Coronation Primary A Lae, Xavier Chang (cont'd), Wendy Phillips

My first day. When we arrived in Lae early in 1954, after 2 years in Rabaul and a brief stint in Wau, Mum enrolled me at Coronation primary, after winning an argument with Mr Breakspear (I wasn't yet five, but I could already read so she thought I should be in school). She was told the native bus driver would drop me off right outside our house after school. When I didn't turn up she was in a panic, to put it mildly.

So where was I, you ask. Well, I'd had a wonderful first day at school. I'd met a girl called Patricia and we'd developed an instant rapport. When she suggested I come and play at her house after school it sounded like a fantastic idea to me!

I got off the bus with her and went into her house, where her mother, realizing my mum would be climbing the walls, tried to extract my address from me. I didn't have a clue - we'd only been there two days and I wasn't quite five years old - all I could tell her was that it was near the airstrip. She had the good sense to immediately ring the police, which my mum already had, so I was soon restored into the arms of a very relieved and angry mother. She said she didn't know whether to kiss me or smack me - from memory it was a bit of both :-).

The film made in 1955/56. I had a scene in it where I pretended to chase a butterfly down a path; don't know where it tied into the plot, but I vividly remember that imaginary butterfly! There were two films according to an old friend from Lae, Malcolm Zimmerman, whom I got in contact with again through the Schoolfriends site. One was Pedro the Fisherman and the other Richard the Lionheart. Pedro stole Nina away from outside the Catholic Church on the back of his motorbike. From memory, one way and another, everyone in the school had a part in the movie. Those who didn't have solo roles sang the Pedro song and did a folk dance. Malcolm (who is a few years older than me and remembers more) tells me that Jo Keating was the principal of Coronation primary at the time, and that the cameraman and inspiration behind the movies was Otto Brabant. Malcolm played Richard, and remembers dubbing the sound track at Lae theatre.

Book prizes for scholastic achievement at the end of each year. I collected my share of them over the years. Miss Duncan, my teacher in grades 5 and 6, who came to us from Groot Eylandt, was the only teacher to realize I was working below my potential even though I came first most of the time, and who made history come alive for me with the role plays she used to have us act out.

The school & Anzac Day: Standing at attention in the sun for what seemed like a million hours listening to endless speeches (photo courtesy of Judith Walker). Morning Parade, raising the flag and singing the National Anthem. Catching the school bus in First Street opposite the Lae Club, outside the District offices, another magical place for us kids. There were baby puk-puks only five niches long that would try to nip your fingers with their tiny sharp teeth, birds of paradise, cuscuses and a tree kangaroo, not to mention the raising and lowering of the flag every morning and afternoon by a squad of police boys accompanied by a bugle.

Speaking of animals, does anyone else remember the white cockatoo that used to chase kids and dogs down the road, hovering just overhead and tormenting them with it's clever mimicking? It could do a spot-on impersonation of just about every Mum in town's home-summoning call!

School concerts on the verandah where we performed all those folk dances we'd learnt for our parents, acted out nativity plays and recited poetry. And who could forget those practice sessions! Remember how some of the kids used to hold each end of a hankie while dancing so they wouldn't have to touch hands and get "boy" or "girl" germs :-)

Xavier Chang (cont'd)

Lae, LIPS or Coronation, particularly PNG in later years, all hold fond memories for me. Just recently I was in the conference room of a company the 77th floor of 2 IFC Tower in Central, Hong Kong. Whilst waiting for my host I was taking in the view, and thought to myself, "how far is all this from Chinatown in Lae, swimming in the Bumbu river, etc ". Lae and PNG hold something for me that Hong Kong or anywhere else in the world cannot and never will replace.