I was delighted to come across another blog site featuring the work of one of my former pupils, Larry Santana, or 'Larry Mike' as he was called when I taught him.
Larry was a third year student at the School of Art & Design in Goroka in 1979 and by far the most talented of his intake.
By all accounts he has had a tough life in later years while living in Port Moresby - loss of his advertising agency job and then his house, living in the notorious shanty area of Six Mile Dump and scavenging for food scraps.
It saddens me that he and his family had these experiences but at last he seems to be experiencing a much happier existence now, in Madang.
There are few prettier places to visit in Papua New Guinea than Madang which is on the Bismark Sea coast. After months in the Highlands it was welcome respite to take a Talair flight to the northern coast and spend a few days of in the tropical climate under the palms.
Madang Girl
I visited Madang several times although the first was one of the most memorable. I stayed on Siar island which is a small island close to the main town of Madang.
The enterprising headman, Paul Munz, collected me in his dug out canoe and ferried me across to the island for a weekend of island culture, living amongst the local villagers.
Accommodation was in a beach side, thatched roof haus; termed a bure elsewhere in the Pacific. The sound of garamut drums and string bands filled the air each evening when the heat of the day had dissipated.
This was also my first experience of snorkeling over a coral reef. The one surrounding Siar teemed with marine life and the colours of the fishes ad corals were simply breathtaking.
Giant clams and bright yellow and pink brain corals were in abundance. Electric blue fish darted amongst them. For someone reared on a diet of Jacques Cousteau undersea adventures back in New Zealand television, this was the real hting.
It was easy see why PNG is regarded as one of the world's great diving locations. In other coastal regions the diving is over sunken World War Two ships using scuba,
I shared my weekend on Siar with visitors from other parts of Niugini. One was an anthropologist who was spending several months living on the island, studying the traditional ways of life. It seemed at the time that most of the world's anthropology PhD students made a bee-line to PNG to complete their theses; the same applied for linguists, they were everywhere!
Potter - Madang
Smugglers Hotel in Madang was a renowned hideaway and I recall coming across the actor Michael York, who was then in his prime, enjoying a relaxing 'getting away from it all' holiday.
I took photographs in Madang which were later turned into postcards and sold commercially by a company in Port Moresby. One of these images was of Smugglers.
Another postcard was of traditional Madang potters and their pottery. The style and clay, which is a red earthenware, differs from the Zumin pottery of the Markham Valley.
Pottery is made on a small turning base without a wheel. It is then handcoiled and beaten.
The detrius of the last war was still clearly visible in the surrounding jungles and some of the toughest fighting aginst the Japanese took place along this coast. Old pieces of Marsden matting were still in use as make-shift fences and derelict aircraft were left to rot where they had crashed or been destroyed in battle.
War Wreckage - Madang
Japanese Artillery Piece
War Wreckage - Madang
The string bands of Madang and other coastal and island communities have a very haunting and repetitious rhythm. One of the more distinctive instruments is an assemblage of hollow bamboo tubes, much like a xylophone, which are played by beating the top with a pair of rubber thongs (jandals). They used guitar and close harmonies.
An example of bamboo percussion, although in this clip it is the Tatok Bamboo Band from the neighbouring Solomon islands (Bougainville)
These bands can also be heard entertaining in the bars of the major hotels such as Smugglers (mentioned above) and the much older Madang Resort hotel, which began as a German colonial guest house prior to World War One - 1914-18.
I stayed in the Madang Resort Hotel for a weekend when I was the Eastern Highlands chairman for the 1980 South Pacific Festival of Arts. The organising committee met there under the chairmanship of Mali Voi and Helen Dennett. Mali went on to become a UNESCO cultural expert based in Apia and Helen remained a world authority on traditional Sepik art.
Being younger and still idealistic I felt the need to experience truly living in an indigenous culture as one of a minority; the reverse of my then circumstances in Rotorua where I was teaching art at Lakes High School.
It was also the first time I had travelled out of New Zealand and spending a stop over night at the YMCA in Sydney was a revelation with some of the largest cockroaches I had ever seen.
It was in hindsight a good introduction to the fauna I would alter experience in PNG but no where near as exotic.
QANTAS was the carrier and in later years I flew back and forth on Air New Guinea, an airline that I undertook professional photographic assignments for as time allowed.
Landing at Jackson Airport, Port Moresby was also my first introduction to the oppressive humidity of a tropical climate. I can still recall the sensation of the humidity greeting me as a stepped down the gangway and on to the tarmac. There were no air bridges in those days and customs formalities took place in a large covered concourse with eating fans in the ceiling.
The domestic airline flights where carried out by both Air Nuigini and a private company, Talair. The latter were often referred to as "Crash Air" which was rather unfair as their safety record was as good as could be expected flying smaller fixed wing planes in and out of highland airstrips.
Landing would often take place in steeply inclined strips and if I remember correctly, Wabag was one of these. Take off was a sudden acceleration down the strip and over what appear to be a precipice.
Later I got to know several of the Nuigini Helicopter and Talair pilots and flew in the co pilots jump seat in the twin otter aircraft from Goroka to Madang and return, over the Ramu valley.
Approaching the Dalau Pass one could discern the glint of metal in the undergrowth, evidence of a previous air disaster where a plane had navigated incorrectly through the narrow entrance and into the low cloud and mist of the Highlands.
It was fun and seat-of-the-pants flying and many of the Talair pilots were Jumbo jet crew who came to PNG to fly in their holidays and get in some "real flying".
The pilots told tales of tribesmen who had never flown attempting to eat the hand wipe towelettes in the mistaken belief that these were the in-flight meal.
I was determined not to lead an isolated expat existence and to get as much from my time in PNG as I could, mixing with the locals and learning their life and customs. There had been people living in the Eastern Highlands for the past 18,000 years and the first Europeans only made contact in the late 1920's, so there was plenty of local culture to assimilate.
Papua New Guinea was a life changing experience in more ways than one. In the intervening thirty years I have come to realise how this first contract in the tropics changed my life forever.
