Expedition Log

Day 8 Wednesday 18th January 2006

We had an early start as Robbie and Moose were going by helicopter to Ora with some supplies and Andy is returning. The idea is for Moose, Robbie and James to organise a landing pad up on the plateau for an equipment drop. The rest of us will travel by boat to Matong and take the supplies to the end of the road. This will include some fuel for the helicopter. From there the helicopter will shuttle it to Ora. After seeing the boys off together with 200kgs of gear Joe took us to the radio station where we gave an interview lasting about half an hour. DG, JPS and SA did the talking and the interview was conducted by the radio presenter, Oscar and Joe. There was an article about the expedition in this morning's newspaper.

The radio station is on the edge of Rabaul. When driving there we passed by one of the volcanoes which had erupted in 1994. There was a thick layer of ash across the road. It looks as if they have to send a grader through on a regular basis. When we got back to Ron's Apartments Andy had arrived. After debriefing he and I went to the earthquake observatory and around Rabaul to look at the destruction from the 1994 eruption.

Dave Gill went with Joe into Rabaul to see Rabaul Shipping where arrangements were made with Rebecca for our boat trip to Matong. He booked us onto the Kuanua for Friday because the scheduled boat on Thursday to Palmalmal is too small to take our cargo which we estimated to be 1.3 tonne. Dave then went to the bank with Peter Lavender to transfer 25,000 Kina into the Nuigini Helicopters bank account to cover the estimated eight shuttle trips from Matong or Nutuve Camp to Ora. Arrangements were made for seven drums of Jet A1 fuel to be delivered from Shell to the dock.

Dave then went to the irport to pick up Herb Laeger who didn't turn up as he missed his flight from Port Moresby.

In the evening we went for a meal with Peter Lavender.

The Journey to New Britain