"Have pen, will travel"

Papua New Guinea 1976 I was back in New Guinea for Christmas 1975. Met up with Brian Herde who was still working at Tutt Bryant's in Port Moresby and flew with him to Wewak to spend Christmas at Noel Butler's place. Noel had been living a very solitary existence on his small property outside Wewak for many years. He had no family and few friends. A disciplined, self-reliant man, he got along remarkably well despite his age and solitude. However, it seemed that our visit undermined his meticulously constructed defenses as it reminded him how lonely he'd been. We celebrated a grand Christmas with lots of good food and even better drink which unmasked even more the gaping void in Noel's life even as we tried to fill it. When, after only a few days, we departed as suddenly as we'd arrived, Noel seemed deeply and unexpectedly hurt. He knew that Brian had to return to his job in Moresby but he had thought that I would take some time out after my "Burmese Days"s; as I hadn't told him yet that I had already accepted work in Iran. ... but suddenly everything that had seemed possible while footloose in another country, with all the ease and openness that comes from having only such possessions as will fill a briefcase and a couple of small acses, now disappeared under difficult considerations like where we might live, the sort of "home" we might settle for, ...t cases Iran 1976 Williams Brothers, Tehran To arrive in Tehran in the midst of the Iranian winter after years in the tropics came as a real shock to the system - as was the job with this American company which, not unlike Bechtel - treated its non-American employees like shit. I left in a matter of weeks but where to go? Straight back to Canberra, seemed the obvious solution. Australia 1976 Readymix, Canberra How did I get mixed up with Readymix? I was desperate for a job while I was in Canberra, waiting for the PNH High Commission to issue me with a fresh visa to re-enter Papua New Guinea. Lived - for the third time! - at Barton House which hadn't changed at all. The visa finally arrived and I was off to PNG. Papua New Guinea 1976-1977 New Guinea Development Corporation, Rabaul Mapmakers, Port Moresby National Housing Commission, Port Moresby My position in PNG was as an adviser to one of the "big men" in the PNG government and to look after his business interests in Rabaul. It was a disasterous appointment: the whole business was dysfunctional, I was supposed to "camp" in a backroom of his house and when I made it clear that this would not do