Ray Clarke Looks Back (continued)

The trip to the site was only about 10 kilometres, but it seemed much longer. We had to cross creeks where the banks had collapsed with recent rains, but the many helpful locals, clinging everywhere to the trucks including the roof, were quick to jump off and make effective crossings using tree boughs and other solids. The trucks managed to stagger across and then climb up the banks with plenty of manpower pushing. This exercise in adaptability had to be repeated, but was quite successful.

We stayed at the Oil International Exploration (OIE) company depot just outside Kupang township and became good friends with Lou Staisch, the Manager, and his Indonesian wife, Otji. The depot had been set up primarily to accommodate geologists. Every evening after work we would sit on Lou's porch in easy deck chairs and sample a few Bintang Barus (the local brew). The view was idyllic looking over the glistening water northwards to Monkey Island in the distance. When we got tired of the view, there was always plenty of pretty brown-skinned village girls passing by. Moments like these are pretty rare but, when they happen, they make the job worthwhile.

Behind the OIE depot were and probably still are Australian Army 15 inch (approximately 38 cm) guns which pointed on a rather narrow trajectory northwards to the sea. Unfortunately, the Japanese crossed the mountains from the east and south-east to capture Kupang but that's another story. We trained the Indonesian staff. Herb Adler, a Head Office Engineer, came over later in the program. It was hard to leave the island and go back to cold old Melbourne but we were recompensed by changing planes in Bali on the way back.

After a break back in the office, Carl Keswick and I went back to the West again in March 1974, this time to Meekatharra for a WF3 radar installation. Meekatharra, a man's town in the golden west, brings instant memories of regular pub fights, chaos on pension nights and tough publicans with baseball bats under the bar counter who were easily provoked into using them. We stopped at the more reputable of the three town pubs. John Gilbery came up from Perth and accepted the radar. 'Gilburger' likes a cold one on a warm day; anything over 3°C to be precise and we sunk a few in between flying Alf West's 'ping-pong balls'. Meekatharra is a colourful, volatile and hugely social place, but it wasn't too hard to shake the dust off our shoes and head east. Despite Gilbery's rhetoric that "the West is the best and East the least", we knew better.

Bureau of Meteorology