Can My Pony Come Too?

by Rosemary Esmonde Peterswald

  One of Phillip’s sons died when we were at Moem. Knocking on the door early one morning, he announced, ‘Pikinini belong me dai pinnis.’

  I looked at him in horror .‘Dai pinnis? Dead?’

  He nodded his head sadly and I could see the tears in his eyes . Moving forward I put an arm around his scrunched up black shoulders. After we had both recomposed ourselves he asked for the day off to bury him. I still wonder how he came to work the next day, even though I begged him to take the week off, a month even, to recover. One of his other sons used to come to work with him often. He and Charlotte became great friends, spending hours playing under the house in a makeshift sand pit, conversing in a common language, being neither English nor pidgin. Listening to Charlotte’s boys play with their school friends, when they first went to a village school at Le Chatelard in the French Alps a few years ago, I realised that children need no common language to be able to play happily for hours on end.

  Rob enticed a few of the soldiers to help him build a wonderful haus win (a palm covered outside entertaining area) in the garden adjoining our neighbours, Dawn and Dick. Here we spent hours partying under hurricane lamps with music blaring from our new Pioneer stereo system bought from Tang Mow’s. The haus win was particularly popular for long drawn-out fondues, Christmas lunch (as none of us had extended families at Moem we mostly joined together) and entertaining visiting dignitaries from Australia, until it sadly blew down with a huge bang one night in an horrendous electrical storm.

  I’m not sure Dick has ever forgiven me for leaving the door of his car straddling a pole under his house. After borrowing it in a flurry, to rush Phillip to hospital when he cut his hand, I was backing out when disaster struck. It took three months to get a replacement door, during which time he and Dawn drove around Wewak and the barracks with a plastic covering, making me feel guilty every time I saw them. But that was Wewak for you.

  One night, with Rob away on patrol, I returned from a party to find a snake on our front steps. I was proud of myself when I killed it by hurling a monstrous rock at its head. Calmly removing the slithery carcass I then proceeded upstairs, carrying Georgie in her bassinet, and holding Charlotte by the hand. The next day it was identified as a Papuan Taipan, one of the deadliest snakes in the world. Another time, when walking across to the beach through the long grass behind our house I encountered a huge python. I left it snoozing happily in the midday sun. Quite often one had to stop on the road into town to give way to these gentle beasts that were using the hot surface as a sun bed.

  We purchased our seafood under the house, as a local villager would arrive most weeks with huge eskies filled to the brim with mouth-watering coral trout, Spanish mackerel or other scrumptious fish straight from the ocean. From a hessian bag, he’d drag squirming live crabs tied up with string ready for our perusal. Half an hour later the crab would be in the pot upstairs. One day a particularly gigantic one got loose. Phillip and I spent ages trying to catch it amongst the rocks and ferns before Phillip eventually cornered it, handing it back to the fishmonger none the worse for wear.

  During this time, Rob spent many weeks away on patrol in areas like Telefomin, the Sepik Valley, Bewani Mountains and Milne Bay. With his company he also had numerous stints at the outstation of Vanimo, some two hundred and fifty miles up the coast towards Jayapura. From here they patrolled the border into Indonesia, stopping renegades from crossing over into New Guinea. For some reason wives and families were not allowed to visit Vanimo. This caused great contention. On one occasion, Rob’s genial Company Commander from Vietnam, was flying to Vanimo the next day. After a few glasses of wine had given me a bad case of Dutch courage, I accepted his offer of a lift. All was well until a senior officer’s wife arrived in a fluster on my doorstep at crack of dawn the next morning.

  ‘My husband’s furious…all hell will break loose if you dare go,’ she warned me, looking as though she hadn’t slept a wink, worrying about the possible horrendous repercussions of such a rash venture.

  I was also told by the Commander of Papua New Guinea’s Defence Force, who happened to be in Wewak at the time, that if I did go it would be the end of Rob’s career.

  ‘Your husband will never go past the rank of major if you get on that plane,’ I was berated in no uncertain terms. ‘What you must realise, Rosemary, is that the army comes first, family, second.’

  I didn’t go that time, after gentle persuasion from Michael Hughes, a charming single officer, who thought I may indeed destroy Rob’s chances of promotion. But after rules were slackened, Charlotte, Georgie, and I did go a few months later, staying for many weeks. It was such a success that I was persuaded to make a return visit for a party – funded by some of Vanimo’s locals kindly putting their spare change in a tin on the bar in the Officers’ Mess. The tin was labelled: ‘Bring Ro back for the Party.’

  On my first visit to Vanimo I wore one of Colleen’s creations – a two-piece yellow outfit with a bare midriff and a tiny mini skirt. As it was, Colleen and the other wives were determined I should make a good impression in Vanimo, hence doing a great deal for the cause of ‘wives wishing to visit’. Rob arranged for us to stay in the old District Commissioner’s residence up the top of the hill near Central Lookout, deserted some time before by the District Commissioner and his wife who’d moved to a new modern bungalow down by the beach. Built of timber and woven palms, with no doors or windows, our temporary abode had neither electricity nor running water, none of which mattered, for it sat in a glorious tropical oasis of frangipani, hibiscus, and tall pandanus with magnificent views over The Babelsberg Strait.

  Here Georgie learned to walk – her stage a large open living area with rustic timber floors and gigantic knobbly poles running at intervals to hold the thatched palm roof up. With no stove (maybe the DC and his wife took it with them) we cooked all our meals by fondue or on a stone fireplace out the back. I bathed the girls in a red plastic bucket under the shade of a huge palm. They looked very lovely with their blonde hair bleached by the sun and little bodies as brown as berries despite my covering them in sunscreen. It was much warmer than my first years in Australia at Reidsdale, yet reminiscent of the times I’d bathed in the old tin bath. Mosquito nets protected us from determined insects and a gentle breeze wafted through the open windows. Overhead, a huge fan turned languidly below the rafters with mosquito coils sending spirals of soft grey smoke to linger in the humid air. For hours we watched geckos playing on the walls, having bets as to which one would get to the top first.

  Vanimo is set on a picturesque harbour formed around a hill. Almost an island, it is joined to the coastline by a tongue of flat land – just the place for an airstrip. It was generally known that cars, animals and people gave way to the incoming or outgoing aircraft. A bit tricky as one got little warning of these approaching hazards.

  Below the wings of the plane as I’d flown in, beautiful white sandy beaches spanned both sides of the Peninsula. The Officers’ Mess was situated on the most picturesque of these. I saw the square pontoon bobbling in the sapphire water in front of the Mess and, just back from the beach, the palmed roofed haus win, which became the focus point for sundowners and Anzac Day’s mandatory game of two up.

  Charlotte and I, with Georgie in her pram, ambled down to the Mess most late afternoons and had a swim on the beach. In the cool of the evening, with the girls asleep in a room adjoining the Mess, we perched around the cane bar before sitting down to dinner at a long table overlooking the beach with the sound of waves gently crashing on the shore as a romantic backdrop. Enthusiastic army stewards cooked for us each night, the ingredients of many meals coming straight from the ocean out front.

  Rob again had a great scam. If his soldiers worked hard he allowed them to go fishing and snorkelling amidst the miraculous coral reef some afternoons, a benefit for us all. After coffee and port we’d retire to the billiard room where we’d have a rowdy game of slosh or snooker. Or it might be a few rounds of liar dice on the deep verandah
. Some nights we set the net off the pontoon and would come down in the morning to see what treasures we’d caught.

  The Mess was a long, low-line structure, built with a combination of native and army supplies. With its many unique artefacts and rustic furniture it had great character; the bar being one of the best I’ve sat around. Although not fancy in any way, like Andy Anderson’s guesthouse in Tapini, it too had a Somerset Maugham and John Masters feel to it.

  Constantly there was a platoon from Vanimo patrolling the border to Indonesia. It was an important job that the army was carrying out at the time – stopping people from scampering over the border from Indonesian held Papua and West Irian Jaya into New Guinea. When not on patrol himself, Rob conducted training exercises in the surrounding swamps, grasslands and mountains and he and his company built a rough links golf course of sorts around the oval. Rob was a popular commander, with respect from those soldiers who served under him – an assortment of mostly happy and friendly young Pacific Islanders from every neck of the woods in both Papua New Guinea, and surrounding islands. Some continued to write to him many years after he returned to Australia.

  Some evenings we played bridge with the District Commissioner and his wife, who thrashed us both. Often they whizzed us out in their speed boat to fish for Spanish mackerel or visit nearby beaches. Many a night we hiked up to John Young Whitford’s (the Assistant District Commissioner) bungalow on the far hill and listened to tales of life as an ADC in New Guinea – the main criteria seeming to be the capacity to drink copious bottles of whisky. Mind you the DCs, and the young patrol officers under their command, carried out a challenging job throughout Papua New Guinea, particularly after the war when there was a lot of cleaning up to do, both physically and mentally. It was not always an easy task in this harsh country with its sweltering heat and impenetrable terrain. It was a lonely life, too. Hence the penchant for the odd drop of sustenance could be understood.

  A couple of times we splashed through rivers and creeks along the coast, past surf beaches with huge waves crashing in from the ocean, mysterious waterholes, deep lagoons covered in pink and white water lilies and the picturesque villages of Lido and Waramo, until we reached our destination just over the Indonesian border. Here we stood on the headland gazing across to Jayapura in the far distance – a place out of bounds in those days. Most of the villages we drove through had immaculate gardens surrounded by borders of colourful bottles and with graves outlined with lovingly painted white stones. I can still hear the squeals of delight as children raced after our Land Rover, leaping onto the running boards, touching our white skin, with others splashing in black rubber tyres in the river or jumping with glee like cannon balls off overhanging palms into the water – a sight we saw again on our last visit, although this time we were on our way inland to Maprik and the remote village of Wasera to buy artefacts and the clay pots for which the village is so famous.

  Unfortunately, I think the villagers had been told that the Queen Mary had berthed in Wewak and the entire ship’s crew and passengers were coming to buy their wares. How sad we were to see their distraught faces when they realised there were only four of us. And how relieved we were to get out alive when it finally sunk in that they’d been duped, although we did our best to buy what we could, knowing our suitcases would be well over the limit and diligent custom officers back in Australia were likely to confiscate anything needed to be put in quarantine.

  The trade store, opposite the beach in Vanimo, had every Indonesian spice available. It was here that I developed a taste for hot sauces, my favourite being sambal and peanut satay. A corrugated iron and fibro building, it had a rickety verandah to the front and was blazoned with garish signs for rice, Coca Cola and cigarettes. Inside, apart from the jars of delicious spices and sauces, there were canned meats and fish, tinned fruits, soft drinks, sweets for the children and the usual tobacco and cigarettes. Dried fish often hung from the ceiling, together with kerosene lamps, razor sharp bush knives and fishing nets, with a huge freezer taking up most of one wall. Above the counter, floral meri dresses were strung on wire lines, with lengths of bright materials and rows of the ever-popular rubber thongs and leather sandals piled up in the corner.

  Most times one had to tread through a group of Sepiks squatted in the pale dust out front, often smoking tobacco rolled in newspaper or chewing on betel nut. Sometimes a mini-market out the back would be in full swing where bare-breasted meris sold bananas, mangoes, paw paws, sweet potatoes, beads, bags and carvings.

  Children played together happily, with ours often joining in. The meris adored Charlotte and Georgie, passing Georgie from one to the other, huge beams on their fascinated faces. Mangy dogs and stray cats lolled languidly in the shade next to grey headed tribesmen holding spears, with their wispy beards wagging from side to side as they smoked, chewed betel nut and gossiped.

  Under another tree, giggling meris held contented pikininis to their voluptuous breasts that shone like treacle.

  All in all it was a relaxing place to shop and I needed little encouragement to go in there to browse.

  At times, Rob, as Company Commander, and I, hosted functions at the Mess; formal dining in nights, fancy dress parties, or cocktails. Vanimo was a popular place to visit, meaning Rob often entertained officers or dignitaries from Wewak, Lae, Moresby, Canberra or overseas.

  Soon, however, all this came to an end and I was sitting on a single engine Aztec with Vanimo just a dot in the distance. Along the coast we landed at the small town of Aitape, later to be destroyed in a devastating tsunami, turning Father Austin Crapp, our agreeable Catholic padre at Moem, who baptised Georgie, into a local hero.

  Disembarking at the airstrip in Wewak, I suddenly realised I’d left something of utmost importance behind. I grabbed Charlotte by the hand and rushed back to see Georgie fast asleep on an elderly meri’s knee at the rear of the plane. She too was dead to the world, snoring loudly. It was unusual for any of the Pacific Islanders to fall asleep on a plane. Most were terrified of the big balus falling out of the sky. For many it was their first encounter in the air. If not giving out loud curdling wails, they chewed gum or betel nut so ferociously that it gave me lockjaw just watching.

  We women were a close-knit lot at Moem as we were often living alone. We seemed to have far too many morning and afternoon teas – welcoming or farewelling a neighbour, leading Charlotte to ask, after one of our contemporaries had tragically died: ‘Did she have too many morning teas?’

  To fill in the days we had flower arranging and copper beating classes, both at which I was pretty hopeless. I did another course in creative writing and we spent hours on the beach under the shade of the umbrella trees with the children playing in the sand at our feet. Charlotte, together with other children from the barracks, went to the International School in Wewak a few mornings each week and we would take it in turns to drop them off or pick them up.

  Looking back I was never bored – lonely at times, but not bored.

  On our last visit to Wewak I went back to the Boram Hospital. Not much had changed, although I gather the PNG Government is thinking of repossessing it to build a huge hotel. Although in a glorious spot on the beach, the neat-as-a-pin buildings are still fairly basic.

  The Officers’ Mess at Moem was a low-line building set amidst manicured lawns surrounded by lush trees and shrubs. Unfortunately today it’s hardly recognisable as it was then, although there’s a brand new Battalion Headquarters where the Commander, Colonel Mark, greeted us, before Captain Jack, a tall good-looking highlander, showed us around the compound. The Mess wasn’t the only casualty over the years – many of the married quarters, not just ours, are derelict, the gardens in ruins, although now and then someone has struggled and one flourishes. The church is still there, the small army hospital too, and down on the beach there’s the same white coral sand with tall umbrella palms and dugout canoes pulled up on the shore. As we got out of the car three little pikininis dug in the sand, whilst off the rocks th
eir older siblings jumped and dived into the sparkling water, their mothers perched on a log – just where I have a photo of Dawn, Louise and myself sitting – with Charlotte and Georgie playing in the waves just like the pikininis.

  I was sad about the derelict Mess, for this was where Colleen and I once danced on the table at a dining in night; where many a young single officer was told to take his eyes off the wife of an absent colleague; where we had fancy-dress parties, cocktail soirées and Sunday evening barbeques on the front lawn, with the children playing amidst the bushes, followed by a night at the movies, or a chess competition. Being so isolated we made our own fun with dinners or parties in each other’s homes, barbeques on the beach, games of soccer or baseball and tennis tournaments. In the last year before we left we often hacked our way through the new golf course we’d all spent many sweltering hours building – between our house and the beach, long since gone. Or it might be a game of baseball. With a couple of the officers joining the women’s team (and dressed as such, a couple with huge false boobs to even things up).

  One evening a few of us organised a fashion parade down in the haus win on the beach with clothes and shoes flown in from Australia modelled by a couple of the more daring officers and a few glamorous wives. Our dressing room was a hessian sack strung between two palm trees. Not many clothes remained after the show, for the one boutique in town found it hard to cater for so many eager young women and the men had no shop at all, apart from the trade stores.