Sean Dorney, Kwanja and the media candidate

 

'shit, it's only seven kinas,'

 

Two of the legends of Konedobu, the ABC's Sean Dorney (left) and Post-Courier's Michael 'Wardsey' Ward in the old PC newsroom having the usual Friday arvo drinks. Notice the old typewriters. Mine was the big bazooka behind Dorney's skinny legs!
It was the culprit behind the K7 per shit fun run story!

PART 01

By Big Pat

SPORTY

Sean Dorney is an Aussie name synonymous with journalism in Papua New Guinea.

And Lofty got to know him in more ways than one and here are some of the lighter moments in our friendship.

I remember Sean Dorney as a good friend, a mentor, a critic and especially someone with an incredible character and courage who had the time to share with you, whether you were young or old or black or white. 

He also had a great sense of humor.

He is the kind of person who has a heart for anybody. Ask his Manus in-laws and they’ll tell you, Sean has never once let them down, even done the famous ‘hey, hey’ Manus swing to the Manus Garamut.

Ask any Pacific Island reporter who has had the good fortune to have crossed his part and he or she will tell you too –Dorney is a champion media freedom in the Pacific, a forte of knowledge of anything of Papua New Guinean, even to the extent that he once captained the PNG Kumuls rugby league team at one stage of his footy life.

Lofty first bumped into Dorney when I began my newspaper career starting as a copy boy at the Post-Courier in 1985. He would come around to the newsroom on Friday afternoons for a yarn and a beer. And he touched me as a very funny guy. He had this obnoxiously happy smile and a way with words.

One day, when Lofty had graduated from copy boy to writing sports, he took me to the top of the Lloyd Robson Oval grandstand, hooked the ABC phone line up, and told me that at halftime, ‘call this number in Sydney and tell the lady at the other end the halftime score, who scored the tries, kicked the goals, crowd size and what the weather is like’. After that Sean wandered off – I don’t even know where to? And left me wandering and still wondering to this day!

Post-Courier old tea room with late tea boy Masu Morim (centre), on the left is late Yehiura Hriehwazi drowning in a brownie and Wally Hiambohn on the right hanging onto one for dear life. this tea room personified the Yangoru Drop.

It was a rugby league Test match between the Australian Kangaroos and the PNG Kumuls at the good old Lloyd Robson Oval now OSNFS. At halftime, after a few stubbies, I was already feeling very drowsy and forgot to make that very important call to the gracious lady north of the South Pole. I would have done with a vegemite sandwich though.

At fulltime, I had to file the match report for ABC, which I tried my very best to do, albeit very tipsy, over the line. From the top of the roof, I yelled into the phone as if I was yelling at my girl on Manus Island too.

Late Mark Sapias, late Tom Alau, the original Ori Kenia, the irresistible Terry FM Longbut, those seasoned radio guys had big smiles on their faces. Lofty was flabbergasted!

Lofty ended up back at Lawes Road where I tried my best to remember what the score was, even scratching my head on which park it was played on, 'wee yaka', Lofty was courting trouble by forgetting my notebook, but my black man mate, the late Blaise Nangoi rescued me that day.

Anyways, Monday comes around and Sean pops by and demands: 'hey Lofty, you have my phone? Lofty - 'What phone?' Sean - 'The expensive one I left with you on the rooftop!'

'Bikpela hevi', problem.

So I don’t have his hello ring but I want my koble coins for sending his ABC story.

‘Come next Friday’ he smiles ‘and bring my phone’.

Those were the old landlines, heavy, ugly, most times you got caught in a crossline, especially when you was anxiously calling your 'lalokau' across the Bismarck Sea.

So Friday rolls by, Frank Kolma, Wally Hiambohn and Lofty duck up the Airvos Avenue to the ABC before our boss and Sean’s tambu Luke Clement Sela can send us somewhere else.

Port Moresby A grade basketball was very popular during weeknights.
Even the players played barefoot at the Hohola Courts.

The esky is out; we are all having a good time and then Lofty decides to have a stroll around Sean’s office. The door rolls back and lo and behold - on the back of the door is a collection of old newspaper cuttings.

This was the ABC’s door of horror and contained all manner of errors, bearers, corrosion, and journalism poison. And there in a little corner, I spot my blessed name! 

Dorney had done me the honors by underlining the offending word ‘shit’ in red!

Shiddo diddo, Lofty almost fainted!!!!!! 'Karanas lewa' . . how did this happen? But it did for the record, embarrassingly occur one fine Friday morning!

It was 1988 and Coca-Cola was the major sponsor for the annual SP Games fun run event. The 'T' shirts for the run were going for K7. 

With my rickety old typewriter working overtime, I had the greatest most embarrassing honor to spell 'shirt' as SHIT. 

How it passed the sports editor Numa Alu's eagle eye or even the proofreading stage, is another mind-boggling mystery.

At seven bucks, it probably could have made me the richest shit seller in no hurry, like my old friend Mister Shit. 

Of course the editor Luke was not too pleased and the MD Don Kennedy was about to hang me out to fry!

But shit is bullshit and shit does happen!

TRIBUTE TO OLD BUGGER LATE BIGA

 

A HISTORY LESSON FROM BIGA THE REPORTER

 

A tribute to Biga Lebasi, 1923 to 2020

 

The Post-Courier and it’s new generation of reporters took an important history lesson from a gentleman who has been there and done it all.

A larger than life Biga Lebasi, adventurer, Mahatma look-a-like, one time stage actor, hermit, historian, writer, poet and humorist, who was older than the Post-Courier. In-fact, at age 76, he beat our masthead by 26 years.

And leggy loveable Lebasi willing, admitted, ‘I will be around for the Post-Courier’s golden jubilee celebration next year 2020’.

To his credit, he did make it, although, he knew in his aging heart, his time on his beloved Kwato was nearing its end. Sadly, the final curtains fell on the journey of Biga, our dear friend who passed on May 27, 2020 in Alotau.

On a dusty Moresby Friday in early 2019, bubbly ‘bubu’ Biga was our special guest at our weekly editorial in-house training program, where the stage play aficionado regaled our young reporters of golden times past and the challenges he faced in his making as an intrepid reporter.

Of course, everywhere Biga trespasses, anything the ageless treasured historian touches, always does somehow fall apart at the seams, and sure enough the training program ascended into a roomful of uproarious laughter at some of his more boldly spicy adventures way out 17 Mile way.

Up the Sogeri road, 17 Mile is famous for many things good including the mighty Laloki river and P&NG’s first copper and tin mine.

The area counts Hollywood screen heart throb Errol Flyn among its first Papuan home grown heroes and Biga was by any stretch of imagination, the Laloki River legend.

For the record, Lebasi at Large, of Suau in Milne Bay Province, was the first Papua New Guinean to have become Chief of Staff of the Post-Courier back in 1973, two years before independence, quite an achievement after signing up in the mid sixties.

But the honour of being first PC reporter belongs to two other Papuans. As for Biga, who initially wanted to be a dentist, his tooth pulling ascension at the PC was by a stroke of stage fright luck.

Born with an adventurous streak on Kwato Island during World War II, Biga had somehow navigated his way into the South Pacific Post – forerunner to the PC – in 1965 shortly after surviving the obstacle course at Sogeri Secondary High School.

Our young journos, whose fate was still in the Milky Way, were glued to their seats in stony silence of disbelief: history was narrating itself in the black and white celluloid reel film of a bygone era of Errol Flynn, James Dean and Biga Lebasi.

Good fortune does smile on the brave, and also on those foolish enough to follow their instincts as a unassuming young Biga chanced on a once in a lifetime opportunity at our Konedobu headquarters.

It so happened that the small-time actor on Kwato Island had one day been to a play where he had the good fortune to follow the misfortunes of Macbeth on a Port Moresby stage.

By a stroke of luck and rare Lebasi twist of fate, the enormity of it suddenly dawned on him that the expatriate Australian editor who had invited him to his office to share a sandwich was actually Macbeth.

‘Eureka, I found you. You are the one who played Macbeth,’ Biga excitedly exclaimed to the South Pacific Post editor John Blair on that fateful day in 1965.

Blair was amused by Biga's passion and convinced by his youthful enthusiasm, and for his best supporting role from the back row of the stage where natives sat, Blair ‘Macbeth’ hired him and threw him in at the deep end as a librarian.

Biga was captivated by the idea that bigger and better things were yet to come – never mind the challenges of racial discrimination very evident in colonial era Papua & New Guinea at that time or the low wages – Lebasi was hooked.

And on that special Friday, history rolled off his Suau tongue - he never got to be the dentist he desired to be but he did cut his teeth across the Lawes Road as a journalist.

As he told the enthralled new journos: “fifty years later, I am still waiting for the Papua & New Guinea Department of Native Affairs to respond to my letter of interest in becoming a dentist!”

Vale Biga - a good friend and a gentleman. – BIG PAT

 

THE POST-COURIER OLD JOURNOS CATCH UP AGAIN

 

By BIG PAT

DOWN memory lane can only be a nostalgic yet lonesome lethargic place.
And the shriveled pages of time, soiled by the minutes of a bygone era, holds its own abundant pace. And its space, afforded in the liberty of the black and white typeface of a bold bygone era, smell of a whiff of adventure forgotten in history.
As this two oldies discovered not so long ago over the inaugural first issue of the PNG Post-Courier, time does dispense eternal friendships.
After many years of separation, with wizened bald patches and diminishing hairlines, the two old 'lapuns' (old) mates got together again to search for their bylines in the first ever Post-Courier print of 1969.
They were young, daring and sparing of thought, but in their sprightly nuances, they forgot that even hot metal type-setting of the yester-years spared no-one, not even the brightest ink toasting spark.
Their impromptu meet and greet in the Post-Courier newsroom foyer created a mini sensation in Sela Haus, drawing curious stares from today’s generation of PC workers and editorial staff.
On the right is the aging but nonetheless effervescent Biga Lebasi of Suau in Milne Bay Province and on the left is the equally ageless Sinclaire Solomon of Mengar village, Wewak, East Sepik.
A youngish Solomon rolled into the typewriter strewn and smoke filled newsroom at Lawes Road as a cadet in 1976, an year after PNG gained its Independence from Australia.
Lebasi was Chief of Staff of the Post-Courier, the first Papua New Guinean to hold that post, and seemed generously aghast at the youthful exuberance of Solomon.
It became an affectionate friendship crafted out of crossword clues and the endless travails of the comical Bluey & Curley, the Les Dixon strip in the PC back then.
Over the seamless march of time, both have written their own eloquent chapters in their life stories as journalists and their endless anecdotes keep popping up on fresh pages almost as endless as the sand on Wom Beach near

Mengar or the waves that batter Suau.
Surprisingly in the historic 1969 copy, is a black and white picture of Lebasi on a farm in Rabaul admiring a rather bemused ‘bulumakau’ (bull).

It’s his attire – short trousers with long white socks and shoes – that elicited giggles of guilt and uproarious laughter of disbelief to light up a rare reunion.
No wonder – 50 years on - that poor old quarantined cow was and still remains rampantly bewildered in the June 1969 issue of the PC, buried in history with bigger than bubbly Biga!

This week, sadly, we were awakened to the duties of Father Time informing our generation of the passing of Biga in Alotau.

Sinclaire Solomon: "He was more than just a friend. He was a legend."

Farewell Biga, from all of us at the Post-Courier and the PNG Media at large.

 

Picture by JONATHAN WAREY

Big Pat holding up a copy of the 1969 inaugural Post-Courier edition for Sinclair Solomon and Biga Lebasi to search for Biga's adventure stories.