Thursday 28th
July 2016
Today it was a Kavieng day. We walked into town and around – yes! – the
hardware stores. They sold, to my
astonishment, Australian wheeliebins!
Mind you they don’t use wheeliebins here…the rubbish is mainly strewn
along the streets. It is a very pretty
town, a bit like Nhulumbuy (Northern Territory) with pleasant houses suitable
for the tropics, and beautiful big trees lining the streets. And an understorey of rubbish, mainly coke
cans.
Pete made friends with a young bloke called Jonah,
from Nusa Island just across the way, looking very beautiful.
And with an older man called Bruce, who led us, in a
dignified manner, to the Air Nui Gini office.
We would never ever have found it.
It was all bright pink and concrete but there was not a single sign to
be seen on the outside…
I was very grateful to Bruce. It was cool and peaceful in the office and
there was a delightfully efficient travel agent called Powden. I left my details with her and followed Pete
to find the Customs office, which we had been told was opposite the church in
the main street. It wasn’t; we went in
and it was the Treasury. The man in the
office had no idea where Customs was so we wandered round…
I found a Department of Labour and Industrial
Relations which amused me somewhat. (I
worked for eleven years for the Industrial Commission, in Tasmania.) And there in a shy little doorway just beyond
the DLIR, was a little sign saying, Customs.
Jackpot!
It took Powden a long time to organise my tickets; it
was all very complicated. But she did
it, smiling all the way through, and I am very grateful. There is no way in the world I would have
been able to do it on the dodgy internet operating on my modem, which lasts for
three minutes at a time and then cuts out.
I am so looking forward to my thirteen days of Tasmanian Life!!
When we dragged our dinghy off the beach into the water
a whole tribe of small boys yelled PUSHIM!
PUSHIM!! (I do love Pidgin…) And push they did, shrieking with joy.
This morning early I looked out the window and there –
oh astonishment! – was a yacht, a beautiful Amel Super Maramu 2000, with an
Italian flag. Astonishing because really
there are very few yachts in this part of the world…
Friday 29th
July
The team from SV Refola came over for drinks in the
late afternoon. Very nice people –
Liliana, Alessandro, Luciano. I do like
Italians…Luciano and I will be flying together as far as Brisbane on
Monday. I only have to go to Melbourne
and then Hobart after that but it will take him 35 hours to get to Verona…we
have to leave Refola and 2XS at 3.45 to get a taxi to the airport… This seems a
bit excessive to me; the plane doesn’t leave until 6.10am but better safe than
sorry. I never want to miss another
plane!!
This morning we had a visit from an official boat from
the Port Authority. Noah Tamekus and
Geoffrey Darius had come to tell us we owe 200 kina for anchorage fees.
Pete chatted to them nicely and I made them iced tea
and gave them photos of themselves, which made them very happy. They are going to help us get fuel – quite a
completed process, involving the filling out of forms. Very glad they are going to guide us through
the maze of red tape!
They also gave us a lot of information about the
region. They both said that New Ireland,
and Kavieng in particular, are the very safest place in PNG. Nusa Island, a few hundred metres from where
we are anchored, used to be a plantation, owned by Germans. When there was a gold rush (not sure of the
dates of any of this…) the Germans all moved off Nusa and decamped to the gold
fields on the mainland, and the government bought back the land to return it to
the original villagers. All seemingly a
painless process.
Apparently Kavieng gets quite a few visitors from the
outside world, not just 2XS and Refola!
Eery year a team comes from National Geographic. Bill gates has been here, aos Russell Crowe. And – the Bulldogs rugby team! Kavieng most passionately follows the blues
and the maroons and the whole town shuts down for the State of Origin
matches. I had noticed flags for sale in
the shops but hadn’t registered the significance.
There are a few tourist attractions not far from
Kavieng, so Geoffrey told us. Apparently
there is as place where you can wade around up to your knees in the shallows
and fondle large eels…Another village has the tradition of calling sharks; they
have done this for centuries. There are
fire eaters in one village, men who walk on hot stones in another. All of this goes on regardless of whether
there are tourists or not, which I think is great. I never really enjoy seeing people tricked
out in costumes and performing traditional ceremonies just for the tourist
dollar. Much nicer to have traditional customs
continuing just because the people revel in them.
