A Year in Papua New Guinea

Munum Elementary School (12 km up the Markham Valley from us) We were invited by The Australian Consul-General - Brenton Kanowski to accompany him on a visit to a Markham Valley school. There is a joint Australia-PNG project to provide water to regional schools and it was the turn of Munum Elementary School to officially launch their new water supply. They received an open building with a roof catching water into four tanks plus a number of desks.  Brenton cutting the ribbon for the new tanks ... ... and for the new building The school environment was beautiful with lush vegetation and grass - a stark contrast to the schools we are used to in Tanzania. The classrooms however were similar to those in Tanzania with no glass windows and earth floors the norm. It was a very pleasant couple of hours out of our normal routine. Last weekend we welcomed a new volunteer - Duncan Gibson. He’s a nice young bloke with an Australian/New Zealand pedigree and is a town planner. He’ll be working ...

We were asleep on the evening of 7th October when the jolts woke us up. Slowly at first then intense shaking followed by a long tail of decreasing intensity the whole event lasted about 2 mins with a couple of small aftershocks in the following hours. We didn't know whether to get under the bed, run outside or stay put so we stayed put and waited for the house to collapse. It didn't - which is reassuring because the quake was a big one by local standards and no-one at work can remember a bigger one. It was Mag 6.6 and 20 km from our house but 100 km deep. I didn't realise we had a tectonic plate boundary running up through our valley. There was a smaller (4.7) quake in the valley on the 15th that Jenny felt but I didn't. We also had a small tremor last night which doesn't seem to have been registered by any of the Geology Services. We had bottles and jars in the pantry fall to the ground and our fridge and stove have both moved. I've decided not to store my came...

After much frustration we've finally managed to organise an outing. Jenny and I, Ringisai (another Australian volunteer) and a couple of her friends went with LaeAbout Tours to Labu Lake. We met guide Emma at the jetty at the Lae Yacht Club and headed off in a banana boat to Labu village with Emma's brother Noah and two other chaps, 5 km across the harbour. As required, we had our official life jackets, an epirb, a satellite phone, our personal trackers and fully charged mobiles. A Little Tern with 2 Common Terns for size comparison. Common Tern Common Tern We cruised around inside the mangroves on Labu Lake for a couple of hours and then headed to Labu village to sample mud crab, shellfish, sago cakes and fresh coconut milk. Then we walked down the beach to the end of the village for a swim. The water was almost bath temperature. I, of course, was looking for birds the whole way with the occasional "Stop the boat!" gesture to the chap driving. It was not possible to...