Open Writing

The same evening of my hole in one, Jan and I had organized a local lass to baby sit the children while we went to a dinner dance at the golf club. We had had a most enjoyable night, arriving back home about one a.m. When we returned, our baby sitter looked as if she had not moved all evening. I put it down to shyness, which it may well have been. I drove her to her village, paid her and then drove home.

We had not been asleep long when an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale woke us. The roar was something I will never forget.

I immediately leapt out of bed to see to the children, especially David, as he was only six years old at the time. When I got to the boy's bedroom, Rodney had just been to the toilet and was standing at the doorway trying to work out how to jump onto his bed which was going from one side of the room to the other. Jennifer was still in bed with two huge water tanks sloshing around dangerously right next to her head, just outside her window. David was still fast asleep. I picked David up and hurriedly ushered the children into our bed with us. Jan was lying there frozen with terror. She also had to visit the toilet, which was the worst place for her to be, as she could feel the tremors coming up through the ground. We clung to each other until it was over.

During the quake we saw our bedroom window rotate almost ninety degrees each time the Coast Watchers Memorial lighthouse flashed when it turned. By this time there was a blackout and apart from the lighthouse. We stayed huddled together waiting for the daylight before we could check what damage had occurred.

One of my staff arrived at the house soon after the quake to take me to the store. I sent her home telling her that there was nothing we could do until it was light enough for us to see. Undaunted she went back to the store and spent the rest of the night moving items piece by piece from the blocked front door until she was able to open it just enough to make her way inside.

As soon as I knew that my family was safe, and that we were fortunate not to lose anything of any value, I took them for a walk around the town to see the damage caused by the quake. I saw one young man sitting on a doorstep weeping next to his brand new TR2 sports car. It lay crushed flat under the house after its beams had been washed away. Also what had been a set of shops had become a pile of rubble.

Jan took the children home and I went on to inspect the store. My staff member who had wormed her way inside opened the main entrance roller-door for the rest of us to go inside. After inspecting the damage we decide that little could be salvaged. Half of the floor area was under three or four inches of alcoholic beverages while the other half was equally covered with spilled house-paint. All the groceries were lying piled up between the fixtures. The only thing to do was shovel most of the whole gooey mess into forty- four-gallon drums and send them off to the dump. Fortunately the building remained structurally sound and the insurance claim covered the losses. We opened for business two days later.

The postscript to this weekend took place a few days later when I decided to take the children to see Walt Disney's film "Bambi" at the local cinema that was housed in an old World War II Quonset hut. Unfortunately however, I was called away to the wharf to supervise the unloading of a ship and Jan had to take the children instead. Jennifer sat with her friends on one side of the theatre; Rodney was with his friends on the other side while David, sat with Jan. Halfway through the film an aftershock came along and Jan's terror was exacerbated by her powerlessness of not being able to be with all the children.

While we were in Madang, Prince Philip arrived on the royal yacht Britannia. Martin, a young lad about Rodney's age from next door, approached his father and said "I want to write a letter to Prince Phillip, Dad, what will I say?" "Well!" his father said, "He's a father too. Just write to him as you would to anyone's Dad." The father did not think any more about the matter until a few days later when there was a phone call and, when Martin's father answered, a cultured English voice said, "Admiral (so-and-so) here, may I speak to Martin please?" "Yes" the father retorted "And I'm the bloody king of England". After a lot of persuasion he finally realized that he was indeed speaking to an admiral of the royal yacht, and yes, he did want to speak to Martin. The Duke had read out Martin's letter at breakfast that morning and had issued instructions that Martin and his sister were to be shown around the yacht after which they were to be given a ride around the harbour in the royal launch. Would he, the father, please bring Martin and his sister to the bottom of gangplank at a prescribed time the next morning!

Martin's father hung up the phone and spent the next few minutes scratching the writing pad with the flat of a soft pencil to bring up the image of what his son had written to cause such a reaction. The words went something like this. "My dad's a sailor but he hasn't got a yacht because he didn't marry the queen". The duke enjoyed the letter so much that he forwarded it to the queen.

© Clement 2007