Somehow, miraculously, I have never lost the sense of wonder and sheer delight that I experienced so often in a country whose places, peoples and cultures were as profoundly different from those of my early life experiences as it was possible to be.

From the moment I set foot in PNG, despite experiencing what expatriates learned to call "culture shock", I was completely infatuated with the place.

An initial posting to the Gulf District, with its serpentine waterways, suffocating humidity and relentless rain, did absolutely nothing to dampen my enthusiasm.

I cannot tell you what a joy it was, after a hard year-long apprenticeship, to have become a sufficiently accomplished boatman and canoeist, to confidently navigate the maze of mangroves, rivers and rivulets that separated Baimuru Patrol Post and Kikori Sub District Office or to unerringly find my way to a distant village.

In a similar way, I learned to love patrolling in the mountains. It was always a special joy to rise at dawn and, with steaming mug of tea in hand, watch the sun rise.

I also experienced the pleasures of coastal patrolling, where the main task in transit between villages was to catch enough fish for dinner, not just for the patrol personnel but, ideally, for the villagers as well.

Of course, there were less agreeable things to do, like slogging up and down seemingly endless muddy, mountainous jungle tracks for days on end, enduring a bout of malaria (or, worse still, dysentery) or undertaking the once experienced, never forgotten exhumation of a month-old body.

Also, it was frustrating at times when it seemed impossible to adequately convey to the people the huge potential for their country to be something more than just a place for hunting and gardening.

But somehow memories of the beauty of the landscape, the marvellous flora and fauna, the frequent kindness and good humour of the people and the enduring sense of achievement in doing a hard job well completely dominate my thoughts about PNG.

These days people pay big money for even a facsimile of the experiences that were gifted to me and any kiap, even if we sometimes didn't necessarily fully appreciate them at the time.

Many years after I left PNG, I read a book by Trevor Shearston, Something in the Blood, which is a series of short stories about life in pre-independence PNG.  It made me both laugh and cry, conjuring up memories that I think had, in some cases, been suppressed.

In particular, it struck me that my experiences and memories of PNG had indeed become "something in the blood", which I am incapable of removing even if I wanted to do so.

It seems to me that, in some respects, ex-kiaps are somewhat like war veterans; a "band of brothers", bound together by shared experiences, both good and bad, that are virtually unknowable and unexplainable to anyone else.

This helps explain why so many of us are drawn to participate in regular reunions or read and contribute to the Ex-Kiaps website or PNG Attitude and why we take a quiet pride in the medals lately awarded to us for services rendered.

We all cling onto our memories, neither able nor willing to let go of them, even if the taim bilong masta has long since (and rightly) passed into the shadowy realms of history.

I know that I was a very minor player in the grand narrative that is the history of kiaps in PNG. My achievements were exceedingly modest compared to the men who preceded me and I certainly learned more from Papua New Guineans than they ever learned from me.

Despite knowing this, I hold very dear the memories of my time in PNG and am deeply grateful that I had the chance to play any part at all in the creation of what is, for all its problems, a vibrant nation, still full of promise for a wonderful future.