In memory of the late Noel Butler of Wewak, a remarkably unremarkable man

 

Childers, Queensland, by night

 

It's almost thirty years ago when my best friend from my New Guinea days, Noel Butler, sent me this funny "Childers by Night" card and wrote,

 

"Dear Pete, Hope your outlook on the future is not
as black as this. Mine is but that's inevitable."

 

I had no idea how prescient and indeed deadly serious his message was until a couple of months later I received a phone call from a woman. She introduced herself as Noel's sister and told me that Noel had just passed away! The only death we experience is other people's.

It may seem that Noel had never achieved much in his life except get through it. And after his life had come to an end, he left no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But the way of life that he had chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and self-reliance of his character left a great influence on me so that, long after his death, I still remember him as a very remarkable man.

 

Noel's airport arrival card on 13 November 1967,
one day before boarding the PATRIS

 

Noel and I first met aboard the liner PATRIS in 1967 when he was going on a European holiday and I was returning to Germany. The PATRIS had been scheduled to call at Port Moresby in New Guinea but, following the Six-Day War between Egypt and Israel, the Suez Canal closed and the ship was re-routed around the Cape of Good Hope.

However, the many New Guinea expats who had already booked, Noel amongst them, still joined the ship in Sydney. As did Graeme Bell's All Stars Band. And so for the next four weeks I would sit in the ship's Midnight Club and listen to the many yarns of high adventure told by those larger-than-life New Guinea expats while Graeme Bell's All Stars played their ragtime music.

During the day, Noel and I would sit on deck for hours, hunched over a chessboard. Our mutual love of chess and my interest in New Guinea started a friendship which lasted until his death almost thirty years later!

 

Christmas 1975 on the Wewak golf course

 

We kept up a regular correspondence during all those years which Noel spent mostly in Wewak in the Sepik District, before PNG's Independence in 1975 and old age forced him to return to his homestate Queensland.

I had come up to PNG in late 1969 and worked there for several years. During this time I visited Noel on his small country estate outside Wewak and Noel came to spent Christmas 1973 and Christmas 1974 with me. Or at least he tried because by the time he arrived on Bougainville in 1973, I was in Arawa Hospital being prepared for an urgent appendectomy; and when he came to see me in Lae in 1974 I was already packed up and ready to fly out to my next assignment in Burma.

 

Christmas 1975 on the beach in Wewak outside the Windjammer Hotel

 

Our paths crossed more frequently after I had temporarily come back to Australia in 1979. I visited him several times and observed with some concern his struggle to make himself at home again in Australia, first at Caboolture, then at Mt Perry, and finally at Childers. He never quite succeeded since, as he put it, after a lifetime spent in PNG, "my spiritual home will always be New Guinea".

Perhaps this struggle is something else that we shared. I, too, still think almost every day about those many farway places in which I lived and worked. The years spent there have left me unsuited in many respects for life in the deep south. I feel suspended between my past life in the islands and my present life in mainstream Australia, and I still seek a place where I can feel truly content.

"Über den Himmel Wolken ziehen, über die Felder geht der Wind, ... irgendwo über den Bergen muss meine ferne Heimat sein."   
                                                                         Hermann Hesse

 

Of Christmases past

 

In Camp 6 at Loloho on the Bougainville Copper Project
left-to-right: Neil "Jacko" Jackson, yours truly, Bob Green

 

It's that time of year again when thoughts turn to Christmases past. We didn't use the word 'Christmas' then. Christmas came with too much emotional baggage. It reminded us of families and homes which we were far away from or didn't even have.

Of course, I'm talking of those many years - decades, in fact - spent in boarding houses, construction camps, hotels, and company housing. Come Christmastime, those who had families and homes had gone; those who didn't hadn't.

 

Yours truly in the chequered shirt in the middle

 

There was Barton House in Canberra, usually throbbing with life from its 300-odd - and some very odd - inmates, which turned into a morgue by Christmastime. The dining room was roped off except for one table next to the kitchen. That one table was large enough for those left behind.

It's hard not to be reminded of something when you're surrounded by half a dozen gloomy faces. So for my last Christmas in Canberra in 1969, just before I flew to my next job in New Guinea, I hitched and hiked to Angle Crossing where I spent a solitary weekend writing letters which is the only device that combines solitude with good company.

 

Canberra's then Youth Hostel at Angle Crossing, over the hill from the Murrumbidgee River

 

Years later, and just one day before Christmas, I booked myself into hospital on Bougainville Island with acute appendicitis . "You'd better get on the next plane out and into a hospital at home", the doctor told me. He was already deep into his medicinal alcohol and had trouble remembering which side my appendix was on. "This is my home", I said. He made one long incision just to make sure he wouldn't miss it.

What I had missed was that my best friend Noel Butler was coming over from Wewak to spend - ahem! - Christmas with me. He must have got there while I was still under the anaesthetic, because there he was standing at the foot of my bed. He'd gone to my donga and waited and finally asked the hous boi where I was. "Masta bagarap long haus sik".

 

Yours truly and Noel hunched over a chess board in New Guinea

 

We tried again the following year by which time I had moved to Lae on the north coast of the New Guinea mainland. By the time Christmas and Noel had come, there was just enough time left for a drink at the club and a game of chess before I flew out to my next job in Burma.

And so it went on, year after year, either coming or going or laid up with something, deftly avoiding Christmas. It's not so easy anymore!

 

So schrieb ich vor zwei Jahren

 

 

So schrieb ich vor zwei Jahren:

Ich kam gerade von "Melbourne" zurück wo ich eine sehr ruhige Nacht verbrachte. Auf dem Wege zurück zum Haus tauchte ein Angler aus dem Nebel auf dem Fluss auf. Der hatte wohl auch eine ruhige Nacht in seinem Boot verbracht. Manchmal brauchen wir solch ruhige Momente um mit unserem Leben klarzukommen.

Im Haus zurück, fing ich an meine Haferflocken zu kochen und den Komputer anzukurbeln wo ich eine E-mail von einem Armin Müller fand:

"Hallo Peter, hier ist der jüngere Sohn von Bärbel. Ich habe die traurige Pflicht auch Dich zu informieren. Bärbel ist am 23.11.22 verstorben. Die Beisetzung fand in Braunschweig-Mascherode statt. Ich hatte deine Nummer in Ihrem iPhone gefunden, konnte Dich als den Auswanderer zuordnen und eine kurze Suche brachte mich auf eure Website."

Bärbel und ich trafen uns als Lehrlinge in 1962 als ich schon im dritten Jahr meiner Lehre war und sie gerade ihre Lehre angefangen hatte. Wir saßen uns gegenüber in der Feuerversicherungsabteilung und daraus wurde dann eine Freundschaft die noch mehrere Jahre nach meiner Auswanderung anhielt. Wir erneuerten sie als ich im Februar 1984 zur Beerdiging meines Vaters wieder nach Braunschweig kam und wurde dann eine Brieffreundschaft als ich in 1985 Griechenland wieder verlies.

Oder besser gesagt, wieder eine Brieffreundschaft denn dass war es schon einmal für einige Jahre nach meiner Auswanderung in 1965 gewesen. All diese Brief schickte sie mir in 2011 um mich daran zu erinnern mit den Worten: "Doppelt so viel habe ich hier noch fallst Du sie haben möchtest."

 

 

In späteren Jahren schickte sie mir noch Fotos von einem Betriebsausflug den ich schon lange vergessen hatte - siehe hier - und nahm auch Fotos auf von meinen Elternhäusern am Altewiekring und Cyriaksring - siehe hier und hier. Und hier ist meine Antwort an ihren Sohn Armin:

"Lieber Armin, das ist doch völlig unmöglich und gar nicht zu glauben!!! Bärbel und ich kannten uns von unserer Lehre in der Hamburg-Bremer Feuer-Versicherung in der Münzstrasse, und wir trafen uns zum letzten Mal in 1984 als ich nach Braunschweig kam zur Beerdigung meines Vaters. Unsere Verbindung war in den letzten Jahren wieder abgebrochen, wohl deshalb weil ich hier unten am Ende der Welt in einem ganz anderen Millieu lebe und überhaupt keine Verbindung mit der (k)alten Heimat mehr habe. Wie ich mich erinnere war ihr letztes Lebenszeichen von der Ostsee mit einem Foto mit ihr und Deinem Vater am Strand. Danke für Deine Email und die Mühe die Du Dir machtest Dich mit mir in Verbindung zu setzen. In meinem Alter ist man daran gewöhnt solche Nachrichten zu erhalten, denn mehr und mehr alte Freunde und Freundinnen versterben nach und nach. Dennoch hat mich diese Nachricht besonders gepackt denn sie bringt mich ganz zurück an den Anfang meiner beruflichen Karriere und bevor ich überhaupt Gedanken hatte je einmal nach Australien auszuwandern. Meinen herzlichen Beileid an Dich und Deinen Bruder und Vater."

 

 

Meine alten Erinnerungen sterben langsam aus.