My mother worked in the bookshop over on the other side of town in the main shopping area, and my brother, three years older, went to Goroka Primary School.
We had to two green VW's; a Beetle which my mother drove, and a Type 3 station wagon which my father drove.
This time of my life was the first I can remember being interested in mechanical and electrical things. My father used to make Airfix models which interested me, and then there were the little blue electric motors at the bookshop / toyshop.
In early 1972 we left Goroka; my parents did a trip around Hong Kong and environs, and my brother and I were sent to Norfolk Island to stay with the grandparents. Then our parents arrived on Norfolk Island in time for my 4th birthday there. Soon after it was back to Sydney.
My father returned back to Goroka in 1972, after we had settled back into Sydney, and resumed work with the DCA. However, the house he now had was not the same one. The new one was also a DCA house, but opposite Rotary Park in Pursehouse St.

The part of West Goroka where we lived; the main road to the right is the Highlands Highway. The roof of our house is looking rather rusty nearly 50 years on.

I have since been able to establish it was Lot 21, Section 15. Our neighbours one one side were the Steamships Flats, where some of the Steamships supermarket employees lived. I don't know who the neighbours on the other side were, but my father said he worked in a bank.

Our neighbours; the "Steamships Flats".

My brother and I first saw this new house when we went up for the school holidays in August 1974. It was like our first house, but I was disappointed it didn't have the ceiling fans. It was, from now until the end of 1980, the place of many of our school holidays (my father didn't have to pay for our air fares, this being a lurk of working for the DCA).
By today's standard the expat housing in PNG was very basic, but it was certainly well equipped and comfortable. Most houses were fibro with polished wooden floors and built on concrete stilts. Internal walls were usually fibro or Masonite. Ours was three bedroom, all of a good size. The laundry was under the house. There was also a dining room, lounge room, and a kitchen with all the usual things. We had a Chef electric range in ours. Above it was a Vent-Axia exhaust fan. The main rooms were all lit with 40W Thorn fluorescent lamps.
Water supply was from six 1000 gallon rainwater tanks, and there was a pump in the laundry. Reticulated supply came in 1975 to West Goroka, but we didn't connect to it. As it happened, that was a wise move because in December 1980, the town water supply failed for something like a week. We had a septic tank, as did most of Goroka, but in August 1980 the main sewer was connected. The treatment plant was a few km out in the direction of the golf club.
Under the house there was a plaque stating the date the house was built (1967), and the paint colours used. Paint was Dulux, I recall.
The house was fed with the usual single phase 240V supply; the power poles in the street being steel rather than wood. Interestingly, circuit breakers were the standard, and so was fluorescent lighting - ahead of the rest of Australia at the time. Most fluorescent light fittings in PNG were a type made by Thorn based on an English design.

Telephones in PNG were the British 700 series but were often fitted with the standard PMG 6 pin plug as used in the rest of Australia. It is unclear why 700 series phones were used when the country was still an Australian territory. Our phone number was 721665.
An early photo I've seen shows a series 300 magneto telephone in use in Goroka. Even in 1980, the telephone book gave instructions on using manual telephones, so there were presumably manual exchanges still in some places. I have since discovered that Goroka had a 500 line manual exchange operating into around mid 1971. This was replaced by a 1000 line automatic exchange (and thus the 700 series automatic phones). I cannot remember a telephone at our first house, so do not know if the manual exchange was central battery or magneto. The magneto phone I mention was in an office situation so may have been an extension on a PMBX.

Like virtually all houses, ours had a solar water heater. There was no mail delivery, so everyone had a post office box. The post office was opposite the top of the airport near the police station. A bit further on was the Bird of Paradise Hotel. For telephone communication outside of the town, it was all via microwave repeaters down the Highlands to Lae and there was a tower on the post office for this. Previously there was a HF radio link.
It was common when making calls to Australia that the link would be too congested and a recorded message would tell you to try again later. "Your call has failed overseas...."
Mains supply was originally from a local diesel power station, although there was a small hydro electric plant, but the Ramu River hydro-electric scheme took over that by the mid 70's. I recall visiting the hydro power station at the time, all underground.

One thing that people in places like Australia would be unaware of was that expat houses also had in the back yard, a house for the "houseboy". The houseboy would be employed to do the menial tasks, like washing and cleaning, for the expat in the main house. Some also did the cooking. Ours just did the the cleaning. The houseboy's house was pretty primitive in comparison, and he lived there with his family. It did at least have electric power and its own tank. The pump was a hand operated one though, which filled a header tank on the roof for a gravity supply. Given the frequency of power failures, that was an advantage over us with the electric pump. No doubt, having a houseboy would be seen as very politically incorrect these days, but it was all very normal and no one complained.
He had a vegetable garden for himself. Given the large size of the block, his family living there was certainly not intrusive.

In 1973, my father established Kotuni Trout Farm, outside of town on the way to Mt Otto. He successfully experimented with rainbow trout which seemed to grow quite well in the climate. So, it was the done thing every afternoon after my father finished work at the DCA to go up to the trout farm. Being in the tropics at such elevation, flights into and out of Goroka stopped in the afternoon. This was because the cloud cover set in and there was no visibility. PNG is scattered with plane wrecks...
Kotuni provided some local employment to the nearby villagers, and became quite successful. Around 1977 or so, my father also became involved in a company called Seafood Marketing. It was located around the corner from the main shopping area in East Goroka, in a complex that had a clothing shop called "Coltra Fashions", and there was also the Lantern Restaurant, owned by Cam and Judy Bennett. They had a son my age, David.
The Lantern restaurant was always our point of call for dinner on the first day of the holidays, and the last. It later moved and was then part of a motel.
There were two supermarkets in Goroka; Burns Philip and Steamships (known locally as "Steamies"). It was a quaint feature of those times in a small town that the shops would close for lunch. If you were in a shop and they turned the lights off and then back on again, you knew it was time to finish your shopping. Steamies was the more well stocked of the two supermarkets from what I recall. Of course, shops still shut at 12pm on Saturdays.

Because of my asthma at the time, I spent 2nd term of 1975 in Goroka, to avoid the Sydney winter. This was May-September. It was the year of Independence, so the town was well decorated in preparation. I went to school at Goroka Primary for the duration; the headmaster was Mr Denholm, and my teacher was a Ms. Schwarz. I don't remember a lot about the school because I was there for only a few months. I remember the Friday afternoon movies at the school, shown by Mr Denholm. You had to pay 10t to get in (Australian currency was being phased out), and one time I forgot, but I was still let in. I was not pleased returning back to Sydney life after my few months in Goroka.

Some time around 1975/1976 my brother and I made friends with a guy my brother's age from North Goroka. His name was Scott Guest and was also the son of an expat. Scott used to come around just about every day when my brother and I were in Goroka during the school holidays, and would come up to the trout farm with us. For a short while there was also a girl from the Steamships Flats; I can't remember her name (Jemma?), and she also appeared briefly during school holidays around the time. I think she may have relocated to Seymour in Victoria. Scott almost became part of the family. I understand Scott went to boarding school in Caloundra.
I remember the 1976/77 Xmas holidays; I got my first fluorescent torch; a battery/12V type under the brand name of "Prince", and also a National AM/FM radio. In May, I got my first streetlight; a double 20W Multi Lighting. There was a junk room out the back of TDE (Turner Davey Electrical) where 2nd hand stuff existed, and there was an employee there who was kind enough just to give stuff like that to me. I still have that streetlight, and a few other light fittings, to this day. Out the back of TDE there were usually fluorescent tubes in the bin. Most of the them still worked, so it provided a source for my collection and experimentation with fluorescent lamps. There were two hardware suppliers as such, Steamships, and Summerscales & Lambert, which is were all the trout farm plumbing came from. Again, the PVC pipe used was not to become common in Australia until much later. Down the bottom of West Goroka was the industrial area. The meat pies and pasties from the "Golden Crust Bakery" were a frequent part of my lunch time diet. Then there were the "trade stores". If you wanted cheap batteries or kerosene lanterns, these were the places to go. This was an early insight to Chinese manufacturing, because most of the of goods was imported from China. Little did the rest of the world know what was in store 30 years later...
I used to buy these "Yaming" light bulbs from one trade store. I liked them because of the semi circular filament shape.
There were no electronics components shops; the closest to anything like that was Brian Bell in Port Moresby.

The trip up and back always seemed so tedious. It was a 2hr 45min flight from Sydney to Port Moresby when it was a direct flight. Until the Qantas and then Air Nuigini 747's started flying to Port Moresby, there was a change at Brisbane airport which delayed things. From Port Moresby, we changed to a Fokker F27 for the trip to Goroka. Later, this was an F28 jet. It was always a good feeling landing in Goroka. The customs people must have thought I was a bit strange, because I'd always take a suitcase of electrical stuff back and forth; things like soldering irons, electric heaters, lights, etc. I had a small amount of stuff in my bedroom in Goroka which sadly I never was able to retrieve. Getting off the plane at Port Moresby was like walking into a blast furnace, but one quickly acclimatised. Goroka on the other hand had the perfect climate, always very mild, and no humidity. In the wet season, it would always become suddenly quiet at about 4pm; there'd be a little wind, and then minutes later, down came the rain. This happened every afternoon. By evening it stopped, and the next morning would always be clear sky.

For Xmas 1979/80,  I made friends with a guy just across the road whose family moved up to Goroka during the previous year. His name was Wayne Riddle, my age, and his father worked for the Posts & Telegraphs dept. They were a really nice family, from Beacon Hill in Sydney. Then there was Jens Junghans who lived on the other side of Rotary Park, also our age. The three of us would hang out all day, riding our bikes around Goroka while parents were at work. It was a fantastic way to grow up!
Entertainment was what you made yourself. There was of course no TV, and only one radio station, the NBC (National Broadcasting Commission). I used to listen to Radio Australia quite a lot on short wave as an alternative program. As it was, the NBC trying to be everything, couldn't just play music all day. The NBC was relayed to all the towns from Port Moresby. In Goroka, the frequency was, I think, 900 Kc/s.
Good results were to be had on a crystal set at home with not too long of an aerial.
I also did a lot of book reading; Alfred Hitchock and the Three Investigators stories were read, and re-read, along with a few Roald Dahl books. My father had some New Scientist, Popular Science and Electronics Australia magazines.

My father had set up a video library around 1979, called A.I. Video (Agents International). I think it was in partnership with Cam Bennett. There was a competing video library in an adjacent shop, and this was soon taken over by A.I. Video. With no TV broadcasts, there was a market for recording programs in Australia, and renting out the tapes in Goroka.
There was someone in Brisbane doing the recording, and every so often would send a carton of tapes up. After a while, the tapes would be sent back to Brisbane, and recorded over again. The video system was the Philips N1700 VCR format. Once the competing shop was taken over, we had to look after Beta and U-Matic as well. One holiday job I had was to copy the VCR tapes onto Beta and U-Matic.
The rate of head wear in the N1700 machines was quite bad compared to the other formats. It seemed that my father was always changing heads in the machines. The TV sets customers had were Philips of the K11 and KT2 series.

In the May 1980 school holidays, Wayne and I set up a telephone line between our houses. It was the first thing I did after getting off the plane that morning. From my kitchen porch railing, a wire went to a tree in the park, down the tree, under the road through a stormwater drain, and then into Wayne's bedroom. The line was a twisted pair with lots of joins, and on first power up it didn't work. It seemed something was open circuit. Rather than find where it was, I connected both wires together as one, and connected the return circuit through the earth. It worked perfectly. The line was soon vandalised at ground level, so we changed it so it went straight across to Wayne's house. We used a pair of Ericsson field telephones used by linesmen. They worked on magneto, central battery, and automatic lines. We used them on magneto of course.
I recall one embarrassing incident when the garbage truck reversed all around Rotary Park because the line wasn't high enough!
We set up our phone line during the May and August holidays and used it alot. Sadly, Wayne returned to Australia sometime after August, so that was the end of that. The new P&T family to move into his house were nothing like Wayne's. Their son, Wade, was a bit younger, but the parents were also overprotective. He wasn't even allowed to ride his bike to the end of the street!
My father then introduced me to Craig Lamb, who lived near North Goroka, as a friend for the 1980 Christmas holidays. I don't recall much about him, except his parents also went to the Aero Club, and one night we changed the fluorescent tubes outside his house from white to yellow. We thought we'd get away with, leaving people wondering how the lights changed colour, but apparently they saw the whole thing!

1980 was also when I first did any house wiring. A worker at Kotuni, had built a small house there so someone could always be on site. His brother had wired the house, but I helped install all the fittings. I often wonder what happened to all the people I knew in Goroka.
Sadly, and unknown to me at the time, the 1980 Xmas holidays would be the last I saw of Goroka. My father returned to Sydney, winter of 1981. He did the recordings for A.I. Video for a while but it was the end of an era. Last I know of Kotuni Trout Farm was some other people took it over, but someone poured petrol into the water supply killing the fish and I think it shut down soon after.
They took a house up from Goroka to be reassambled at Kotuni. It was originally opposite the Bird Of Paradise, but was due to be demolished to make way for shops. My father and I had a look through it, and I took the phone of course. Apparently, we lived in this house for a short time before moving to Leigh Vial St. I don't have any memories of it though.
While I reminisce about Goroka, the reality is that PNG has gradually descended back into 3rd world status with an increase in crime. The pretty well maintained houses and gardens have been let to run down as their expat occupants left. Seems typical of a country when its previous colonial power gives it independence. It would have been impossible for the good times to continue, had I continued staying there.