There were many a tropical night when I and the young, bespectacled Swiss chef who was in charge of all in-flight catering (as well as our own meals at the Pilots' Mess) sat on that top verandah and, with the help of quite a few 'Greenies" and punctuated by the roar of landing and departing aircraft , bemoaned the state of the world and our rather insignificant place in it.
I had just taken on the new position of Internal Auditor with Papua New Guinea's newly-formed national airline AIR NIUGINI, which meant I was busy setting up procedures and writing manuals that would assist auditors who'd come after me to follow established auditing standards.
My office was in Port Moresby's imposing ANG House but I was seldom there, with my work taking me all over Port Moresby and the country.
It was an interesting and challenging job but there are always more interesting and more challenging jobs ahead, and so, just after Christmas 1974 (which I spent on a beach in Lae, blissfully unaware that Cyclone Tracy had just wiped out Darwin) I flew out to Rangoon in Burma to take up the position of Chief Accountant with the French oil company TOTAL - Compagnie Française des Pétroles who had begun drilling for oil in the Arakan Sea.
My Air Niugini T-shirt, Port Moresby, 1974still with laundry mark "15" for my room in the Pilots' Mess at Six-Mile
On the way, I stopped over in Hong Kong where the company had booked me into the swank PENINSULA Hotel who met me at the airport with a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. I had not expected this nor had they expected to meet a young chap straight out of New Guinea, in shorts and wearing an AIR NIUGINI T-shirt still with the laundry mark "15" for my room in the Pilots' Mess, and carrying a swag over his shoulder.
As for my neighbour and confidant during those long tropical nights, the young, bespectacled Swiss chef, I am ashamed to say that I forgot his name but if somebody knows him or he himself reads this blog, please email me at riverbendnelligen[AT]mail.com . The internet is a small world and I have seen longer odds than finding an old friend this way!
P.S. The odds are shortening: just received a facebook message from a Raymond James Hammett: "I took up head chef position at PX in 1975 from Swiss/German Frank Gertz". That must've been him - Frank Gertz.
