DIRTY STUFF
WILLIAM PORKERT
HERE are no street machines in Papua
New Guinea. The roads are real bad
thanks to tropical rain and constant
landslides, with trees falling down
across the dirt every other day, demanding
widespread use of four-wheel-drive stuff and
heavy trucks.
I know this because I recently flew into PNG
(with a mate as a minder, as at my age I tend
to fall down some of the time) to be there at
Kundiawa in the highlands for the dedication
of a new grave memorial to my father’s brother.
George Tuckey fought along with my dad
in New Guinea through the Second World
War, and survived that bloody awful conflict
to return to PNG early in 1946 to work in the
uplands as a patrol officer, or Kiap. He was
living in a tent and overseeing a worker group
who were shifting a mob of cattle from Goroka
to Kundiawa to build up a productive herd,
when one of these wild cows turned on him
and gored him with her horns. Unfortunately,
George contracted tetanus and died shortly
after, to be buried on a hill overlooking the then-
beginning town with a simple white cross as a
marker. That was in June 1946, and his grave
was gradually forgotten throughout the passing
70-odd years.
The Kiaps (whose name comes from the
German word kapitan; Germans colonised
north-east New Guinea before World War I),
were all tough young men from Australia, and
when PNG was granted independence by
Whitlam’s government in 1975, they formed
an association of ex-Kiaps, with some stayingin PNG, and the rest moving back to Australia.
One of these ex-Kiaps, Peter Turner, used
to walk past George’s grave every morning
and wonder what sort of a man he was, and
later contacted the Port Moresby RSL to see
if a proper headstone could be made and laid
there in place of the rotted-away white cross.
Somebody donated the money, word got
through to the Simbu Provincial Government
that this was happening, and they decided to
fund a proper concrete-and-tile above-ground
tomb for George, and the work commenced.
There was going to be a huge dedication of
the memorial at Kundiawa early in 2017, and a
search to contact surviving relatives of George
began. Australian-based ex-Kiap David Tierney
got hold of me by phone one night to see if I was
connected to the family. I knew that George’s
widow lived in Sydney and had an only child,
Lynette, so my wife Jan, with help from David,
managed to reach her in that city after she had
returned from many years in England with two
sons, Nick and Michael. Her mother Phyllis had
passed away, Nick was living in America and
Michael and his mother were unable to make
the possibly dangerous trip to be there at the
dedication, which the people of the Simbu
rated highly in importance as a major part of
their history.
So as I was born in Wau and evacuated by
boat at just nine months of age, I flew into Port
Moresby with my mate Kevin, jumped on a flight
to Mount Hagen, then travelled a potholed and
landslide-blocked main highway in a police
convoy to Kundiawa.The ceremony was huge. The indigenous
population treated us like visiting gods and
couldn’t do enough for us on that day. We
returned smiles and shook so many hands that
it was really difficult to finally rejoin the convoy
and leave.
From there we flew to Lae to visit my father’s
grave in the war cemetery; he didn’t quite make
the end of the conflict through being shot by a
Japanese soldier. Then we returned home after
five days in the incredible world of PNG.
But they do have a violence problem over
there. The ‘Raskol’ gangs not only kill each
other in payback, they attack visitors and
vehicles to the extent where there are almost
no cars driving the roads, and almost all the
commercial stuff is heavily glass-protected by
sheets of expanded metal, with a small hole in
front of the driver so they can see where they
are going. Hotel compounds have wire-topped
walls and thousands of security guards are
employed to foil robberies, but we had great
service everywhere and never had a problem.
Kevin kept saying that he wished he had the
franchise for selling Toyota Coaster buses,
for there were literally hundreds used as
indigenous transport on the incredibly busy
dirt road – although there is a new four-lane
highway from Lae leading halfway to the
Nazdab airport, where we had to stop briefly
while PNG workers cleared a tree that had
fallen across the dirt road bit.
We didn’t see a single street machine – you
need lots of vehicle ground clearance in PNG
just to get in and out of the potholes! sI FLEW INTO PAPUA
NEW GUINEA TO BE
THERE AT KUNDIAWA
IN THE HIGHLANDS FOR
THE DEDICATION OF A
NEW GRAVE MEMORIAL
TO MY FATHER’S
BROTHER. WE DIDN’T
SEE A SINGLE STREET
MACHINE!