A Bird on My Shoulder (24 page)

•••

Three years after Julian died, I made my first significant decision. General wisdom had dictated caution– make no major plans within the first year – but the statute of limitations on that was well overdue.

George was now eight years old and Meg and Charlotte were five. It was time to take them to Papua New Guinea. I had no idea how this would happen or what I might do once I got there, but I wrote to some friends to see if they had any ideas. Clearly full-time journalism was out of the question and I had no desire to return to Port Moresby permanently; I knew that would be far too hard.

There was also a growing desire in me to reconnect with the person I used to be, to leave this place of sorrow and remember, once again, the living Julian. And I wanted the children somehow, mysteriously, to also find something of him there, an echo of where he had been during the happiest years of his life.

I had remained in contact with several friends, one of whom was Ian Boden. When Julian and I had left Port Moresby, Ian had been the deputy editor of
The National
, a local newspaper, but in the intervening years he had secured a place at Divine Word University in Madang, on PNG's north coast, as a lecturer.

Sometimes, in our email exchanges, I would ask Ian to look out for a suitable job for me volunteering at the university. My emails did not betray the hunger I really felt but I always trusted that Ian, who knew me so well, could divine what was in my heart.

One day, I went with the children to visit some friends in Robertson who ran an alternative community and the conversation turned to Papua New Guinea. They let me ramble on for quite a while; as I spoke I felt a keen longing to return and was grateful for the opportunity to talk.

As we drove home, I remembered that I had two copies of Frank Hurley's collection of extraordinary black-and-white photographs taken in Papua New Guinea. I ran into the house, grabbed a copy and, with the children still strapped in their car seats, raced back through the country lanes to my friends' house and presented them with the book as a gift of thanks for listening.

I tried to ignore the squabbling in the back seat as we drove home; my mind was full of Papua New Guinea. How could I get back there? If I did, how I would I manage with the children?
What would I do with the house and Stig? Was it a good idea? Would the children even want to go?

By the time we arrived home I already felt deflated. Back to reality. Baths, dinner, stories, bed, and the yawning emptiness of another evening alone.

After the usual scuffle and pleadings for ‘another story, another story', the children eventually fell asleep, and I wandered upstairs to check my emails.

My inbox showed one message. I half-heartedly clicked on it. It was from Ian. It began:

It seemed the gods were on my side.

ASKING

I pray to be open to life

To all the gifts that lie within me

To cherish every day, every moment,

And to be open to letting go, for

Every opportunity to heal, to forgive.

I give thanks for all the joys that come with living,

To have been loved and to love.

I pray for the grace to listen to truth,

To embrace the constantly flowing

Source of love within my heart.

I pray that I will live before I die.

26

I dreamed I was standing in a room surrounded by thousands

of tiny notes, tied together with spidery silver threads. A sign

on the blank wall said,
These are all the moments, the

chances, and coincidences, every step that led you to Julian.

Quite a few eyebrows were raised when I announced we were going back to Papua New Guinea for a year and that George, Meg and Charlotte would be going to school there.

People asked me whether I was worried about the level of crime or the culture shock, but strangely enough I only ever experienced that sense of displacement when I returned to Australia, where so many aspects of life no longer made any sense.

I remember once taking Nina to see Ros Nougher who had just given birth to her first daughter. She had been home for a few weeks, and was adjusting to the enormous responsibility of having a brand-new tiny baby, April, and a partner who
worked full time. When she opened the door, she had the look of many new mothers in the West: exhausted, overwhelmed and dishevelled. We tiptoed in and stayed for a couple of hours, just long enough to see her beautiful baby awake. As we stood at the doorway, saying our goodbyes, I felt enormously sad that I could not stay and help her more.

The same thought obviously occurred to Nina, because as we drove away, she said, ‘Ros is tired. Why is no-one helping her?'

I explained that her husband was working.

‘But where are her sisters, her aunties, her mother?' Nina pressed.

I explained that they all lived in different parts of Australia and that this was quite normal for a woman in our society. Many new mothers were left to their own devices, and did not receive the tsunami of care and support that many women in Papua New Guinea would have been brought up to expect.

Nina gave a mild snort of disapproval. ‘Someone should be helping her,' she said.

Like the hotel and hairdressers for dogs that had shocked Susannah Wamp when she visited England, there were moments when I felt ashamed and concerned for the humanity of my own culture. I found it hard to explain to Nina why a woman in such a vulnerable phase of her life had no family around to help her. It troubled me, too, that it did not trouble me; that I saw Ros's circumstances as normal, and so too stories of
post-partum depression and isolation, despite the obvious cost to the quality of a person's life.

I privately longed to return to PNG, to bask in the support and affection of a caring community. That said, I wasn't seeing the country entirely through rose-tinted glasses. Living there with Julian had been one thing, but returning alone with three young children presented greater potential risks. However, Madang was a much quieter coastal town than Port Moresby, I reasoned, and robberies and violence were much less common.

Health care was another issue. After my experiences in Port Moresby, I knew that in comparison with Australia the health services across PNG were rudimentary at best. If the children were seriously injured, we would be in trouble; I already knew from Ian that the local hospital in Madang regularly ran out of anaesthetics and had little or no resources for dealing with a life-threatening illness or emergency.

But the children were healthy and I felt confident that I could care for them. Nevertheless, I began to fill a small suitcase with medicines that might not be readily available once we were there.

Everything began to fall into place. Some family friends offered to stay at the farm for the first few months while their home in Robertson was undergoing renovations, and they would also take care of Stig. It was a perfect solution for everyone.

After several frustrating delays with visas and work permits, we finally left for Madang at the end of January 2005. A delighted Ian was at the airport to greet us and take us to our new house.

The university campus was on the edge of town. Like all the staff working there, we were allocated a tiny two-bedroom fibro house, fortunately for us at the heart of a bustling community.

The children started at Madang International School two days after we arrived so that I could begin work. This was not an ideal introduction to their new life, but I had little choice – and I had absolute faith that they would cope, as indeed they did.

I arrived at the office for my first day at my new job to be greeted by the department head, Valia Papoutsaki.

‘Wonderful to meet you, I've heard so much about you from Ian,' she said, looking at her watch. ‘Okay, we have ten minutes until your first class on international news and research. Here's the course outline and I'll catch up with you at recess.'

The classrooms at the university were large, open rooms with louvred windows down each side and creaking fans. I soon learned that if the fans were left on, we could not hear one another, so the only option was to sweat our way through the class. The students wandered in and sat down at old-fashioned wooden desks, surprised by the sight of a new teacher.

I scanned the notes as they settled in. With no time to properly prepare, I was desperately scrambling for ideas. One
student sitting near the front had carried with him a copy of that day's
Port Courier
with a story on the front page about the war in Iraq. It was as good a subject as any, so I began by asking what they thought about the conflict.

There was an immediate chorus of support for the American-led invasion.

‘The Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction,' one said.

‘Saddam Hussein is a terrorist,' said another.

I already knew the political bias of the newspapers in the country from my days as a journalist. I also knew how easy it was to present a very one-sided view of any event. The internet was far from pervasive in PNG at the time, and was still expensive and cumbersome, so I would have to rely on common sense to challenge their strong views.

We started a discussion about who owned the newspapers, who wrote the news and how many war reporters were not being given free access to all sides of the conflict. In a culture where tribal fighting was still a fact of life and inter-clan relationships were bogged down in political complexity, the students immediately grasped that there might be far more to the Iraq war than they had realised.

‘Are you saying that every story is biased?' one girl asked.

‘A lot of the time in war, yes it is,' I replied. ‘One job of a journalist is to read as much as possible and to question everything. Don't believe it just because it's written down.'

‘Well, how do we know what we read is true?'

‘We don't,' I said. ‘But we're going to try to work it out.'

•••

Returning to full-time work after several years of absence and being back in the realm of journalism, albeit in a role somewhat removed from the everyday news cycle, was exhilarating. It was stimulating to think about world events again and to be focused on something other than domestic life.

I was no longer surrounded by people who were wary of me, wondering whether I was about to burst into tears or nervous about what to say. Living in the centre of the campus, there was always someone dropping in for a chat or to play with the children. The community of students absolutely saved my sanity and, without a grand display, gave me all the support I needed.

•••

Life in PNG was such a far cry from the isolation of the farm and it was wonderful to spend so much time with Ian, my old friend and new neighbour. He was particularly solicitous towards the children, patiently playing chess with George and encouraging the students to do so as well.

I worked every day, teaching journalism and creative writing. I found an old room which could be used as an art studio, and with the help of friends like Stephen and Celeste I began
to gather materials from Australia. I even launched a poetry competition with a $100 prize which was donated ‘from the estate of the late Julian Thirlwall' – it was fantastic to see the outpouring of creativity among the students and I felt so privileged to be part of that.

When possible, I took the children travelling during the holidays. Papua New Guinea has so many extraordinary, unspoilt destinations and I was up for as many experiences as we could afford.

‘You took the children to so many dangerous places,' someone commented later.

‘Well, I wanted some adventures,' I said, ‘so they didn't really have much choice.'

•••

Julian had often talked of exploring by dugout canoe the mighty Sepik River near PNG's western border with Irian Jaya, but he never got there. After weeks of research – where to stay and what to do – the children and I boarded a tiny aircraft run by the Missionary Aviation Fellowship and headed into the wilds.

The river twisted beneath our tiny plane like a lazy brown serpent. Wisps of smoke, just discernible, rose up from the roofs of thatched village houses clustered along the water's edge.

Our young pilot, Bartholomew, occasionally turned and grinned at the children in the seats behind, their small white
faces already bathed in sweat as they gazed in fascination at the view below. Meg was clutching a small white bear.

‘Ambunti
. Em I stap we?
Where is Ambunti?' I shouted into my mouthpiece.

Bartholomew pointed ahead and I could see the gleaming corrugated-iron roof of a church. As we descended I could see a lone man standing up in a long dugout canoe, like a gondolier.

Julian's forgotten dreams.

‘Why are you crying, Mum?' asked George.

‘Sorry, darling, I'm fine,' I said, giving him a hug.

As the tiny mission station of Ambunti came into view, I began to look for the airstrip. On seeing a tiny strip of grass, I wondered how we could possibly land, but seconds later, with a lurching descent, we were bouncing over the runway in a blur of incredible noise.

I could already see several women with small children laying their woven mats under a huge rain tree next to the church – we were being treated to an impromptu market of shells, armbands and bracelets. The children immediately ran to see what they were selling.

Several treasures later, we moved to sit in the shade of the church porch and wait for our host, Robert, to arrive and take us to the guesthouse. Well, that's what I had told the children. The truth was I had no idea where we were staying that night because, after buying some very expensive and non-refundable
tickets, I was told that the Ambunti guesthouse had not been open for two years. I decided, perhaps somewhat recklessly, that we should go anyway.