Supermarket development halted

The road to Lae

me again

Sisiak home

After two months of effort and with the formal ‘stop’ notice still awaited from the Capital, the developer and contractor stopped building the biggest supermarket development that the town has seen, at least pending a planning approval. Most civil servants outside the planning office are unhappy because the owner is an influential, upstanding millionaire member of the community. Most of the public are happy, sadly because he is an ethnic Chinese. It seems I still have a job so will probably have to move sights onto the town centre airport expansion. After a hair raising ride to Lae and back a day later to discuss digital mapping at the school of architecture– 300km each way in a 4x4 driven by an Australian would be rally driver I reported sick to the doctor, clearly with some rare tropical disease but he said it was just a cold “there’s a lot of it about” and to go and lie down for the weekend. All ok again now and my second traffic count successfully completed with 8 teenage secondary school students. Finally I learn something that Ann Marie who knows everything and everybody hasn’t heard yet – the latest harebrained, innovative and stunning project – the “gold coast” of Australia is to be replicated in Madang – condominiums, golf courses, shopping malls and presumably 20 miles of golden beach to replace the mangroves, croc infested swamps and rocky foreshore just 10 miles up the coast !