Can My Pony Come Too?

by Rosemary Esmonde Peterswald

  ‘I can still remember opening the door to this demented figure wrapped in a white sheet,’ Mike recalls with a laugh. ‘And that dog…well, it must’ve been the ugliest mutt alive.’

  After that I made Timmy sleep in the laundry below, whilst Snoopy continued to languish under the bed.

  I spent my 21st birthday on my own. Not that we planned it that way. Rob was somewhere far up in the mountains on patrol and due back that day.

  ‘Book a table at the Biccy Room,’ he told me, before he went away the week before, knowing this was my favourite haunt.

  Even though he wasn’t back by seven, I dolled myself up in anticipation, thinking he’d arrive any minute. I can even remember the dress I wore. White with a silver band around the neck and cut away at the shoulders. Rob had bought it for me when he went on a trip to Canungra in Queensland for a training stint. He’d won some money at the picnic races at Beaudesert and had splashed out on this dress when down at the Gold Coast before coming back to Moresby. I adored it and had it for many, many years.

  At about seven-thirty there was a knock on the door. Outside stood a young single second lieutenant I’d met a few times at the mess, who was obviously the Duty Officer come to give me some news. He looked me up and down, noticing how I was dressed up to the nines, and probably thought: Don’t like the look of this. What I’m about to tell her may not go down so well.

  ‘There’s been a health scare amongst your husband’s platoon and no-one’s allowed to fly out of the camp,’ he told me apologetically with a look of genuine distress in his grey eyes.

  I stared at him in horror. ‘But it’s my twenty-first birthday. We were going out to the Biccy Room.’

  He seemed so sorry for me that I thought he was going to offer to take me out himself when he came off duty. And I must admit, being all dressed up and with a dinner booking made, for a brief moment I thought I’d have accepted. But, after shifting from one leg to the other, and running his hand through his mop of dark hair, he obviously thought that taking the wife of a fellow officer out on the town for her 21st birthday wasn’t such a good idea after all. Once again he apologised profusely and left me standing there.

  I was not impressed to be stood up (even it was unavoidable), collapsing into tears and suddenly feeling very alone. It wasn’t as though I could even pick up the phone and ring my family in Canberra. We didn’t have one. Eventually I got undressed and spent the evening painting my nails. It would be another week before the platoon was given the all-clear and Rob came home, whereupon we celebrated my coming of age at a candlelight table at the Hibiscus Room and I wore the same dress.

  Shortly after this episode we acquired a small motor-boat painted in army green. One day Rob and I decided to move it from one side of the Peninsula, Bootless Bay, to the other side at Moresby Harbour. We were on our way for about two hours when the motor conked out.

  ‘The bloody sheer pins broken,’ Rob told me a few minutes later, looking worried.

  I looked around the boat. ‘And we’ve only got one oar!’

  My memory fails me as to why we were on this expedition with only one oar. I suspect one had fallen overboard earlier on and we couldn’t retrieve it.

  As it was, there was nothing for it other than to beach the boat and take to the land, or rather the swamps. What seemed like hours later we were still wallowing in mud up to our necks, with spiders and all the other delights of a tropical quagmire surrounding us. Now Rob had a mutiny on his hands. I still remember his encouragement, assuring me he could see light and hear cars…a ploy to keep me going.

  ‘Come on darling…we’re nearly there,’ he coaxed time and time again.

  Since then it’s taken me a long time to believe him when he says: ‘We’re nearly there’. No matter what trip we’re on.

  Eventually we found our way to the open spaces and hitch-hiked to the Mess. As I wasn’t allowed inside (women being persona non grata unless invited to a function) I had to remain in the scorching heat, with Rob bringing me out a lemon squash. He and one of his platoon soldiers returned the next day with a new sheer pin (and another oar) to take the boat the rest of the way to Moresby Harbour where they put it on a mooring. The following week Rob went out on patrol again. When he came back, the boat had sunk to the deep, dark chasms of the ocean, where I presume it still sits today. Fortunately we’ve had more success with the many other boats we’ve owned since.

  A few months later Rob won the Papua New Guinea squash championships in Lae. When we returned home in a tiny plane to Moresby, we were greeted by flashing bulbs and a gaggle of reporters. In the next day’s South Pacific Post he made the front page. He even made the back page of Nui Gini Tok Tok, the newspaper for the Pacific Islanders. Squash was like a religion in Moresby at the time, squash possibly being too fine a word for it, as like in most squash courts in those days, squash was only a minor part of the evening’s competition. Celebrating or commiserating afterwards, whilst downing copious bottles of South Pacific lagers, was the chief activity of the night.

  With Rob away on patrol once more, I flew with a couple of girlfriends to the Trobriand Islands to the north of the D’Entrecastreaux group, where my mother had previously visited. Totally different to the rest of the Province, the Trobriand Islands are flat, low lying coral atolls with Kiriwina Island being a popular ‘get a way’ of the day. Much of the weekend we rattled around in the back of a rusty beat-up truck, visiting serene villages, and admiring the unique and elaborate carvings and ebony walking sticks the islanders had on display. Long tranquil twilights were spent talking, and devouring sumptuous local chow, on the huge verandah of Tim and Beverly Ward’s wonderful hotel, which was decorated with wooden carvings, colourful shells, and covered in hibiscus and frangipani. Later, when dusk had fallen, we’d listen to a sing sing put on by the villagers dressed in intricately crafted tribal costumes, elaborate head-gear and painted and greased bodies. In the morning, the sound of a cockerel crowing, children playing and the cheerful chatter of the villagers tending their yam gardens below our verandah gently woke us up.

  The Trobriand Islanders have strong Polynesian charact-eristics. The women, with their light-brown skin and often long straight hair, are generally a more attractive race than the rest of the New Guineans. The villagers’ lovingly tended yam gardens provided a staple food, some of which we enjoyed the night before in the hotel. On the whole the villages were set out much the same, with the yam houses forming an inner ring surrounded by sleeping houses built of timber and woven palm. All this was encircled by a ring of palm trees with neatly trimmed hedges, washing lines strung between wooden poles, gardens of bright flowers and bursting bushes of native plants. A great sight from the air.

  The Trobriands’ most notorious white resident was Cyril B Cameron, otherwise known as King Cam or King of Kitava. A more than colourful character, he died in 1966 after almost half a century of reigning over Kitava, at the same time maintaining a harem of young girls he’d offer with great delight to special visitors. You can still see where the villagers buried him on a hillside overlooking the lagoon with a raised cairn of coral rocks over the grave. In this day and age I’m not so sure he’d have been so revered by the villagers, yet back in the first part of last century, such dallying with the local girls seemed to be acceptable. Often white men had two or three native wives, or in some cases had a white wife and numerous native mistresses, leading to a mixture of white, black and coffee coloured children.

  When I boarded the plane to go back to Moresby I was sad to leave. But I had many reminders of my time there, including a rare copy of the best-selling book in the Trobriands for many years, The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia, written two centuries before by the anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski.

  A few months later, with Rob once again away on patrol, I started to feel nauseous in the mornings. At first I put it down to a tropical bug; however, it wasn’t long before I discovered that I was pregnant. When I picked Rob up from the airpor
t I gave him the good news. Although we hadn’t actually planned it we were both delighted. Fortunately I soon got over morning sickness and sailed through the first three months without anyone at work noticing I was pregnant.

  When I did pluck up the courage to tell Ron Firns, he said with a grin, ‘I should have known you wouldn’t be around for long.’

  But it wasn’t my pregnancy that forced me to resign from STOL. It was another posting for Rob.

  Chapter 21

  A Settler’s Wife… Lae

  ‘How would you like to go to Lae?’ Rob asked me one evening when sitting in our wicker hanging-basket chairs under the house in Taurama, with the rain thrashing the tall ferns and flooding the ground, causing tiny rivulets to cascade into the garden.

  Asking me this was a mere formality, for in reality we had little choice.

  We started our posting outside this sprawling township in the Province of Morobe when I was four months pregnant. Lae is built on a headland, turning its back to the sea, losing the benefit of the beautiful view of the Huon Gulf. A pity, as before the war the town was better orientated. Looming mountains rather than the sea grab your attention.

  In our day, Lae was a mass of fumy streets, clamouring traffic and laid-back Pacific Islanders. Although most of our time was spent out at Igam Barracks, the Hotel Cecil and the Lae Club in town were good places to meet for a sundowner and a slap-up meal.

  Near the Botanical Gardens is a sombre war cemetery with the graves of thousands of allied servicemen, mainly Australian and Indian, who perished there during the Second World War. There are 2808 graves, 2363 of which are Australian. Many with everyday Australian names. Most so very young. In the centre of Lae, Mt Lunaman was used by the Germans and the Japanese as a lookout point. The Germans called it Burgberg, meaning Fortress Hill. It is also known as Hospital Hill.

  Rob went to Lae first to assume his position as temporary captain, second in command at Igam Barracks, where he was to take possession of our brand-new house in this newly established remote army settlement. Snoopy and I flew in a few weeks later in an army Hercules to the airstrip just outside Lae, where Rob and his army driver, a happy mischievous fellow from Mount Hagen, met us. After a hot dusty drive along a dirt road we arrived at our new home, a bat-winged house set on stilts in the midst of a tsunami of brown dust. It seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. It was.

  Snoopy proved to be a problem. We were told by Rob’s company commander that we should probably not bring him with us. Unfortunately for Rob, my Irish stubborn streak came to the fore and Snoopy was delighted to accompany me on the trip and was over the moon to see Rob. I don’t think either of us was ever forgiven by the company commander, a small stocky man not given to much grace and charm. Needless to say, this didn’t herald a good start in our new posting. But what was I supposed to do? Leave Snoopy behind in Moresby? He was now very much part of the family, keeping me company during the many months I spent on my own. As it was, I had to part with him a few months later when I returned to Australia and Rob went to live in the Officers’ Mess. But when it came to that time, we found him a good home with one of the other army couples, who were to be there for the next eighteen months. After that, he went to another couple, where he lived to a ripe old age. Yet I was devastated to leave him behind in Lae when the time came.

  Igam was indeed a barren camp. There were no gardens, apart from a few shrubs around the Officers’ and Sergeants’ Messes. Our job, together with the few other families, was to establish the area. From the neighbouring jungle we dug tropical plants, shrubs and bamboo, planting madly, trying our hardest to turn this desolate terrain into something that resembled a garden and home. Fortunately the wet season was just around the corner so most things thrived.

  At first I was pretty lonely, as I wasn’t working and none of our friends from Moresby were around. Rob was at work all day or away on patrol. For the first time since coming to New Guinea I was homesick. Maybe being pregnant, my hormones were playing havoc, for on a number of occasions I burst into tears for no apparent reason or got myself in a state about entertaining official guests, including generals, politicians or anyone else sent to Igam to parade the Aussie flag or have a jaunt to the tropics. As the Commanding Officer wasn’t married, a lot of the entertaining fell on our shoulders.

  One day I removed the best steak available in Lae from the freezer, placing it on the bench to defrost. I told Lani, my young houseboy, to leave it there to thaw out while I lay my sweltering pregnant body down for a rest under the ceiling fan in the bedroom, before preparing a meal for a visiting dignitary, General Daley.

  I arose at five to prepare the meal. No meat. The General was coming at seven.

  ‘Lani!’ I shouted (screamed actually) from the door. ‘Kai Kai, it go where ?’

  With a large grin from ear to ear, Lani sauntered up the steps, proudly proclaiming he’d taken the kai kai home to his wantoks. ‘Tenkyu,’ he said. ‘Em goodpella kai kai.’

  My pidgin wasn’t the best at this stage, although it was improving.

  ‘You eatim kai kai? ’ I exclaimed in horror.

  Lani smiled, nodding his head.

  I threw my hands in the air.

  Lani! Kai kai belong General!’

  ‘Ah! Kai kai belong General.’ He shook his head of tight curls and looked at me with huge soulful black eyes. ‘Me sori missu… sori tu mus.’

  Obviously he’d misunderstood my instructions, for often I left him out kai kai to take to his wantoks in the small village adjacent to the barracks. Or did he get the better of me? Who knows?

  Shopping wasn’t a breeze at Igam at the time. Supplies were limited and hence one never set out with a menu to cook. What was available was what one used, and as a boat carrying supplies hadn’t been in for a while, stewing steak was all I could find in the fridge, so hastily I made it into a curry. I always think fondly of the delightful General Daley for happily chewing his way through morsels of leather, without saying a word, as Rob’s CO glared in disapproval. I received a lovely letter from the General some days later thanking me for such a lovely night but no thank-you from the CO.

  The strained relationship with Rob’s Commanding Officer caused Rob to rethink his army career. Maybe matters were not helped by the fact that when Rob arrived at Igam, the Commander was the army representative on the Lae Rugby Board, a post voted for by the soldiers. With Rob’s arrival, the soldiers chose to vote Rob into this prestigious position and drop the Commanding Officer. Needless to say he was not impressed.

  ‘Maybe in hindsight I should have rejected the rugby post and relationships would have been less tense,’ Rob has since told me.

  Despite the shops sometimes being short on supplies, all kinds of tropical fruits, fish and vegetables were available from the local markets. We were spoilt in this regard. We could also buy what artefacts we wanted, with no restrictions on removing them from the country, as there are nowadays.

  I often wonder how our garden at Igam has survived over the years. Did the trees and shrubs we spent hours planting grow? Did future soldiers and their wives enjoy the benefit of our pioneering? Or has it gone like a lot of married quarters in New Guinea today, which have fallen into disrepair. In some instances Officers’ Messes and other buildings have even been burned down. The Officers’ Mess in Wewak was burned during a formal function in progress a few years ago when the soldiers felt the dignitaries were being fed better kai kai than they were, so decided to take matters into their own hands, setting fire to the building. One of the expat women at the function described in an email to a friend of ours, how she had to leap from the table, just escaping through the door in the nick of time. For hours she wandered around the swamp and thick rainforest with the hem of her dress in one hand and her high heels in the other, before eventually fighting her way onto the beach where the police rescued her six hours later.

  From Lae, we took a number of trips into the mountains. On one occasion, friends came up from Port Moresby. We spent
the weekend in a guest house at the highland village of Wau, famous for its gold rush in the 1920s and 30s. We weren’t after gold – just some cooler air and a chance to sit around an open fire once again. We drove up in our small Mini through the Wau Gorge, passing Edie Creek and then Little Wau Creek, where we stopped for a picnic and a walk through the bush. There are some thirty-eight of the world’s forty species of birds of paradise in New Guinea, one of which we were lucky enough to see on this day, together with a couple of bower birds, a kingfisher, parrots and pigeons.

  Both the birds of paradise and cassowaries are of great ceremonial importance to the tribal groups in New Guinea, with their feathers used to adorn their traditional tribal dress. There are also millions of species of insects, and, as I’ve said, copious varieties of stunning butterflies, including the largest butterfly in the world. The beetle is often used as a body ornament, in particular the brilliant green scarab beetle. New Guinea also has about two hundred species of reptiles, including two of crocodiles, thirteen turtles and about a hundred different kinds of snakes.

  Most of the Pacific Islanders are absolutely terrified of snakes. Rob told me of an occasion when Patterson Lowa, the indigenous officer I mentioned earlier, literally turned white, leaped in the air and without touching the ground, levitated out of the doorway, when someone brought a rubber snake into the Officers’ Mess and placed it on the table in front of him (a cruel joke in hindsight, but supposedly fun at the time).

  We had a grand meal around the open fire in the hotel at Wau, afterwards watching the dancing. There was one entirely beautiful Pacific Islander dancing seductively to the loud music by herself. Tall, with tight curly hair and finer features than most Pacific Islanders; the boys were quite smitten with her, even getting up and joining her on the dance floor. From memory, Rob and I had a roaring fight as I was feeling like a fat sow about to give birth to a litter of ten and the last thing I wanted was my husband dancing with a divine-looking creature, even though I could see she merited all the attention she was getting.