Flying in over Mer and Dawar

The big white building with the point is the Anglican church. Our house is the tiny bit of white showing to the left of it, slightly up the hill.

The tide is out and the reef is exposed. The air strip is on the top of the hill, the opposite edge of the volcano's ridge, which is not visible on the left of this picture.

The airstrip was, of course, grass, and (although the photo above is obviously the 'dry' season) if it had been raining a lot and the grass was too long the plane would return to TI and wait for the men to get out there with scythes and cut it short enough. The 'strip was about 500metres long, formed by flattening out a section of the hill, and there was a sharp drop-off at both ends.

The trip from the airstrip down the steep hill to the village was by tractor trailer.

And what is it like inside those little planes?

Beach Family

The whole crew: Ruth, Beatrice, James, Jo, Ali, and Peter.

Playing School

Our new verandah proved a great place to be. Our kids loved to play there, and sometimes the local kids joined them.

Our kids loved to play school. Some might say that's weird - but my sister, brothers and I always played school too .. and my parents were both teachers.

The island children were not generally allowed to play "role-play" type games, their parents would yell, beat them, or throw a fish-spear at them if they were caught ... obviously they didn't like to see the kids copying their behaviour!

Letters from Mer

The Letters

I wrote endless letters to my folks while we were on Mer, or "Murray Island" was the anglicized name. My mother kept all my letters, and I have just been browsing through them. So I am going to type them out - I find they make an interesting story for me and I am sure "the kids" will enjoy reading what I wrote about those times. I have italicized references to the kids so they (you: James, Ali, Jo, Bea) can find it easily.

Letter: Just Before Furlough

Letter 15 / 8 / 85

We are enjoying our rest! So much space here - wish we could transport this big old house up to the island. The weather in Townsville this time of year is delightful - cool, clear and sunny. The kids are enjoying the two little boys who live next door (they are about 6 and 8). Their dad (no mum) gave us a huge colour TV (in working order). He's a bit of an electronics wizz - fixes TVs and gets landed with spare ones occasionally - he has three right now. So we are learning to sit back from it instead of pressing our noses against it like we have to do with our 5"screen TV!

The blood test results show that Alison, James and Peter all have/had hepatitis, not Jo and I. Peter's doing well now. Even manages long walks - but he's learning his limitations. There suddenly comes a point where he gets deeply tired. The only food he can't stand to think of now is crayfish mornay - that was the last thing he had before getting sick.

We've had a roo-bar put on the car - we are not very impressed though, bit of a shoddy job. Peter's fixing on a 'spottie' - we plan to do a bit of night-driving (when the kids will be asleep).

Alison went to the dentist yesterday. She was sooo good. She just lay there perfectly still and didn't complain at all. The dentist was really impressed. I was having such a lot of pain myself, I actually made an appointment to have a tooth pulled. But a couple of hours before my appointment I got the bright idea to see a doctor first - I persuaded a doctor to fit me into his busy schedule. Sure enough - retracted ear drum. So I cancelled the appointment at the dentist's with great relief. Things are slowly improving now.

Kids are getting rather obstreperous, time to give them a bit of full attention. James usually ends up having some private time with me after the others are in bed at night. Peter just sleeps ...

Letter: Half-Way House

Letter 1 / 8 / 85

A whole week in Townsville and this is my first chance to sit down and write.

Peter is actually up and about on his own today - he and James have gone to the hospital for more blood tests and I'm 'home' with the girls.

No place for us to live in Cairns - hotels and motels wouldn't have us with my yellow husband! The Baptist Church here in Townsville let us use this "1/2 - way - house" for ex-cons, people on the run / in trouble etc. Its a huge old place with built-in verandahs all around, masses of doors (our bedroom has 5 doors, three to verandahs and two to the main room!) Big and airy, ideal for Peter to convalesce and kids to run around.

Peter's much better now - couldn't even keep water down ust before we left the island. He's still very weak, tires easily, and has to be very careful what he eats. But at least he's not quite as yellow as he was. His eyes especially were a very vivid, startling yellow. So far the only test results we've had show that Peter and James both have/had hepatitis, but no mention of type or intensity, and tests for the girls are not back yet.

I'm making another desperate attempt to get Alison off the bottle - she has developed a hole in her front tooth. She has a very 'crowded' little mouth. We are seeing a dentist on Monday.

Jo has cut her eighth tooth at last. She's standing up a lot these days, without holding on, but no steps yet. She has a terrible temper. And this week here in Townsville she has developed a 2am play-time - as if I'm not tired enough already with a sick husband and three small kids and doing all the cooking, cleaning, shopping and driving around ...

I've just been filling in forms for James to do some pre-school by correspondance. So far all we have are some vague ideas and stuff about "everyday play' (sand, mud, water etc). We are looking forward to the arrival of the "equipment pack" (paints etc). Hopefully there will be things to do now and when we start travelling south for furlough - he's so ready for school. He is so confident these days. We go to the park and suddenly he's the "big kid" who can make the merry-go-round work and jump on and off again without falling.

I'm sitting on the front doorstep - not like on Murray where I always sit in the shade. The nights are very cold here (9degrees) but the days are really pleasant, like spring in Perth.

Letter: In Papua New Guinea

Letter 7 / 5 / 85

Despite heaps of sickness since we've been here (coughs, colds, fevers, ear infection, upset stomachs ... all in just two weeks!) our time so far has been really encouraging. So much so that the powers that be are discussing the possibility of us changing branches. Of course this sort of thing has never been done before - we want them to go a little bit over the international border, that's all. Then we would have access to all the trained consultants in this branch, and the computer dept, and even a travel subsidy. In turn we may be asked to act as consultants or whatever ourselves.

When it comes to computers our branch in Australia will only allow us to use certain ones (a choice of 2), neither of which is any use without mains power. We are the only ones without mains power, of course, and in such a small branch they have to make restrictions according to what sort of backup facilities they have. But up here in PNG every man and his dog has a computer, and the "in thing" is the little "Radio Shack 100" which runs on batteries, and is driven by a cassette player, and the accumulated data can then be "dumped" onto the big branch computers.

The lady who was babysitting Jo and Alison found it too hard to continue after her 2 year old came down with chloroquin-resistant malaria. We brought the girls with us to the lectures for a few days - trying to remind the administration that we have a problem! (They were very well-behaved, though). Now we leave them with the mother of three boys - Jacob (4), Caleb (3) and Abram (1). Jacob goes to pre-school with James. Young Abram is a little rascal, and is quite taken with Jo. Its been interesting for Sue, their mum, to have little girls around the place.

Emotional traumas for James

James is going through emotional traumas, again. He seems to like pre-school, though he doesn't talk about it. He's been sick, like the rest of us, and has only now developed asthma - first time in ages. He's very run-down, very weepy, won't eat. I have been trying to give him extra attention in case that's what he needs - things like housework are put aside - and he's been learning to trace his name ... but he gets so frustrated and cries if he doesn't get it perfect.

Emotional Upset for Alison

Alison has regressed too. I keep her in nappies all the time here - can't afford puddles etc on other people's carpets, and she has stopped trying to use the toilet. All our efforts to throw away the daytime bottle have gone to pot since she was sick and we let her have it to keep her fluids up. And for some reason she seems to have almost forgotten how to talk except to grunt and "yeah" and "nah". Maybe she's not hearing too well after having ear trouble - she still has a lovely smile!

Jo's missing smile

And little Jo - such a delightful child! We had a few days when we missed her smile, then we found she had an inner and an outer ear infection. Now her smile has returned. The other day she actually began to crawl a little, but she hasn't continued much. After all, she can usually find something close at hand to amuse her. Apart from her dark brown eyes she looks just like the others did at 9 months.

Sleepy kids

There's a market here (7 am Mon, Weds, and Fri) where the locals sell produce to the missios. We've been gobbling up avocados at 10-20t each. Last night at tea we had a fish (frozen, from the store) and corn, potato, sweet potato, and chokoes and choko greens (from the back yard). Unfortunately Jo had a disturbed nap during the day and fell asleep before tea, and James had a prolonged asthma attack just before tea too and fell asleep and slept all night.

Missing teenage mk

The day after we got here one of the teenage boys (16 year old, missionary kid) went missing while camping with a group of kids over the river. They presumed he'd gone to the toilet as he disappeared from his tent without even taking his shoes, but as time passed and he didn't return the search started - and kept going til 2am. They started again at first light using the helicopter and most of the personnel here - we heard the helicopters and stuff but weren't able to help. They gave up about mid-morning. Six days later there was supposed to be a "positive sighting" of him (alive) in nearby Kainantu town, about 7 miles away, and so they mobilised the senior high school boys and many others - thinking that for some reason he must be "running away". He was recently converted at a camp near where they had been camping. But they found his body in the river near Kainantu "looking like it had been there six days".