SeaChange

 

 

I did my seachange at about the same time the Australian television program ran on the ABC - in fact, I had bought "Riverbend" a few years before in 1993. Like Laura Gibosn, I had also suffered from professional burn-out but unlike her no job was waiting for me at the Bay and I took up grass-cutting and reading and grass-cutting and reading and grass-cutting and reading and more reading.

 

 

While I was looking for more books at Vinnies to feed my reading habit, I also discovered the full boxset of the first three series containing thirty-nine episodes. Some thirty-three hours of uninterrupted comedy bliss!

 

It's a small world

 

 

Some months ago, I picked up this coffee table book of "Aung San Suu Kyi - A Portrait in Words and Pictures" at Vinnies. The check-out lady was surprised, "Why are you interested in Burma?" to which I answered, "Because I used to live and work there."

When she continued, "I am Burmese and I am from Rangoon," I began to take notice of her typical soft Burmese voice and took another look at her typical gentle Burmese demeanour. "It's been almost fifty years since I left Rangoon but I'm still in love with Burma and its people," I told her as she gave me that typical doe-eyed Burmese look and wished me good-bye.

I am a regular Vinnies customer, and it was a few weeks later that we met again at the check-out. "Oh, it's you again! Have you read the Aung San Suu Kyi book yet?" she wanted to know. "Not yet," I replied, and then told her where I used to live and work in Rangoon. When I mentioned that for a few months I had also lived at the Inya Lake Hotel, she told me that her father had been its manager, although not at my time. What a small world!

Weeks went by during which I stocked up on more books and DVDs, until one day it was another "Oh, it's you again!" and we struck up another conversation during which I confessed that my love of Burma and the Burmese people had been more than just platonic. Perhaps I must've also confessed that "ငါ့ရဲ့ ပထမဆုံးနဲ့ တစ်ဦးတည်းသော အချစ်" had been a certain Daw Khin San Myint whose memory I still carried to this day, because when I visited Vinnies again today, she asked me, "Is her family name Thaw?"

Quite taken aback, I asked, "Yes, how did you know?", after which she told me that her father, U Pye Aye, who now also lives in Batemans Bay, took over as manager of the Thamada Hotel from Daw Khin San Myint's father when he passed away after suffering a heart attack in 1977, and that U Pye Aye was somehow related to the Thaw family. Small world indeed!

Would I like to visit Burma again, she then wanted to know. "With all that emotional baggage I now carry, I'd never get past the check-in counter," I told her and left before my emotions could completely overwhelm me.

"Happiness is just an illusion, filled with sadness and confusion. What becomes of the broken-hearted who had love that's now departed?

 

A trip back in time for fifty cents

 

6th Edition, February 1998

 

Most people buy their Lonely Planet Guide to plan a trip; I bought this old 1998 edition for a mere fifty cents at the local op-shop to take a trip back in time. And I discovered much!

Only the very back of the guidebook, the last three pages 359-361, is dedicated to the place where I had spent most of my time in New Guinea. It begins with the explanation, "The following information is included in case the situation in Bougainville dramatically improves and travel onto the island is once again allowed. But this information is likely to be out of date since Bougainville has been off-limits for eight years and there's been considerable damage to the towns in the south."

And equally so about the place in which I first lived and worked: "Rabaul is a weird wasteland, buried in deep black volcanic ash. The broken frames of its buildings poke out of the mud like the wings of a dead bird. Almost the entire old town is buried and barren and looks like a movie set for an apocalyse film. Streets and streets of rubble and ruined buildings recede in every direction. The scale of what happened to Rabaul cannot be appreciated until you see it. If you were fortunate enough to walk its busy, noisy and colourful streets before September 1994, be prepared for a shock."

 

 

With the help of the old town map on page 315 I was able to walk, in my mind, from my office in Park Street to Casuarina Avenue, across Court Street, Namanula Road and Tavur Street, before turning left into Vulcan Street to arrive at the company-supplied accommodation, a converted Chinese trade store which I shared with two other accountants.

 

 

Then there is the Port Moresby City map on page 112 which also shows Cuthbertson Street where I used to sit in my parked car in the sweltering heat on a Sunday morning, waiting for the newspapers from "down south" to arrive at the newsagency to grap one of the few copies of the weekend edition of the Australian Financial Review which always advertised the best job vacancies, and to check my mailbox at the post office on the opposite side of the street for letters from "down south" but especially for any job offer in response to some application I had sent off in previous weeks.

 

 

Page 130 reminded me of trips to Yule Island where "the missionaries who arrived at Yule Island in 1885 were some of the first European visitors to the Papuan coast of New Guinea." On the way there I would stop over at a small trade store at Hisiu, then run by an Australian and his local wife.

Then there were those many trips out to Idler's Bay to the west, Bootless Inlet to the east, and north to Brown River. Sailing my CORSAIR dinghy from the Royal Papuan Yacht Club all the way out of Fairfax Harbour to Gemo Island and Lolorua Island and capsizing it far out at sea. I would have never made it back home had I not been with my mate Brian Herde who dived under the boat and pushed the centreboard back through the slot so that I could grap it and pull the boat upright again. I lost my precious wristwatch and we lost all our beer but only nearly our lives.

 

 

The map of Lae on page 176 shows the corner of 7th Street and Huon Road where I lived and spent my last Christmas in the country in 1974 before flying out to my next assignment in Burma. My old friend Noel had flown across from Wewak to spend that Christmas with me, and I still remember talking about another job I had been offered eighteen months earlier as manager of a thriving co-operative at Angoram on the banks of the mighty Sepik River. Angoram was no more than a couple of hours' drive away from Wewak and I had been tempted to accept to be near my friend but how different things may have turned out because only a few months later, again at Christmas time, I developed accute appendicitis which was quickly and successfully dealt with through a hurried operation at the newly-built hospital at Arawa but which could've been far more complicated in the remote wilds of the Sepik District. And, of course, no access to the Australian Financial Review with all its interesting job ads! We are so often the result of the circumstances we find ourselves in.

 

The Sepik is to New Guinea what the Congo is to Africa

 

And then there is Wewak itself, described on the guidebook's page 254 as "an attractive town where you can happily spend a day or two in transit to the Sepik or Irian Jaya." Well, that was then: today Weak is a very unsafe and run-down place and the border to Irian Jaya is also closed. The town map on page 256 still mentions the Windjammer Hotel which burnt down many years ago. The larger district map on the facing pages 250 and 251 shows the road to Cape Wom and the Hawain River where my friend Noel used to live before Independence and the unruly natives forced him out.

A great trip back in time for a mere fifty cents!