Monday 26th July

Ok, I got nothing that we had planned done today, but I did get to finally see Frank Haikus new workshop and carvings. We used the new truck to shift them from his workshop to the wharf, they are for the new Solomon Island Chancery in Port Moresby. Beautiful carvings, as the pics show. All from Vasa, which is a very dense heavy smooth grained timber. Each of the posts weighs 1 tonne, according to the reading off the truck pressure gauge, and I was probably doing so many illegal things with it today that after the first thing, the rest didn’t matter.






Along the lines of having the arm fully extended, letting the hook out even more, then pulling the posts out to where I could actually lift them using the arm retraction to pull the posts with.

It did get a bit interesting, but everything was done slowly, so any accidents would have happened in slow motion, till the weight took over and things sped up. No damage to anyone, other than a bruised knee and ankle from trying to stop a post falling. As far as I was concerned, it wants to fall, let it, we can always pick it up, or make another. Legs etc are harder to replace. And a tonne of falling timber isn’t going to notice anyone in the way to start with.







As you can see in the pics, there is a shortage of lifting gear, no rope blocks, pulleys, block and tackle, but we have no shortage of people. And accidents are common.

We’ve got another day there tomorrow, about 16 carvings to ship out, plus panels. They all look really good, all the different provinces represented, samesame as I discussed with Frank last year with Heritage Park.

He has another carver working there making a traditional canoe for the Chancery as well, hand adze and saw is all, wooden pegs holding it together, as the pics show. I’ll try and get back next week when he starts doing the finishing carvings on it. All up, it takes about a month to hand make a canoe to this level, with the carvings, the usual local fishing ones about 1 – 2 weeks.


Which puts us a bit behind with the compost bins, but welcome to the Solomons. I have a contact in Solbrew finally, so we will be starting with the brewery waste very soon, I’m interested in seeing how effective it is for decomposing sawdust, and how long it takes. The info I have found on waste brewery sludge has time periods of 6 weeks to 12 weeks, depending on the water used, the brewing process, and what type of grain used for brewing. The nutrient levels are better than most other organic waste, other than chicken/pig and cattle manure, but given the quantities, I’m not going to get overly concerned about a couple of % points. And we have chicken manure on a regular basis to add more nitrogen anyway.

I’m keen to get it started, mainly to start cleaning up around Honiara, at present it is either dumped into Ranadi tip, or flushed out to sea, neither a good long term solution. Given that there is no fertiliser manufacture here, everything is imported, which makes the price of fertiliser prohibitive, if we can start producing a good composted fertiliser for the local farmers, everyone wins. And we might even make a profit, I’m trying to be King of the Golden River in Honiara. In passing reference to T. Pratchett and The Truth.

The new truck handles well, we had 5 tonne in it this afternoon, and it floats along Mendana, well, inbetween the potholes more, but that samesame sort of feeling. Good hydraulics and power assist everything makes a difference.

I’ve been mentioning the upcoming Elections lately. Here is another interesting note to add to the others.

Honiara has been without rice in any of the shops or warehouses for a week now, due to all the people standing for election buying up every last grain to use in campaigning. Not that it is called a bribe, or payment etc. With 508 people standing for 50 seats, and from todays Solomon Star one person alone bought and shipped 4 tonnes of rice to the constituency he is campaigning in, there hasn’t been much left to go around. I saw a truck of rice being delivered to one of the election offices this afternoon, in Honiara, so whoever is supporting that candidate is sure to get some.

It’s interesting though, we were tossing ideas around in the truck driving through town, and I decided I’ll call my party the Rice Party, and have a rice grain as my symbol, because from one small rice grain, we can grow more, and it symbolises my Parties desire to help the Solomons grow from one small seed, into a land of plenty. About then the guys in the truck couldn’t stop laughing. I was most hurt. I thought it sounded such a good slogan and election promise.

Every party has a symbol, mainly because of the 100’s of different languages here, including Pijin and English, so it helps the voters know who to vote for. Everything from Eagles, (mainly Malaitan), to fish, flowers, canoes, aeroplanes, bushknives, spears, flags. With 508 people standing, there are a lot of symbols going around.