Mijts Blog

Open Bay is a very remote location – accessible only by boat or, on rare occasions, helicopter. It is quite rugged and there are no sealed roads at all. The managers live in houses that are thirty plus years old and all of a very interesting design. The General manager has a ‘guest house’ where we stayed – of the same design.

The houses are built on a hill – and have a pop-up roof with a screened opening right around to catch the breeze. There is no electricity supply at Open Bay and they power via a generator which is turned off at 10pm and back on around 4am when the men get up to go to work. They work long hours six or seven days a week in sometimes very murky conditions. It rains EVERY day – in fact in January and again in February they had well over a METRE of rain each month!

It is very lush and green and there were many flowers around the house including these hibiscus.

Inside the house (as with our Kokopo house) were beautiful wooden floors. We noticed in the house and also at the office and in ‘The Mess’ there were also several pieces of beautiful old furniture.

This old shoe shine chair (the ledge at the bottom pulled out) was in our house.

The alligator boots were lined up at the door of the guest house – evidence of how wet and muddy the place gets! Especially needed for visiting buyers who go amongst the logs etc to check on timber.

The views from the balcony were great – especially at sunset

We were fed in the Japanese managers’ Mess and the food was fantastic – ate far too much!

More about this trip soon!