A day on the Ridge.

The dim yellow glow of halogen lights filtered through a nebulous spray
of fog greets me like the setting for a horror movie. I follow the grey
strip of concrete round corners, up stairs, through a basketball court,
weaving around people dressed in coveralls blue and red.
It's only five thirty but the mess hall is full of the peoples that make
up a project, Fasu and Huli, Australian and American, a sprinkling of
other nationalities including the odd Kiwi like me.
The guard at the entrance nods to me in passing. Kitchen staff are
working away over steaming cauldrons, or serving food to the line of
waiting people they have been up since midnight but always seem to
manage a great deal more cheerfulness then I can manage at this time of
the day.
For me breakfast is nothing more then muesli and a big mug of steaming
coffee but around me plates are piled high with rice, eggs and steak,
those that have to spent the day in the field need a lot of sustenance.
I make a quick trip back to my room to brush my teeth and a few minutes
later I am behind my desk going through email, planning out my day and
dealing with whatever problems have surfaced during the night.
By about seven o'clock the first people arrive in the Brisbane office
and the telephone starts ringing, normally Anthony checks in or I ring
him if something is on my mind and we try to coordinate the days
activities. Today camps and catering is foremost on everybody's agenda
and whether we can engage a sub contractor to manage this for us. Later
in the morning I have a meeting with them in Moro and it seems that we
understand each other on most issues. There are of course problems with
labour hire which has to go through a landowner company and the fact
that everything you need has to either flown in or trucked on a
hazardous four day road trip from Lae. It hasn't happened recently to us
but highway robbery is far from unknown out here.
I get back to the office in time for some more emails and lunch. Lunch
is normally a full featured affair with both hot and cold food
selections and desert for those that want to. I normally have some cold
meat and cheese on a roll and a side salad of some description but today
they have lamb curry on the menu, which I like, so lamb curry it is,
there are even poppadums to go with it.
The afternoon is spend with updating CEFRS with the latest forecast and
doing some good, nice numbers. It is most enjoyable at times to just
puzzle with figures when they are not to easy to get bored and not to
difficult to get frustrated. At the end of the day we have a project
meeting to go over the days proceedings, all the supervisors come in
from the field for a debrief and we make sure that everybody knows what
is happening to the various aspects of the job. Then it's dinner, watch
some telly for an hour or so, read my book and by nine thirty it is
lights out and hopefully of to sleep.

Cheap.

Life is cheap in the highlands of PNG and so is the cost of living if
the company houses and feeds you. Today I incurred my first expense in a
fortnight though. A somewhat disreputable bottle of Sunsilk shampoo with
the label almost worn off cost me all of five kina or just under two
dollars. I don't anticipate any other major purchases this rotation.
Good thing they don't sell chocolate.

Just a note on the site medical team.

In my less then pleasant mood yesterday I forgot to mention that all the
people that staff the site hospital are PNG nationals. They once again
confirmed my belief that if you give people the opportunity and a decent
education they are capable of excellent work. They were at all times
professional while at the same time caring and seriously concerned for
my well being. I am back at work and feeling well. Hats off to them.


NOTE: This message may contain privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the addressee(s) named above.
If you are not the intended recipient(s) of this message you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance on it.
If you received the message in error please notify the original sender immediately and delete the message and any attachments.

Not very happy.

Talk about having a lousy day. I woke up around midnight and felt
nauseated, had stomach cramps and spend the next few hours on the toilet
loosing most of my body fluids. At six in the morning or so things
settled down a bit and I managed to get some sleep. At nine thirty John
banged on my door, apparently for the second time, and took me over to
the site clinic. It didn't take long for them to diagnose what I
expected already, food poisoning. So I found myself on a hospital bed
with a medic trying to insert an IV it took three goes before they got
it in. I know I am a wimp but it did hurt when they got it wrong. Two
hours later I felt a lot better and they had dripped a litre or two of
water, antibiotics and cortisone in my system.
I have just stumbled in the office to check my email and have found a
whole variety of problems with our contractors and land owner groups as
well.
I think I go back to bed.




NOTE: This message may contain privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the addressee(s) named above.
If you are not the intended recipient(s) of this message you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance on it.
If you received the message in error please notify the original sender immediately and delete the message and any attachments.

An update from the rainy ridge camp.

Time to update the blog.
Over the last week we have been busy getting a lot of the infrastructure
together and setting up a lot of the peripheral items that we require to
get the job done. I myself am currently keeping occupied by negotiating
with and making arrangements for the caterer to take over the running of
our new camp at Sisibia. This requires a fair bit of effort as the camp
isn't exactly habitable and a "refurbishment" programme is under way.
Yesterday I got a list of things that need to be fixed up in the
kitchen, like getting a stove that works, fixing the dish washer and so
on and all that will take some time. Never the less we are still pushing
for us to move there by the end of next week.
We also had the first job evacuation, one of our local labourers came
down with cerebral malaria and had to be evacuated from a cliff face
where we are doing some bush clearing ahead of the geotech crowd coming
in and drilling some test holes for us. This will largely determine
whether we go ahead with the bridge over the Hegigio gorge at this
point. It's all limestone country here so there is always a significant
change of finding caves where we would like to put our bridge anchors.
The evacuation went smoothly with less then forty minutes between the
first call on the radio and the doctor being flown in and subsequently
the man out.
Other then that it still rains most of the time although I think it was
dry for some time last night or at least I couldn't hear any rain on my
bedroom roof.


NOTE: This message may contain privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the addressee(s) named above.
If you are not the intended recipient(s) of this message you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance on it.
If you received the message in error please notify the original sender immediately and delete the message and any attachments.

Just working away in PNG.

It's actually dry today. There was plenty of rain last night but now it
has dried out although it's still overcast. I am starting to get various
parts of my work organised and while construction still hasn't started
in earnest we are making headway with the infrastructure planning and
everybody is engaged in trying to sort out things as diverse as what we
need to eat, how to book people on the charter flight or where to site
the fuel tanks for the helicopter.



NOTE: This message may contain privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the addressee(s) named above.
If you are not the intended recipient(s) of this message you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance on it.
If you received the message in error please notify the original sender immediately and delete the message and any attachments.

Return to the jungle.

Last night just after six and after the usual chaotic travel
arrangements I arrived back on site. The rumours that the weather was
improving got dispelled when we landed in a steady rain at Moro airport.
This morning there is the odd patch of sky visible from time to time
though so maybe it will improve after all. As anticipated things are
looking up here and we now have a number of people arranging our remote
camps and early next week we should move from the Ridge to Sisibia near
the Agogo Processing Facility. The pipeline contractor is back on site
as well and a geotech crew is due to fly in to the Hegigio gorge
abutment to check out the rock structure to anchor the bridge on. All in
all it looks like we have finally a project going.


NOTE: This message may contain privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the addressee(s) named above.
If you are not the intended recipient(s) of this message you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance on it.
If you received the message in error please notify the original sender immediately and delete the message and any attachments.

Return to the Jungle.

Last night just after six and after the usual chaotic travel
arrangements I arrived back on site. The rumours that the weather was
improving got dispelled when we landed in a steady rain at Moro airport.
This morning there is the odd patch of sky visible from time to time
though so maybe it will improve after all.
As anticipated things are looking up here and we now have a number of
people arranging our remote camps and early next week we should move
from the Ridge to Sisibia near the Agogo Processing Facility. The
pipeline contractor is back on site as well and a geotech crew is due to
fly in to the Hegigio gorge abutment to check out the rock structure to
anchor the bridge on. All in all it looks like we have finally a project
going.


NOTE: This message may contain privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the addressee(s) named above.
If you are not the intended recipient(s) of this message you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance on it.
If you received the message in error please notify the original sender immediately and delete the message and any attachments.

Home for a few days.

I managed to get a long weekend in New Zealand before heading of back to Brisbane for on Tuesday and PNG on Wednesday. The flight arrangements were chaotic as usual but hey we are home so who cares?