Quote:
Originally Posted by ali
See, I know you had more tales to tell.
A special Story Telling Corner at the Perth Meet for you Bobcat! |
Being on the Dole long term wasn't much fun at all really....... but I kept my mind occupied by doing what I like to do best .......... with plenty of spare time on my hands and not much joy on the job horizon.............. I became a founder member of the Northern Writer's Association which later became the Peter Cowan Writer's Centre at Edith Cowan University Campus in Joondalup.......... and I wrote a book.
I pinched the title from a favourite Bob Dylan song of mine...... ....... and the manuscript won me several prizes ........ I got interviewed on Radio 6PR and the West Australian Newspaper were going to run a big article in Saturday's Weekend West pull-out. I spent half a day down at the West as we picked out a series of slides to compliment the write-up............ only for them to get cold feet and can it because of the legal backlash threatened. My book is highly critical of Australian mining projects overseas; and the West didn't want to do battle with the Big Australian BHP or Conzinc Rio-Tinto ........... the mining company I worked for on Bougainville Island for 10 years? In fairness to the West...... they still paid me even though we didn't go to print which I thought was pretty cool!
I was advised to turn my manuscript into a screenplay........ which I did. It's based on what I saw during 10 years up the bush in PNG prior to war breaking out there.
Screen West here in Perth have had the manuscript for at least 10 years now............. they're probably using it as a doorstop? The best they have come up with over the years is 'Dance around the lighthouse' starring Jack thompson and filmed on Rottnest....... but it bombed......... and was even declared the worst film
ever !
I don't think Screen West have such a good track record actually........... they rejected Wolf Creek which was filmed in the north West and loosley based on the Peter Falconio disappearance .............. and an Ivan Milat type chappie ........... which went on to win rave reviews and even attracted the attention of Quinten Tarratino?
Good old Screen West eh.
ONE TOO MANY MORNINGS
by
John Mason
PROLOGUE
Bougainville, once a peaceful idyllic tropical paradise lays a thousand kilometres east of mainland Papua New Guinea. It was so named after French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, the first European to clamp eyes on the harsh impenetrable jungle terrain in July 1768.
Commander in chief of vessels L 'Etoile and La Bordeuse when he made his epic journey to the remote South Pacific, after sighting Bougainville he sailed further east finding a smaller island which he called Choiseul, nowadays part of Western Province in the Solomon Islands.
In 1567 Spaniard Alvaro de Mendana set sail from Peru in search of fabled gold, the source of King Solomon's treasure. He arrived at what he called Puerte de la Cruz, during his quest he found no gold but still insisted on naming the islands after the great King.
Bougainville and widely scattered smaller islands make up the North Solomons Province of Papua New Guinea. Distant from the mainland the islands are not ethnically or geographically related as culture-wise the natives have more in common with neighbouring Solomon Islanders.
Today in 1992, against wishes of the majority of landowners their island still remains part of Papua New Guinea but the outlawed Bougainville Revolutionary Army would beg to differ. A vain attempt in 1975 to achieve secession from the mainland was quickly thwarted, not so the happenings of 1989-92 which sprang up out of initial demands for ten billion dollars compensation from the giant Australian mining company.
In 1989 Panguna landowners ordered the mining company to pay what many considered a ridiculous demand for compensation to cover damage done to the surrounding environment. The company steadfastly refused to meet demands and out of the blue came the raggle-taggle Bougainville Revolutionary Army which at first no-one took serious.
At 0600 hrs on Monday 26th June 1989, Papua New Guinea officially declared that a State of Emergency was in effect on the once tranquil island. Heavily armed security forces went bush amid dense rugged foliage to seek out and destroy outlawed militant rebels. The once sleepy town of Arawa became dotted with temporary camps housing thousands of villagers, forcibly evacuated from surrounding jungle for their own safety as full scale guerilla warfare broke out.
Originally Arawa had been built to house employees and their families from the huge open cast mine situated at Panguna nestled below the Crown Prince mountain range 600 metres above sea level. Prior to premature closure due to militant activity, the mine used to produce copper in abundance as well as some gold, the same gold that Mendana had set out to find all those many years before.
As 1990 and a new decade approached, it was found that the before unheard of BRA were indeed a force to be reckoned with, very much so as they perpetrated typical Rambo type clandestine exploits.
This is the story of expatriate men and women lured into the remote Pacific Island lifestyle in their quest to make a quick dollar, it's also the story of native Bougainvilleans who years earlier had bitterly opposed the mine and compulsory acquisition of their land.
Land raided by white men many times before during black birding days when strongest men folk were forcibly taken to work sugar cane fields and plantations in Queensland, Fiji, and Samoa. The same rich vein of gold which lured Mendana and other early day European adventurers now attracted huge mega-buck mining magnates. The advent of them brought a throng of thrill seekers; get rich-quickers; and modern latter day explorers who collectively went about the task of raping the land with scant regard to landowner's feelings about intrusion to their soil.
The 1940's brought the first yellow invasion when hordes in excess of 50,000 arrived without warning, wreaking havoc throughout the length and breadth of Bougainville. In the late 1960's the second yellow invasion took place, not warriors following the code of Bushido but bright yellow bulldozers, shovels and haul trucks capable of moving 150 tonnes of overburden in one load, and other earthmoving implements of destruction.
They met opposition in the form of human chains of bare breasted maidens, clearly not in agreement with what was about to happen. Despite what powers to be in Australia thought, Bougainvilleans most definitely did not want their land subjected to the massive rape it undoubtedly was about to undergo.
In those late 1960's, amid protests survey pegs were pulled up and riot squads went into action amongst the coconut groves at Loloho Beach. Batons wielded, gas masks donned, tear gas canisters went ping... ping ... ping ... as villagers dropped primitive axes, bow and arrows, and fled into the steamy jungle to escape clouds of spiraling thick white billowing smoke that threatened asphyxia as throats burned and eyes smarted.
Now in the 1990's gone is the ping...ping...ping sound of launching tear gas canisters, that onomatopoeic sound replaced with noisy staccato chatter of automatic weaponry and all around the sky is awash with fiery red tracer fire. As Australian donated Iroquois choppers hover above deep dense jungle, the air is heavy with the stench of death and rotting corpses.
Sadly it isn't a remake of Apocalypse Now, nor is it in some far off distant land with strange sounding names off the South China Sea; this is closer.............. much too closer to home...............
