Mike Thomas
I Made Mike Thomas look like a bit of a dill at Christmas 1970.
I’d been bunged in the DCA mess as our’s didn’t have room when BackWard and I got transferred to Madang and there was only one room available in the Ansett mess (All the Hosties were in Madang… that’s why Back and I’d gotten the transfer).
I mostly knocked round with the DCA blokes and PMG techs, who were up putting in an upgrade to the ABC transmitter, because I saw them all the time.
Christmas day… Nancy? (the manager of the DCA mess ) decided to have a beaut Christmas lunch for the town notables… we inmates were pointedly uninvited.
My mob didn’t care as they were rocking at Weavers (Flt Service operator) for the break and I was going on a two day flight over Christmas and Boxing day.
I returned to the mess at about 2AM so I could get a good night’s sleep before my 5AM pick up. On getting to the mess I had an attack of righteous indignation at our being cruely expelled from OUR mess, so decided to “make a statement” .
Decided to remove all the chairs from the dining room and hide ‘em. I was going to cart them up to Father John’s room (he was the bloke who always blessed the beer before opening it).
Decided it was too far to cart ‘em across the lawn, up the stairs, along the veranda and into his room… needed sleep to sober up.
Whacked them all in the ladies toilet on the veranda at the end of the dining room and went to bed.
While flying on Christmas day reckoned it was a bit of a stupid, futile, insignificant thing to do, as they would be found straight away.
FORGOT that it was PNG and oli would get in the game.
I got back late Boxing day and wandered round to Brookie”s room (He was that mad little hippie who owned the Datsun 240Z when he moved to Moresby) the boys were all in his room getting over a couple of days of Buka Meris and SP.
I arrived and was greeted with. “Police are after you!….”
On arrival at 5AM the mess bois saw nothing amiss and started their duties. When Nancy arrived, she went right off noticing immediately, as all women do, that there were tables but no chairs.
Bois got confused under the Missis’ tirade and not knowing what to do did something to get her off their backs. They looked at each other, under the tables, in the kitchen, on the roof, and under the building and returned to report, ” Me no savee missis” .
Nance got real mad then as NOTHING was going to spoil Christmas lunch, so rang the cops.
An hour later a couple of important boys in blue arrived and were set upon by the irate Nancy who’d really whipped herself up into a lather. This got the polis confused and they forgot their training and looked in the same places as the mess bois. Nancy got madder and they fled back to the station and rang Mike … needed the heavy guns when attending to a berserk missis.
Mike came ambling down, full of bonhomie and humour in his all purveying knowledge of the hijinks the expats were capable of.
He set the poils bois to checking the rooms of the absent inmates, knowing that some joker had put them there as a joke.
Al the rooms were checked with the same result. A couple of DCA blokes did get a start at having cops come into their donga and consciously search. Mike got perplexed and Nancy … haughty!… she’d been right all along… The chairs HAD been stolen.
Oli was sent back to the station to bring down the investigation kit. Finger print powder everywhere, causing a certain amount clouding from the sneezing of the mess bois who were highly interested in all this scientific stuff going on. No fingerprints, but no one looked down at the powder spilt on the floor where there were a couple of hundred footprints of one person (small ones … compared with oli’s)
A warrant was sworn out for the arrest of persons or persons unknown, who had stolen the mess equipment.
Nancy was ropable at having to get all the dust cleaned up, breakfast cooked for the couple of blokes still at the mess and organising lunch.
At the wonderful picnic Christmas luncheon held on the lawns of the DCA mess beneath the spreading Poincianas and Raintrees, a lady decided at about two o’clock that she needed to nip off to the toilet… couldn’t get in, as the joint was full of chairs which stopped the door from opening more than about six inches.
Consternation! … took ages for someone to manage to move the offending chairs so they could get the door open even.
Gent’s toilet was operating continuously for a while.
I swore every one to secrecy as I reckoned Mike might need to get me back for making them look so bloody silly. I kept a low profile and was never anywhere Thomas frequented. He was part of the upper crust of Madang and they jealously kept the mere mortals out of their circles.
A couple of years later I was overnighting at Hagen Motel with Barrie Rogers and we were the only ones with the chicks at the bar.
We had our hostie and were joined by Molly Malone who was based at Hagen in the Twin Otters. Mike and one of his high ranking mainland mates were at the bar too and didn’t like missing out on the only female company in the bar, so Mike approached Rogers and asked if they could join us.
Rogers seemed to know that being in the good books on the inspector of police was a good thing, so said yes. On their arrival at our end Rogers introduced the girls to Mike and as an addition said, “You know Dennis?”
Thomas, very meaningfully looked me in the eye and rather sweetly answered, “OH yes! I know Dennis!”
I kept a VERY low profile that evening.
Thomas was a bit of a rogue. He was pretty good at getting the odd favour done.
Another time he approached Rogers and said, “ I say Barrie, can you take a parcel of meat up to my mate in Hagen”… he’d was just passing by the aerodrome at the time we were about depart to Hagen in a police truck.
Rogers appropriately showed delight at being able to do this small thing for Mike, who told his oli offsider to get the meat.
We took off a couple of hundred pounds overloaded that day with a bloody whole side of beef trussed up in cheese cloth on top of the cargo.