Rob Dehaan, on the yacht Arita, wrote the following – and more – for his erstwhile ASOPA classmates. ASOPA PEOPLE reproduces this small slice of Rob's wonderfully crafted prose. It really deserves to be shared.

It was only yesterday I walked into the common room at ASOPA between lectures to see Haggis and his clan playing cards on that low coffee table as they always did, laughing and joking. During the lunch break I walked down the road past the Navy barracks to sit on the edge of the Hawkesbury sandstone cliffs overlooking the breakers, marvelling at the power of the ocean as the waves bombarded Middle Head.

It was only yesterday, my head still in the clouds and dreaming of the wild places I’d see in New Guinea. I’d always wanted to go to New Guinea, as my dux book prize at my high school graduation in Wollongong attests. You know that book, the one by Colin Simpson, Plumes and Arrows, full of feathered highlanders. Magic colour with none of the odour. I was wrapped before I attended even my first lecture in Anthropology.

It was only yesterday I’d jump in my car with the last lecture done and head to Balmoral and Walton’s boatshed and rent a Tupperware sailboat for a few hours. Go screaming to the Spit Bridge and back again just for the thrill of sailing, wind in my hair, salt water in my face. Yesterday I was probably as crazy as today, but life was just awesome. It still is. A little hard to believe forty years have slipped by. I guess I was too busy to notice.

I flew to PNG to be confronted at Moresby airport by a trillion look-alikes with fuzzy hair and temperatures straight out of the microwave. From there I went to paradise. To the patrol post on the Duke of York Islands. Travelling by speedboat in crystal clear water, over coral reefs, diving for fish, learning Pidgin, making a mess of it, night in local villages learning culture and customs, all the time being paid real money. Life is so fair.