Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 479
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[Page 479]
(24)
is no authentic record of the ambient temperature exceeding a hundred degrees in the equatorial belt, that is, ten degrees of latitude north and south of the equator.
Rarely was there any wind. Outside our shelters, we got around in plastic anti-gas capes, which were not long enough to prevent the rain from wetting our legs. Strangely enough nobody seemed to get a cold: I cannot remember that I ever heard any coughing.
Weekly film showings and performances by the talented divisional concert party took place in an open-air theatre, only the stage and projection room being covered. The audience sat on hard, wooden backless benches in their plstic capes, often in the pouring rain: it was really a crude version of the ancient Greek threatre.
All buildings, large and small, were constructed native style with overhanging ridge-roofs thatched with coconut-palm leaves. For extra good ventilation the upper halves of the weatherboard walls were quite open, and these large openings were usually furnished with big, top-hinged, shutters which, however, were rarely closed. Gangs of the natives, working cheerfully and efficiently under their own foremen, erected these buildings quickly with only a minimum of supervision by the Army engineers. Our headquarters officers' mess was built up on tall posts, and had a sawn wooden floor which projected, like a balcony, out over the edge of the lagoon waters: at high tide the wavelets were lapping noisily underneath the floor. Here we gave hospitality to members of the United States Navy and Air Force, to officers of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, to nursing sisters from the Australian General Hospital, and to our fellow Australians.
I was agreeably surprised to find how well the climate agreed with me, as I had been under the mistaken impression that this part of the globe was a "white man's grave". The four regular seasons of the temperate year didn't exist; instead there was a six-month wet season and a sx-month dry one, during which the daily temperatures did not vary much. Nights were cool and