PNG ATTITUDE

Web power triggers new special delivery

The correspondent

Oala Moi, a disaster management official with PNG’s National Disaster Centre, is in Beijing on a disaster training seminar sponsored by the Chinese Government. The other night, perhaps feeling a bit homesick, he was idly searching the Internet for the name of his village – Boera, near Port Moresby – when he came upon the following story, written six years ago by Richard Jones, just as the ASOPA regeneration was getting underway.

The story, by Richard Jones

SPECIAL DELIVERY: The Porebada Coast isn’t far from Port Moresby but in the wet season the dirt roads became almost impassable. Getting to town from Boera, where I was head teacher, could be tricky. In 1967, I was the rugby league writer for the South Pacific Post. In the sixties, Friday night league in Moresby was the highlight of the sporting week. On Thursday morning the sports editor required the preview.

A Standard 6 lad did the run from Boera for me. Gonogo Ganiga boarded the Boera truck armed with my story and clad in my rainproof jacket. One day, because of road works, the truck was forced to stop near Idubada. Gonogo disembarked and trudged in pouring rain past Hagara, Hanuabada and Konedobu to Lawes Road and dropped off the packet a the newspaper office. The South Pacific Post sports desk never complained about material arrived dripping wet and the weekend rugby league preview appeared as normal in next day’s issue. Not for the first time, I thanked Papuan ingenuity.

The google, by Oala Moi

I googled ‘Boera’ and read a short story by Richard Jones, ‘Special Delivery’. I took particular interest as the delivery boy in the story, Gonogo Ganiga, is actually my maternal uncle. My mother's maiden name is Naime Ganiga and I am also from Boera. Uncle Gonogo is alive and well but in his mid to late 40s (I think!).

The story put a smile on my face as it confirms my misgivings about this uncle's boasts about working for the Post Courier back in the seventies. I may have been a kid but my instincts were not always wrong. I will show this article to my uncle once I return from my overseas trip (am in Beijing now). I am sure my uncle remembers his head teacher fondly.

The response, by Richard Jones

In due deference to Mr Gonogo Ganiga, he was only a Standard 4 or 5 boy when he did the job as a ‘runner’ or ‘copyboy deliverer’ back in the late 1960s. He could well have gone on to work for the Post-Courier later in life - and into the 1970s - when he had finished school.

Gonogo Ganiga was a delightful boy, always willing to help. No after-school task was too onerous for him. He especially loved the sarif (grass-cutting) duties around the teachers’ houses. It meant he could duck inside and watch the magic of the flush, septic toilet - paper and water disappearing before his very eyes with one push of the button. And, magically, the cistern filling up ready for another plunge.

The upshot

It turns out that, in addition to his day job, Oala is a music columnist, music publisher and music copyright advocate in PNG. And he’s also a very talented songwriter. You can see a music video he wrote, composed and co-produced for the PNG National Disaster Centre on YouTube here. Just click here and wait, the video will launch itself.

Seeking highlands singsing audio

One of Siebrand Petrusma’s retirement goals is to convert his 8mm colour film footage of PNG during the 1960s to digital format and edit this to produce a DVD. As you might imagine it’s a major project but it’s one that will give his family and other people some idea of what an amazing era that was.

Here’s how you may be able to help. Some of the film was shot in the Southern Highlands and Siebrand is looking for an audio recording of a highlands singsing to be used as part of the sound track. So far, all his attempts have been fruitless. If you can assist, send Siebrand an email here or call him on 03 6248 1267. Oh, and while you’re at it, why don’t you drop into his blog samtingbilongmi here.

Songs Of The Volcano free online

Ingrid Jackson

Bob Brozman and Phil Donnison went to villages in East New Britain to record five different Tolai string bands for the music on the CD, Songs of the Volcano. Bob, an accomplished guitarist, is Adjunct Professor of Music at Macquarie University, while Phil, an Asopian of 1969-70 and son of the renowned Norm Donnison, is a musician and filmmaker. One purpose of their mission to the Gazelle was to record this fragile music before it disappears.

Rabaul is a town that has had its share of hard times. In the same century it was destroyed twice by massive volcanic eruptions and once by a devastating war. The Tolai people suffered greatly from these natural and manmade disasters yet always managed to bounce back.

Rabaul is the location where guitars first arrived in PNG, and the music has an innocence and beauty reminiscent of what guitar music may have sounded like in Hawaii and Mexico in the mid nineteenth century. Most music travelled across the Pacific on boats, with sailors leaving behind instruments and ideas to percolate in isolation. Hence, the songs on this album sound both exotic and familiar.

You can find Songs of the Volcano at this website.

The jugalug sound of ASOPA

Phil Donnison - son of ASOPA sixties education lecturer, the great Norm Donnison, and an ASOPA graduate himself - is now a well-known musician around Sydney as leader of the Jugalug Stringband.

“Oi!” writes Phil with his usual understatement. “The Jugalug Stringband was the feature album of the day on ABC Radio National's The Daily Planet last Wednesday. Following the show we had a great flurry of CD sales from emails and via our website - so radio does work! The show is presently on the net so have a listen now before it's gone forever!”

For the ease of your listening pleasure, dear reader, I have located the link to the program and if you click here, after an irrelevant introduction (the ABC has not given us a clean cut into the program), you will hear the Jugalug in its full glory presenting melodies from its new album, Waltz Mysterioso.

The traditional stringbands were combinations of portable instruments like guitars, banjos, violins and basses. Sometimes a kazoo or a harmonica was added while a washboard contributed rhythmic texture and a blown jug took over the role of the bass. Jugalug plays a repertoire that was popular between the late 19th century and World War 2. It’s an unusual, inventive and happy sound. If it turns you on, you can also visit the band’s website here and order yourself a copy of the CD.

More about Maria

  Les Peterkin writes: I remember Maria von Trapp on the 4th E-Course in Rabaul, which ran from April to September 1963. I had been seconded from ASOPA to lecture in Physical Education and Music on that program. Maria was a quiet and unassuming lady but, to everyone's delight and enjoyment, she was a brilliant recorder player. I more or less put her in charge of teaching the recorder to the rest of the students.

Much of the music course was designed to impart to students suitable folk and camp songs which they could teach in the schools. One of these was ‘Do Lord, Oh do Lord, Oh do remember me!’ Most of you will recall these songs from ASOPA days. We also taught local traditional songs and songs in pidgin like ‘Lik lik kanu’.

After we taught the songs to the school kids they would go home and teach their parents. The New Guinea Islands people are fantastic singers and I was greatly thrilled towards the end of my stay in Rabaul when a two-ton truck full of people drove by on the way to Saturday morning market with all on board singing ‘Do Lord’ in full voice.

I was also given to task of training the Malaguna Boys Technical School choir for the big choral festival held each year. That's a great memory: a hundred boys singing in perfect pitch and four part harmony. I taught ‘Jamaica Farewell’, having to write it on the blackboard in Solfa with the boys singing by numbers – the same way the missions taught singing. Can you believe it?

RABAUL IN SONG & FILM

Renowned US guitarist Bob Brozman travelled to Rabaul with film maker Phil Donnison (ASOPA education lecturer Norm Donnison’s son) to capture on DVD and CD the sound of Rabaul’s local string bands. The music reflects an unfailing optimism in the face of war and volcanic eruptions that have destroyed the town twice in one century.

Phil Donnison writes: "I first went to Papua New Guinea as a teenager in 1960 when my father was sent to run an expatriate teacher training course at Malaguna Technical College in Rabaul, East New Britain.

"There were a number of other significant firsts for me in that year; it was my first trip in an airplane; my first overseas trip; the first time to experience the tropics in all its sweat, vibrancy and colour; and it was the first time I passed Latin.

"Rabaul was a flower-laden paradise. The wide streets, engineered by its German colonial masters, were lined with magnificent trees – mangos, casuarinas and kapoks, giant fragrant frangipanis and sizzling flames. Surrounding its magnificent harbour were no less than five volcanoes. One, Tavurvur, was still semi-active, with sulphurous, stinking steam wafting over the town when the trade winds blew in the right direction.

"The Tolai people were colourful, handsome and happy. Reminders of the Japanese and Australian involvement in the last World War were scattered along the beaches and in the dense jungle clad hills and mountains. We climbed inside the crater of Tavurvur, snorkelled on the reefs, swam amongst myriad colourful fish, visited villages, copra and cocoa plantations, and browsed the many Chinese trade stores – overflowing with amazing treasures from the east. We played with the village kids who showed us hidden paths in their secret jungles, visited the markets, ventured into Japanese tunnels and practised our Pidgin."

You can read more and order Songs of the Volcano at Bob Brozman’s website here. The cost of the DVD/CD set is reasonably priced at about $35 Australian including postage and packing.