28 May 1974

Kolo Ridge

Honiara

B.S.I.P.

28 May 1974

Dear Mum & Dad,

Well my phone call today inspired me to write you a letter. It was great to hear your voices & you both sounded a lot happier than when I last spoke to you. I have said before that this place feels a lot more isolated from Australia than Nauru. Even Australian news takes a long time to filter through & even then you have to chase it. But, after all it isn't Australia & once that sinks in it is a very nice place. We know doubt suffered a bit of a cultural shock when we first arrived. We had gained a large number of friends on Nauru which was very easy to do. Honiara is a lot more ”big town” & even though we realized it would take longer to fit in it doesn’t make it easier. I think we have now found our niche & feel comfortable in our surroundings. As you know different towns have their own quirks & it is even more so with countries. The Poms have a big influence on the expatriate community, but the Solomon Islanders are now influencing the way of life more as it gets closer to Independence. For example, the imported goods that attract the highest duty are those used by expatriates, sugar, coffee, beer etc. It is almost impossible for Europeans to get new jobs in the Solomons because of the localisation programme. The unfortunate part of it is that there are very few locals either intellectually or educationally trained for the specialized jobs being left vacant by expats. My back up staff is almost nil & what will finally drive us out will be overwork. I have never worked so hard & still things are getting left for later. I just lost a reasonably good secretary-typist & gained an idiot. We have radio contact with the logging camp at Viru Harbour twice a day 8.30 am & 2.30 pm & it is part of her job to take down the conversation & messages & type them for circulation & action. Our new acquisition finds that a full time job.

Andy & I attended a dinner last week at the Mendana Hotel, at Mobil’s expense. The occasion was a visit by the Australian & Pacific Manager, the General Manager for the South Pacific & the Manager for Papua New Guinea & the Solomon Islands. The big chief, The Australian & Pacific Manger is an American & based in Melbourne. They were on a rather quick grand tour of their area of influence & in fact only stayed the one night. They all brought their wives along so the evening was quite social. Representatives from Solomon Motors were the General Manager, the Ataka director & me & wives of course.

As I mentioned on the phone, Shane has been crawling for about 4 weeks now. He started off like a frog & would pull his rear end up & sort of throw himself forward onto his tummy. He has progressed to doing it properly & stalks around the house like a veteran. He likes to crawl into the shower & splash around in the water.

I took Darren off to preschool today, a first for me. Andy usually takes him & I didn't think he would be quite up to leaving his Mum at the house instead of the school gate. However I was wrong & he was thrilled that Daddy should take him & waved bye to Andy & perched up in the Mazda. He kept it up all the way to school. The preschool has a Gilbertese woman helper who comes out & assists the kids into school & today she helped Darren out of the car & closed the door & off went Darren with his school bag full of play lunch, through the gate without hardly a backward glance. The whole thing nearly broke me up. I guess he is growing up. He is going Tuesday & Thursday mornings from 8 to 12. Andy has been attending “keep fit” classes on the same mornings so it works in well. She leaves Shane with our house girl to mind.

                                            Darren off to Rove Infant School

We had the P&O passenger liner Orosay in last Friday. & 1,200 passengers plus crew hit the town. It was quite a shock to the place, all the local carvers & artefact makers had their goods on display & appeared to do a roaring trade. A large group from the island of Malaita put on an elaborate display of dancing & shell money making.

That’s about the lot for now. Again, it was great to hear your voices on the phone & to hear that you both sound so well.

Love from all of us here,

Greg