22 November 1973

Government Settlement

Republic Of Nauru

Central Pacific

22 November 1973

Dear Mum & Dad,

Thanks for the congratulations etc.. for the birth of Shane. It is nice to have the 3^rd bedroom occupied even if he does wake us up in the middle of the night. He is feeding very well & you can almost see him grow. There is a pretty established pattern that the kids born on the island (expatriates) usually grow into big kids. Andy hopes to breast feed as long as possible because of the milk situation. Darren thinks Shane is great & we are very pleased with his reaction. We have finally received our last lot of supplies ordered for Shane eg. nappies, bottles etc. from Myers & some bits & pieces from Mothercare in England. These all arrived yesterday off one of the ships. We had been getting by with some thin nappies from China Town.

Yesterday we had a gang of prisoners at the house cleaning up the yard. It was in a hell of a mess with material from the renovations & repairs to the roof all over the place. They even cleaned up the garden. It is still dry but our water situation was improved today with the arrival of the new 32,000 ton “Kolle D” on a run from Tasmania to Japan with a pretty big load of Tasmanian water. I have heard a rumour that we may be faced with power restrictions soon because of a cut back in diesel fuel for the generators. Some of the people who run air conditioners to protect expensive sound equipment from rust are getting worried.

There isn't anything more to report. I've enclosed a copy of a chapter from “Auditing” by Irish that may be of some assistance to Bruce, if he hasn't already made a decision. Your comments in the last letter came as a bit of a surprise as I thought you were pretty settled in Warnambool. I would be interested to hear what the turnover & gross profit have been in the business Bruce was looking at.

On that note I’ll sign off. Hope you are fit & well.

Love from Andy, Greg, Darren & Shane