by, “I have kept my promise.” He has indeed, above and beyond anything that I could have asked or expected.

As I turned to the north out of the valley system leading eastward out of Tabubil, the direct track to Telefomin was straight into the centre of the arch of a rainbow, not slightly to one side as is common, or even above a circular rainbow which sometimes occurs, but straight into the centre of the arch which faded as we descended into the circuit area.

There’s another follow on to this. I’ve lost a lot of sleep in recent weeks and months as I’ve processed our departure, plus other things going on within the programme that it’s singularly hard to let go of.

On Thursday morning in the very early hours as I lay awake, those words resurfaced, but slightly changed: “I will make a way, where there seems to be no way. The promise still applies.”

It’s time for us to leave PNG, inevitably painful as it is, but it’s with confidence for the future and with one of those rare but beautiful occasions when I feel sure that God has indeed spoken.

January 27th

Greetings from lovely Telefomin where it is so nice to live in a place where there is no mechanical noise to be heard first thing in the morning. Nor drunken hollering or loud music from a club.
It’s been a really good week dominated by flying and with little office work, just enough of the latter to keep abreast of emails.

The week started off rather frustratingly with a programme on Monday disrupted by bad weather and lack of organisation by one particular charterer. Things were eventually sorted out and the weather improved enough to get a reasonable amount done, but the day had its patience-stretching moments!

The rest of the week improved sequentially, ending up with us in Telefomin on Thursday, and me flying on Friday and Saturday. Nicki has worked hard during the days finishing off the material for the Tok Pisin and orientation programme that will continue after we leave.

For me, this week has epitomised why I’ve been so fulfilled by the flying here. Medical supplies taken to remote communities; students taken to school at the beginning of the new year, and whose education would not be possible apart from MAF; high quality foods taken to a disaster-affected community; sand ferried from one community to another to make concrete at a new rural high school.

More of the same this coming week, along with more goodbyes as we leave Telefomin on Thursday.

Have a good week.

January 20th

I’ve been running regularly again recently, topped 13km a couple of weeks ago, and did 12.5 near enough this morning. The longer runs interspersed with shorter, faster ones before an office day are gradually getting my fitness level back to what it was before I injured my ankle. Milton Keynes Half-Marathon here I come!

Running around Hagen in the morning while it’s still dark, leaving the house at about 5:30, isn’t actually a great deal of fun. I have to watch for potholes, slippery patches where mud has washed over whatever seal still remains, and broken glass from where drunks have had a smashing time. There’s enough street light to dodge the hazards, especially as dawn is just over the horizon, but care is needed; if there’s no moon I sometimes take a torch for a bit more situational awareness.

In these circumstances it’s not the running that’s enjoyable, but the effects of the running. I find that I’m much less fidgety in the office, and therefore considerably more productive with better concentration.

In the same way, packing up the house and selling things we’ve had for years is not enjoyable. It’s a case of gritting the teeth and getting on with it; that final kick that an athlete makes as they sprint for the line.

The piano went yesterday (to a church near the airport where I hope it’ll be made good use of). Our nice PNG hardwood lounge unit will go in a few minutes, probably along with our basketwork coffee table which is something of a one-of-a-kind curiosity. We just don’t have space to bring everything back.

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On Thursday we go to Telefomin for a week, our final visit and my last opportunity to go to some communities that I’ve had a lot of interaction with over the years. There’s an element of will power needed as I know it is going to be hard saying goodbyes multiple times. Sneaking quietly away might be an easier option in the short term, rather like staying in bed rather than going for a run, but in the long run it would be counter-productive.

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At church this morning an old friend (as in longstanding, he’s not that old) greeted us. The boys may remember Tombo, a friend from the Southern Highlands. Very early in our PNG time he married a young woman, Topa, from Western Province and they had a young daughter, when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma and died soon after. Their marriage was unusual for PNG in that it was in church and not a village bride price exchange.

Tombo subsequently remarried and children from that marriage are now becoming grown up, though we don’t know them or his second wife.

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Now about 30 minutes since the last paragraph. Lounge shelves, lounge carpet, basketwork coffee table and another shelving unit have gone. In 5 minutes so will the exercise bike. Actually, it’s helpful to get things out of the way so we can see more clearly what’s left.

A bible verse quoted in the sermon this morning was about pressing onwards. How appropriate!

Have a great week.

January 13th

While unloading a box of eggs (12x 1 dozen cartons), I discovered that while not heavy, its mass is quite sufficient to remove the skin from the top finger knuckle to the nail base when a digit is caught between the box and an aircraft frame. Although not deep, it has been quite sore, sufficiently so for me to sympathise with people who’ve had skin grafts, which I’ve heard are remarkably painful.

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As is often the case, the week had some short notice changes. One of the First Officers in Goroka, Sebastian, couldn’t fly on Tuesday because of an ear infection, and the other, Glenys, is on leave with some friends visiting. I filled the gap by flying down to Goroka in the Cessna 172 again, though the Twin Otter programme ended up being quite disrupted by bad weather.

Fortunately, Sebastian was better the next day after starting a course of antibiotics, and was able to come back to Hagen with me for a couple of days.

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There were two flights, one on Thursday and one on Friday, taking food and other relief items to the earthquake affected communities of Mougolu and Huya. I mentioned the other week that the mountainsides are less vividly coloured now, but still have every appearance of being unstable.

All around Huya there are clearings in the forest where displaced people are settling, building homes and starting gardens.

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Rather than getting on with some packing up yesterday, I was distracted by organising two medevacs, which were done by one of our Caravan pilots.

We’d heard about the first one on Friday, a man with urinary problems, but had gained the impression that it wasn’t urgent and could wait until Monday. A person from the community of Junkaral told us on Saturday that the man was getting worse, and could we send an aircraft then. So we did.

While this was in progress news came in that another person in a community a long way away from the first was also in need of evacuation, due to suspected tuberculosis. Once the first one was done, the pilot took off again for the second, and fortunately the weather was sufficiently good for it too to be completed successfully.

When an aircraft is out on a mission like that I like to monitor their progress on our satellite tracking programme. It means that I can not only see where they are, but also send messages about the weather, or other operational information. We are a long way from the days of when an aircraft was out flying we had little or no idea of its actual position, and it gives much greater peace of mind.

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I’ve been making a sort of mental list of things that I’ll miss and things that I’ll not miss when we leave. Doing the two together is rather important.

• I’ll miss the friendly greetings when I’m out for a run in the morning.
• I won’t miss the shouts of “Whitey”, either when I’m running or driving. These are usually from ill-mannered children and youths who’ve never been disciplined or taught how to behave.
• I’ll miss the beautiful scenery, the mountains especially. Driving to work has some stunning views in the morning.
• I won’t miss the potholes, especially round town, and the lack of hope of any decent maintenance in the near future.
• I’ll miss the sense of fulfilment that working here continues to give. The medevacs are an excellent example.
• I won’t miss the noise at night from the club (which has been loud again for the last few nights) and the hollering of drunks.

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Our departure was announced again in church this morning by the pastor. I told everyone the last time I preached a couple of months ago, but now it is more imminent the message has been received and understood. I’ve been asked to preach on our last Sunday, February 17th, and I will look forward to that. Even if we do visit again at some point, this seems like a nice way to close from a church we’ve gone to for the best part of the 25 years we’ve been here.

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I didn’t mention that the trip to Goroka gave me the chance to go to Aiyura and to say goodbye to one of the SIL workers there, Robert Kokombo, whom I’ve worked with for many years. Robert is the person who always prepares the manifests and loads for MAF aircraft, though doing a lot more for SIL. It was really special to be able to see him again before we go.

One of my most memorable occasions with Robert was when an SIL translator in the Telefomin area was sending in sacks of sel kamban for sale as tourist souvenirs. Informally known as Telefomin trousers, they are more accurately defined as penis gourds, the traditional ancient dress of men in the area.

I have two of my own but have thus far refrained from wearing them as examples of traditional PNG dress.

Anyway, I once landed at Aiyura with several sacks of the gourds in the back and Robert was curious and asked what they were. He didn’t know what sel kamban were, so we told him more specifically, upon which he, and the rest of us, nearly fell over laughing.

I’ll miss that sort of interaction. PNGians have a tremendous sense of humour and love plays on words, so there’s a good crossover which British humour as well.

Have a great week in which you don’t miss too much. For us it’s just par for the course at the moment.

January 6th 2019

A theme that always strikes me in one of my favourite books, “The Lord of the Rings” is the sense of the passing of time. The ages of Middle Earth come and go; different people play their part and then move on leaving the future to others. It’s accompanied by a sense of wistfulness, even melancholy, which is most poignant when Frodo says farewell to Sam Gamgee, Pippin and Merry before sailing into the west with Gandalf and other companions from his adventures.

Before Tolkien, Shakespeare had used the same theme in As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”

More cynically and tragically in Macbeth he wrote: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.”

In part at least, this melancholy reflects something of the way I feel as we work through the selling of possessions and letting go of all that we’ve been involved in.

This week:

• The car is sold, though we will have use of it until the beginning of February.
• Our lovely PNG hardwood bookshelves/lounge unit is sold.
• So is the office unit Nicki used in the dining room.
• Our chairs, most of the tools I’m not bringing home, and just about all our kitchen equipment has either gone, or is earmarked for somebody when we no longer have need of it. Similarly the TV.
• The rocking chair, piano and exercise bike are really the only remaining large items left to go. All this while I still haven’t circulated the for sale list widely
• Another crate is also packed and locked. That makes two completed.
• I’ve flown my last flight in P2-MFT, probably my favourite of the Twin Otters. It was a load of building supplies for the school in Kol, a community only about 50km east of Hagen, but located in a small valley to which the road is frequently impassable. On return the aircraft had to go in for a major C-check which will last between 4 and 6 weeks, by which time I will have flown my last flight.

It is all very surreal.

Whether we’ve strutted and fretted our hour upon the stage, or merely had our entrance and are now approaching our exit, others can judge. But a fact is that after we’ve gone, within five years or less, it is unlikely that any more than a handful of international staff will remember us, though the national staff and other local friends will.

Such is life, our entrances and exits: We come, we stay, we hand over to others, then we go.

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One of our GA8s had the unenviable effect of closing Goroka airport for about 3½ hours on Friday. For no obvious reason a main landing gear tyre deflated on landing, leaving the aircraft stuck on the runway. It was moved off to the side, but only into the grass and still inside the cone markers, so the runway remained closed. Fortunately, Goroka has a second, smaller, parallel runway that light aircraft can use.

The only quick way to get an engineer and a replacement wheel there was for me to fly the Cessna 172 down. It didn’t take too long to get everything organised, and rather than flying myself, it provided an opportunity for a young PNGian pilot, Ricky Poki, who works in the Flight Ops Office, to get a bit of free flying experience. Whenever the C172 has a trip that he can do with an experienced pilot, we like to give him the chance, if only to see the big smile it puts on his face.

Once the engineer, the hydraulic jack and the replacement wheel were in Goroka it only took about 30 minutes to have the aircraft moving again and the runway reopened. Air Niugini had had to wait in Port Moresby until notice that the runway was clear had been given.

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The first reasonable sized batch of Christmas cards arrived this week. A lot of Christmas greetings and annual newsletters arrive by email these days. In fact, Nicki saw some statistics yesterday of how the billions of letters that used to be delivered annually has dropped to less than half of what it was.

Most of these cards had a postmark from early December, so we wondered where they were delayed. With the decrease in volume, certainly in PNG we’ve seen an increase in transit time. 7-10 days used to be the norm, so it was possible to have a return letter within 3 weeks. No longer!

Although we appreciate electronic communication, and make a lot of use of it ourselves (this letter is evidence!), the occasional hard copy to peruse with a cup of tea or coffee is still nice.

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I don’t think there’s any more news this week. Seven weeks today, and at this time of the afternoon (14:10) we should just about be in Port Moresby (ETA 14:15). That is always assuming that another operator hasn’t had a flat tyre on landing …

Wishing you a happy, non-melancholic week.