Papua New Guinea 1973-1974 PDF Holdings, Bougainville Island AIR NIUGINI, Port Moresby TDE Electrical, Lae After my interlude in Honiara, I returned to Bougainville to work as Senior Accountant for the commercial trading arm of Bougainville Copper, in charge of their department stores at Arawa and Panguna. Worked in a window-less office in Arawa and occupied one of the old "dongas" at the senior quarters in Camp 6 at Loloho. What a come-back after the gracious life-style enjoyed in Honiara! On top of it all, I found myself with acute appendicitis just a day or two before Christmas 1973 and was carted off to the newly-built Arawa Hospital for an operation. The resident European surgeon had already "signed off" for the Silly Season and promptly assigned this textbook operation to his only recently qualified Indigenous sidekick. All went well but not before Noel Butler had popped up by my bedside! He had come across from Wewak to spend Christmas with me but in the "excitement" of the moment I had forgotten all about him. When he arrived at Camp 6, all he heard from the 'haus-boi' that 'Masta' had gone 'long haus sik' which he found hard to believe. He knew Des Hudson at Panguna who arranged for him to stay in Camp 6 and confirmed that I had taken ill, and they both visited me in hospital. Not long after my discharge from hospital, I responded to an advertisement in the local papers for an Internal Auditor with AIR NIUGINI. On November 1, 1973, AIR NIUGINI had commenced operations as the national airline of Papua New Guinea by taking over the internal services of Ansett Airlines of Papua New Guinea and TAA. AIR NIUGINI's first general manager, Ralph Conley, hired me to set up the airline's internal audit department, located at ANG House on a hill overlooking the city of Port Moresby and its harbour. Papua New Guinea in those pre-Independence days was full of expatriates who under the immigration law had to be in possession of an open return air ticket at all times. Those tickets had been bought from AIR NIUGINI and in most cases would not be used for several years. AIR NIUGINI, being a member of IATA, also sold tickets to any destination in the world without flying to any overseas port other than Cairns and Honiara. They collected the money and only had to part with it after the overseas airlines had presented them with the used ticket coupon through what is known as the Interline Billing System which in those pre-computer days could take months. In the meantime, AIR NIUGINI "sat" on all that money from open return tickets and uncollected overseas fares and earned good interest on it! A very good business indeed! But imagine my surprise when during an audit I discovered that AIR NIUGINI's accountants at Six-Mile were also routinely including all that unearned money as INCOME in their current Profit & Loss Statement! My report caused quite a flurry (and a few red faces) in the accounts department! AIR NIUGINI had absorbed many of the previous staff from Ansett and TAA and there were many internal conflicts. One day, for example, an ex-Ansett flight attendant was assigned to an ex-TAA F27 and obstinately refused to open the door after a landing at Wewak. According to the regulations of her previous company, this was the responsibility of the traffic officer on board. The traffic officer, an ex-TAA man, had been trained differently and, in any case, had other things to do. He refused to open the door. The argument pretty well covered the subject of responsibility and competence. Fortunately, it remained at the verbal level, but it is reported to have lasted more than 15 minutes while the passengers roasted in the cabin under the sizzling sun. The 'politics' and 'jockeying' for positions permeated most departments, including finance and administration, and internal auditing under those circumstances was not a pleasant task. I left for another job in Lae before I could explore the deepest depths of the human character and just after Christmas 1974 (which I spent on a beach in Lae, blissfully unaware that Cyclone Tracey had just wiped out Darwin), I flew out from there to Rangoon in Burma.