Friday 20th July

We had lunch with our friends Lorraine and Larry last week.

Lots of catching up on DelhiDays – we spent a very happy week there with them in 2006, in their beautiful apartment.  So hospitable they were, so knowledgeable!

They have had lots of adventures since than, and have spent quite a lot of time recently in Papua new Guinea, again for Larry’s work with what I can only think of as the Hydro.  Lorraine had actually worked there in 1969 as a young school leaver, in the public service.  Port Moresby is very different now.

Everyone says, basically, don’t go there.  When we were in the Louisiades we heard dire warnings, both from locals and from people who had sailed too close to The Mainland and who had suffered for their foolhardiness.  The DFAT website says: Crime rates can be high and opportunistic crimes should be expected.  But Lorraine and Larry had no such tales of woe. 

They lived in a big, secure apartment block, right on beautiful Ela Beach.  Every morning Larry would leave for work at 7am and Lorraine would walk from one end of the beach to the other.  Sometimes she would stop and talk to an old lady mending fishing nets, but basically she would just wander along, all alone, enjoying the beauty around her. 

One morning she was quite a long way from her apartment and she saw a gang of young men coming down onto the beach and walking purposefully towards her.  Rascals??  She was a teensy bit nervous and thought maybe she should have heeded all of the warnings.  As they came closer, one of them came right up to her and said, a bit sternly, “You’re late!”  She blinked a bit and he explained that they watched out for her every morning, and they had been worried when she wasn’t back right on schedule…