On our arrival back from Indonesia, we inherited a new pet. We have our compound guard dog Roxie, but this new pet is a little different. It is a green tree snake called George (a good name I think). It belongs to a pilot family who are currently in Canada on furlough. Than another family were looking after it, but they are currently in Australia for some training. So at present Timon is looking after it and he is living on our front balcony.

1. George the snake after his feeding

You would be amazed what sort of pets you can have here and how easily it is to get them. In town I have been offered a snake before. You can also get crocodiles from other parts of the country. Also there is a kuskus, like a possum that you can get, its fur is used to made hats. I guess being PNG makes it a lot easier to have these sort pets than what it is in Australia having to have a license and all.

The other week George was due to be fed, as he is fed every 3-4 weeks. The only thing is that it has to be live food for him to eat it. Normally he would be fed a baby chick, but there are none available in town. So the attempt to a catch a rat with a rat trap was initiated, especially as there are so many here. Timon tried the few places where they have been spotted with no success, thanks to Roxie setting it off some of the time. After this two weeks had passed Georges feeding time, a bit of a concern started trying to get him some food. So the trap was placed down at our base at the airport. That day a rat was caught.

This rat was a descent size, but yet he was pretty cute. A few eagles flying outside the hangar had spotted him and where hanging outside for him. I had told Timon not to get too attached to the rat, yet it was I who could of let him free in the end. When we got home it was feeding time straight away for George. I felt sorry for the rat knowing what was before him. He was put into the cage and at once starting climbing/jumping around the cage. Normally the feeding process can be slow. But with the rat jumping around and then trying to attack George, got his attention quickly. The first strike he missed, but the second time the rat jumped on him at the top of the cage before I knew what had happend. The snake had struke the rat and wrapped himself around him and was strangling him (I had thought being a cool climate here, that the snake would be slow, not at all). Then over time, I don’t know how, he swallowed the whole rat. It was all over in twenty five minutes, it was like watching something on National Geographic channel. A little bit of evening entertainment before having dinner.

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1. The yellow men (you have to excuse me as I can’t remember singsing group names or where they are from)

Last weekend the Mt Hagen cultural show was held out at the show ground next to the airport over Saturday and Sunday. It is the biggest annual event in Mt Hagen. Different groups from the Western Highlands and other provinces came and displayed their traditional displays and performances. It brings tourists to Mt Hagen from all over the world. PNG being a country of diverse cultures, which has over 800 language groups amongst six million people makes sense why people travel from all over the world to see the show. The show itself was originally started back in 1961 to help enhance peace and harmony amongst the different ancient cultures.

2. Getting ready

So a group of us headed out to the showground early Saturday morning around 0700. The morning was an opportunity to see the different groups getting ready with their bilas (ornaments worn at dance) and practicing their singsing (traditional dance/music) before the singsing groups entered the main arena. It was a good opportunity to get photos and get up close up with the people. It was only 4K to get entrance to the outskirts of the showground.

3. Guys doing their singsing

As both Timon and I did not make it to the show last year. We were both keen on getting inside and seeing the actually show. For the average tourist it was 300K to get entrance, but for us being locals it was 50K. The 4K visitors could get onto the hills around the football ground and watch. But for us we could sit next to the main VIP stand and see the groups up close as they passed. Only thing was there was a wire fence and barb wire in front of us. But after all the ceremonies had been completed and all the groups were in the stadium we were able to go onto the football field and get up close with all the groups performing.

4. Hanging out with some mud men from the Goroka area

It was really good to see the groups up close outside when preparing, but inside it was a completely different atmosphere. I have seen different singsing groups before. But it was an amazing thing to be surrounded by six groups at once and they are all doing their singsing at the same time. It was again another good opportunity to get up close and get some photos (as long as tourists weren’t walking in front of me) but also to talk to some of the people. I have wanted to see some mud men for a while now.

5. Highlands ladies singsing group

For me I was quite amazed to see so many tourists. You rarely see any tourists in Mt Hagen. This year it was expected that there was around 200-250, the year before 350-400. They were from Holland, Germany, other parts of Europe, USA, Japan, Australia and of course New Zealand. The one thing that did stand out to me generally about the tourists was just their rudeness (maybe I am too use to living in PNG), I won’t explain why I think that is.

6. The skeleton men

After the show had quieted down, we decided to head back to town. The group we had driven in with had left around 12. So we had planned to get a PMV back into to town. We met up with a  Christian photographer who was staying with MAF. The three of us walked a few km’s with a large crowd of people till we reached the section of road where the PMV’s were picking up people. There were a large number of people trying to get back to town or other parts of the province. We tried several PMV’s but no success, we walked further down the road and each time we tried to get onto a PMV it was just a mad rush of people trying to get into the van. There was no way we could get in one unless we got really physically. So we just kept walking down the road and eventually a PMV pulled up and a group of us got in and we were off back into town. Since we left the showground there had been a big rain cloud heading towards us, so we were glad to beat the rain. We made it back to the compound just before 1600. Interesting enough it is the first big event that I have gone to in Mt Hagen. I guess it shows how different it is to back home. It was a long day in the sun, but I really enjoyed it and it was good just to go to a big event. it was a great event to celebrate the diverse culture of PNG.

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Some photos leaving Sydney last year, thanks Dad for sending them. Man I was wrecked that day.

Airport Farewell

Some photos taken saying farewell at Sydney Domestic Terminal back on the 6/05/08

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Here is a little video from the summit of Mt Hagen during sunrise. The summit is roughly 12,600 ft above sea level. I guess a camera lens can’t capture the view from up there as well as the human eye. But it was amazing through the different stages of the morning as lighting changed. It was recorded by one of the pilots on the hike, Derek, including his marvelous commentary of the surrounding area. The only thing left out is the first big mountain range you see is Mt Wilhelm, enjoy.

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It has been a few months since I have done a work update. So I thought I better give one, work has continued to be steady, flat out at times and ongoing. We had a C check on a Twin Otter (MFB) for five or six weeks. It is always a challenge to work through that while having other aircraft coming in. But in the past months all I have really worked on is Twin Otter’s, the Caravan which doesn’t come in much and occasionally GA8’s. I rarely work on any C206’s.

Back in April or May I was asked if I would take on the role of hangar safety officer or safety rep. Which I agreed to, and I have been spending 1-2 hours each Monday morning working on various projects or reports (will hopefully start running some training this week) and whenever I get a chance. Interesting thing (I guess no surprise) for people who know how far people have gone with the Aussie OH&S policy is that PNG does not have a policy, but we do have one in our MAF operating procedures. Two weeks ago we had our first fire drill since I have been here. Later in the week a group of us met together with one of the PNG safety officer’s to discuss how it went and work on procedures and other issues we have here in this area.

1. Tower of Death in background

Three weeks ago was a quieter week than normal, which is good. We normally get a quiet week every few months (not much scheduled maintenance). It is good because this allows us who aren’t working on aircraft to do other work around the hangar. There is always plenty of other stuff to do, hangar maintenance, component rebuilds, engineering projects etc. Stuff that we need to do and catch up on and don’t have much time for when we are all on aircraft. For me it was a good week, just being able to get into different safety projects. One of them was playing with new scaffolding we had recently received thanks to money donated by MAF US for new equipment and tooling for the engineering department back in 2008. To come up with different setups that are safe for our needs for different aircraft and come up with procedures for doing so.

All the places I have worked commercial or military we have had adequate equipment in stands, docking, forklifts, harness systems, scissor lifts that sort of thing (but again they are bigger aircraft, some much bigger). Here we normally get by with ladders or stands that are homemade and quite old. It can be quite awkward removing parts off the Twin Otter this way. Anyway the new scaffolding we are able to make a tail stand and two wing stands out of it all. Another Engineer and I played around with it seeing what combinations we could make with it and see if it could meet all our needs. The tail stand worked out really well, only using three out of five levels we could use to make it (so it can go quite high). The setup we came up with was able to meet all the needs and work to be done on the tail of a Twin Otter. Plus all the guys who would be using it were very happy with it. And is a lot safer than the old stand. Which I nicknamed the tower of death, because you don’t know if it will hold you next time you use it (never mind that all you have up there is thin metal flooring and a rope around you). So there is a few projects to do here, but we are moving forward and will hopefully make working a lot easier, let alone safer.

Here is a slideshow of some photos taken to make instructions for the assembly of the tail stand. Funny thing is these were taken while disassembling it all, once we were happy with the setup. The only photo that we did not end up taking was one of Kalex and I underneath a pile of the scaffolding as a warning if you were to assemble or dissemble it incorrectly.

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Mt Hagen Photos

A random selection of photo's around Mt Hagen taken mostly late last year.

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We spent nine nights in Indonesia, all of them in Jayapura. Originally we had thought of traveling to other parts of Papua or Indonesia. But as we got our bearings around the city and public transport and found enough things to do, we decided to spend the whole time in Jayapura.

1. Swiss Bel-hotel, Jayapura

One of the biggest challenges was actually communicating with people. With their being no tourism in Jayapura, no one understood or knew English for maybe a few (except for ‘hello mister’, ‘I don’t understand English’, or some other sayings I wont mention). I didn’t know any Bahasa (Indonesian) since Primary school. So this made communicating with people quite interesting and challenging. It was like playing charades a lot of the time. All the time people would just start laughing because we were speaking English and they didn’t know what to say, it was quite comical. So it took some time to get information or to communicate.

2. Chose a lane

For the first time I was a millionaire while in Papua, a million Rupiah is around 126 Aussie dollars. At first it was hard to get my head around the currency, as you would pay 9,000 to 20,000 rp for a can of coke in some places. But once I got my head around the currency and calcilate it easily, most things were really cheap.

3. Indonesian millionaire

The main way of transportation besides walking was by taxi, the Indonesian equivalent of a PMV, but only smaller. They were really cheap to get around and different taxi’s go to different places. After a while we worked out how to get around Jayapura which is a decent size city after living in Mt Hagen for a while now. When we needed to go to the border or travel to a beach over two hours away we would have to charter the taxi, which still was pretty cheap for how far and where we were going. The longest was to Sentani which is about an hour from Jayapura, it took five taxis’s to get there. And in the process being quite a squeeze, fitting up to sixteen people into these small vans. There were also bike taxi’s called Ojeks, which were a lot of fun. We had planned to hire bikes there or even buy some bikes if they were really cheap. But as we could not ride them across the border (except by sea), I didn’t even pursue it too much. So I was disappointed, but these bike taxi’s helped my craving.

4. Fourteen people in a taxi – I can’t feel my legs

The food I have to say was awesome. I love Asian food, well I love pretty much most food types. And there were so many restaurants after restaurant. Not like here in PNG, the equalivant would be kai bars everywhere. There was up class restaurants like the one in the hotel or one’s on the street to even food stalls. To eat out in Jayapura is quite cheap, that most people eat at them. There ranged from Indonesian food to some Chinese food, to even Pizza Hut and Dunk’n Donuts. But it was like a lucky dip each evening, as the menu was all in Indonesian. I didn’t know what I was really getting myself into, photo menus did help at times but in a limited way. After a while I worked out the word for chicken and fish. I enjoyed just being able to walk around at night (which you don’t do here) in a clean atmosphere. At night is when the city really comes alive and there is so much atmosphere there. My favourite restaurant was the blue cafe on the harbor water front, where you chose the fish you want cooked on coals and there was live entertainment.

5. Base G Beach

We got out every day to see different things. We went to the city markets, Sentani for shopping, base  G beach (a former US WW2 base), exploring a beach where the allied forces landed to take back Jayapura from the Japanese, Amai beach over two hours away which was good for swimming, old Dutch government buildings, other WW2 sites, seeing many other parts of the city. We pretty much got to see everything a tourist could see in Jayapura which was good. We did a lot of exploring, a lot of the time with a lot of uncertainity where we were going to end up. It was hard with the language barrier, but also we could not find any city maps at all. So sometimes it did take a while to find what we were looking for (hours and km’s of walking). But we really got to see a lot and experience a lot during our time there.

6. Allied Forces Landing Monument at Hamadi Beach

I was really amazed by the people there, I was really expecting Papuans to be everywhere. But in the city at least half or a majority are Indonesians from other islands (there are over 17,000 islands in Indonesia!). They were at most friendly people and we didn’t have too many problems. But as there are hardly no tourists who go to Jayapura, especially white people we stood out quite a lot and drew a lot of attention at first, probably more than what I would here in PNG at times. Especially people wanting photos taken with them, particularly one gender. The thing that stood out to me was the general respect people had for each other despite there being so many different Indonesian backgrounds. But also there being very little if none affect of alcohol or drugs in the community. Alcohol there is really expensive and drugs are illegal and are punished with the death penalty. So it was very different to here in the Highlands.

7. Beach huts for hire at Amai Beach

The Hotel was by far the most luxurious place I have ever stayed. I knew that it was going to be good, but it was even better. And for how cheap it was, it just didn’t seem right. Each morning there was a big buffet breakfast included with a range from fancy omelette’s made for you to donuts. There was a really nice pool and fitness centre, a restaurant, room service, massage service ( I had my first back massage in there years), cable TV, business centre, nice rooms, pretty much everything. For me it was so refreshing coming back after a long hot day out and to come back to such a nice place.

8. The pool

So my time in Papua was my second overseas holiday I have had and the first sharing it with someone else. It was a huge blessing and I am really thankful for God’s provision and how it all came together, I really enjoyed it. We did a lot but at the same time it was relaxing, especially being out of PNG. I am amazed that we found so much to do, even though there is no tourism there and at first appears there’s not much to do there. But it was great to experience a new place and it’s culture. I do hope to return to Indonesia again some day.

9. Indonesian cuisine

(More photo’s to come soon, maybe a video)

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