Caribou Surprises
The platoon stayed at Bulldog for six days. The first day was a rest day. Hawkeye reappeared in his Cessna to bomb us on the disused airfield and resupplied the platoon with clothing and other personal stores that had been prepacked in Port Moresby and had gone to the company headquarters in Wau. I received my tin of “Big Sister” steamed pudding that was eaten with delight. The second day we received another food drop. This one was made by the RAAF who flew three Caribou aircraft over the landing strip and dropped the supplies by parachute. It was a magnificent spectacle to see the khaki-coloured parachutes coming down over you. We recovered 100% of the rations dropped as they had hit the ground in a gentler manner than the Cessna’s bouncing bombs. I had not been previously briefed about a RAAF airdrop so apart from the wonderful surprise I was also stuck with the problem of what to do with the silk parachutes. I did not want to carry them as we were loaded to the hilt so I rather naively asked the Pastor if he could arrange for them to be shipped down the river to Port Moresby. I never saw them again and nobody in the Army asked me about them, so I assume the RAAF considered them written off. I hope the Pastor got good use of them.
On the third day I sent out section patrols under the command of their corporals to find the Bulldog Road and the railway line. One was to go south to Grimm Point on the map, one was to follow a track east to the railway line then follow it across a swamp to the Kunimaipa River and the last one to proceed down this track and follow a native track to the Oreba River.
These patrols returned after three days. The two patrols sent east both found the Bulldog Road approximately 400metres southeast of Bulldog across the Aiv Aui River. They failed to find the railway line or any other native tracks, however, they did find an old Army camp.
The patrol sent out south reported that they could not find a road but followed an old native path cutting their way through secondary jungle to a deserted house near a wide bend in the Tiveri River. After another two hours walking along the track, through sago trees, they came across the relatively large village of Otavai on the banks of the Kunimaipa River. There Cpl Tutuman found a sawmill and an old war time Army camp with 44-gallon drums and other rusted iron objects scattered about. His section crossed the river by canoe and then walked on to the Lakekamu River where they found two deserted houses before returning. (Recently I learnt that Grimm Point was located on the Kunimaipa River. Another error on my map. Tutuman’s patrol had found the start of the Bulldog Railway Line and the other patrols found where the railway linked up with the road.)
In the meantime, I walked about the general area to keep myself amused as a tourist amongst the deserted gardens and houses. I found lots of iron pyrites in the creek beds and could understand why Bulldog was a gold mining centre. During this time the Pastor came to our camp carrying two hessian chaff bags full of pineapples. There were about thirty in each bag which we purchased for the princely sum of ten cents per pineapple. After peeling the skin off the pineapple with a machete the pineapple was eaten like a watermelon with vertical slices rather than horizontal slices. It was a delicious treat that was enjoyed by all the men.
The sixth day was an enforced stay. Two injuries occurred whilst we were in Bulldog. Sergeant Guri had jumped from a log onto a stick which penetrated his rubber thong and about 1.5cm of his foot. His leg then became swollen. Private Koi swung at a vine with his machete, and it bounced off and hit his leg 8 cm below the knee giving him a 5cm long gash 1 cm deep. Our platoon medic patched them up as best he could, and they had to grin and bear their pain for the next section of the walk. These injuries meant that we had to spend a day longer in Bulldog than I intended.