Postby Hasbeen » 19 Oct 2009 02:24
Peter, your colleagues were game, or perhaps the Buffalo car thieves
were not as smart as those in New Guinea, in the 70s.
Sometime in 1975, I was asked to mind the spare parts shop of Tutt
Bryants in Rabaul, New Guinea, while their spare parts manager went
on 2 months long leave.
I found that to avoid some of every air freight shipment from Japan,
or Oz, getting lost, I had to personally check the airport, every
day. Left to the locals, some percentage of many shipments would be
missed. Once you had used the paperwork, for some of a shipment, you
could not then get any stuff which was late ariving, or missed. You
had to wait for a customs auction, & buy your parts from the
uncleared shipments.
Rabaul is only 400 miles from the equator, so it gets a bit hot.
Cars left in the sun rapidly get to 180F+, so this was an
uncomfortable part of the day.
Most of the blokes doing this drove Holdens, & those Holdens had a
new feature. You only had to use the key to unlock the ignition. You
could then remove the key, & use the switch without it.
One smart bloke took to leaving his car running, with air condition
running, with the key removed, & the doors locked, while he was at
the airpot, or the harbour. We all soon caught on.
However, the locals up there, may not be too educated, but they
aren't too dumb, either. They soon figured out that they could
easily get into these things, & go for a joy ride. It was just a joy
ride, but as most of them had never driven before, they often ended
suddenly, against a coconut palm.
The airport hired a local to watch the cars, but the "ONE TALK"
system ment he could only come & tell us the car was gone, not that
someone was trying to take it.
We only had about 6 weeks of cool cars, before we had give up. It
was back to dropping into home, on the way back to work, for a
shower, & a change of the sweaty clothes.
Our house boy's used to lay out clean clothes, as soon as we left
the house, & sometimes we would go through 4 or 5 sets of them in a
day.
Hasbeen
