6 June 1973

MQ 44

Government Settlement

Republic Of Nauru

Central Pacific

6 June 1973

Dear Mum & Dad,

As you said in your last letter, things seem to happen pretty quickly here. The situation has taken the full circle & I am now booked to go to Tokyo on the 13^th June. My passport has already been sent to Melbourne to be stamped with a visa. The whole affair has been very complicated, my first insight into politics at work & has resulted in one of the members of Parliament resigning. His reason for resigning was not based on the facts, but explanations given in Parliament over the “Tokyo Affair” (cough!) must have been misinterpreted at least by him.

The Chief Secretary asked me to do a report on my findings, which, when it was originally discussed that I become involved, was not required. He used my report as the basis for his own report to the President. In the meantime, the Consul who had been recalled from Tokyo had to sweat it out on the island until the President decided he was clean & able to return. He was here a fortnight, most of which was spent in my office. The Chief Secretary concluded his report with two recommendations, one that the Consul be sent back to Japan, & two, that I be sent up as soon as possible to set up a new accounting system to speed up the recording of information to be sent back to Nauru.

I got to know the Consul quite well during his stay because for the first week we spent going over his expenses & returns to tidy up the account in Treasury & during the second week he used the spare desk in the office to prepare his budget for 73/74. The poor bloke had virtually nothing to work on as the figures to 28^th Feb were not correct. I helped him as much as I could by getting correct totals of various expenses for the present year on an adding machine & by making suggestions here & there. I really felt sorry for him because before he left it was obvious that there was a lot of local dislike for him because he had scored the Tokyo job ‘because of his friendship with the President” And here he was in enemy territory with even the President on his back. I think the help I gave him while he was here should pay off when I'm in Tokyo. My opinion of him was that he is doing a really good job considering the training he had & the lack of support he is getting from here.

Did I tell you about the pocket calculator he had with him. He purchased it in Tokyo just before he came down at export price from the manufacturer. This meant of course that there was no duty or sales tax or any other middleman profit. It runs on 4 penlight batteries & has an accessory that enables you to plug it into the power. Total price including the adaptor is under $40. It does the normal applications, adds, subtracts, multiplies & divides. It also has a constant switch, exchange button, correction & cancel buttons. I have priced a comparable unit on Nauru at $125 & that’s exclusive of duty or sales tax. You guessed, I'm going to get one when I'm in Tokyo.

A Director Of Audit has been appointed & should be here in a couple of weeks. That will mean a complete re-shuffle for the Internal Audit section because he will have to create a new Department. It may even mean recruiting another qualified expatriate. No one has any idea at the moment what’s going to happen, it will be completely up to the Director. An interesting side light is that, as yet he has no legislation to work with as the Audit Act is only in the Bill stage. Until that’s finally passed into Law he wont be able to move. No one has given any thought as to where he will be accommodated in the Admin building & now that I have my office comfortable with new furniture, washed walls & an air conditioner, I intend to squat there at all costs. A little highlight of the weekend was when the Chinaman making my frame delivered it & we went down to the office to finally hang up my certificate.

The President finally closed the door on my possible move to Treasury. According to the Chief Secretary who put the proposal to him for the second time he said that now they had an “efficient” internal auditor he preferred me to stay there- well. I am really pleased it turned out this way because although I was reasonably confident of being able to do something with the mess it would have been a very long job, & with the end of the financial year in only a month I might have finished up in a heap. Both the Secretary for Finance & the Chief Accountant are close to resigning because of the situation which has developed. They are both blaming the deteriorating position on a qualified Nauruan accountant who is at present the Acting Accountant. He really is pretty hopeless & the sooner they can get an expatriate in the better. They will have to wait until one is recruited from Australia now which will probably take at least 2 months.

Well that’s 2 ½ pages on work so it must be enough. We stay pretty busy week nights & weekends, a barbeque last Friday night, dinner with a group at the hotel on Saturday & lunch at the Club on Sunday. Sunday afternoon was very interesting. A group of about 15 of us organised an expedition “top-side” as it is called to an area which has not yet been mined. The purpose of the exercise was to explore some large caves. Andy & Darren missed out & once up there I appreciated the suggestion that they stay at home. The entrance to some of the caves is straight down a narrow hole, with a drop of about 12 feet. We used ropes to get down. The track up was pretty rough & those of us with bikes took those. The caves are really fascinating & have quite a history. During the war the island was bombed daily by the Americans, so the Japanese used the network of caves for a hospital through to ammunitions stores. They were set up with a complete fresh air system, electricity, stairs were cut & they were generally made comfortable. The entrances are heavily fortified with block houses of 3 foot concrete. They are very extensive, so we tramped about with our torches for hours. The temperature in the caves was the same as outside but it is dead still in there & we came out wringing wet. My only souvenir was a small green Jap beer bottle with a broken top. I've cut it off evenly to about the size of a small glass. & Andy has got a small water plant growing in it.

Last Monday night I was inducted as a member of the Nauru Apex Club. Our main project is a children’s mobile library which is on the road in a different district each week night. We are all rostered & 2 Apexians are on each night. We are also having working bees on Saturday mornings to cover approximately 1,000 new books sent up by Apex Clubs in the Western district of Victoria.

My application to the golf club has been accepted & I had my first game last week. It is a very short course & in a lot of cases a rifle would be more useful than a golf club to hit the greens. A miss-directed shot can put you in some funny places like the Chinese housing area, the power house or the main road.

Andy & Darren are both well. Darren continues to increase his vocabulary at a tremendous pace. To answer your query on the Secretary’s course, I can either do it through Hemingways & sit for the Institutes exams, or simply get the recommended texts & do it myself. Hemingway’s price is nearly $300 & that’s only for the last 2 sections. I think I might get the recommended texts.

That’s about all for now. Hope you are well.

Love from the Nauru Tuers.

PS Last week we had about an inch of rain, the first for about 3 months. It’s now dry again.