First day back at work

9.10 Advised that a man with a gun has threatened Joe and Jim at the wellpad near the lookout.
9.15 Called Shane on the radio and asked him to return to the office
9.16 Requested security to get Chris or Dennis to call me.
9.23 Advised the plant supervisor of the APF of a "shooter" in the area.
9.24 Dennis returned my phone call and will organise mobile squad to go down.
10.26 John, our security manager, believes the shooter is actually a person he knows and is going down to the wellhead to "sort it out"

Well they didn't find the guy but it appears it is all related to a tribal killing in 1964, they have long memories out here. The reason our people were held up seems to be more by accident then design.

Anyway plenty of excitement for a first day back at work.

Another flying visit.

I am on my way to PNG again after the briefest of visits home. Last Tuesday I spent all day on the plane and being harrassed by various check-in drones about my passport and the fact that I have visae in both my old and new passports. Anyway Wednesday morning I was back in NZ and greeted by friends and family at the airport. The last few days were passed playing with Daniel who has definitly improved his communication skills over the last month, it is good to see some progress.
Unfortunately as I wrote earlier it was a very short visit and yesterday afternoon I flew back to Sydney and right now I am waiting for my flight to Port Moresby.

Another strike.

We haven't had any labour unrest for at  least five days now. So it had to happen, we mobilised our pipe support crew to the start of the bush run and voila up jumped a bunch of people saying "no you can't work here". I should have known that this would happen as all the community affairs people strategically disappeared from the office this morning. So now we are running around finding them as well as the management from our subcontractor. Things just never are easy out here.

Flying visit.

A small flying fox somehow got into our office. I made a few half hearted attempts to catch it but then one of our local employees came around and caught it on his first try. It took some persuasion to get him to let it go again rather then turn it in a snack but eventually the beast was released unharmed to join his brethren out in a tree somewhere.

Weather

Yesterday at four in the afternoon the wind picked up and I decided to get a bit of a cool breeze on the veranda for a moment. Then the wind really started moving and spinning and while I was still thinking micro burst it lifted the roof clean of the medical centre's veranda. Three minutes later the wind died away and on inspection we found that no one had been hurt and with the exception of a few loose sheets of roofing iron the camp had sustained no additional damage.

Strikes, storms and sabotage we've got it all.