Unwanted excitement

 

We had our first earthquake here in the first month.  We were sitting on the couch.  We felt the shudder.  It didn't last long.  Nothing moved much.  Our driver said it was a medium one when we asked him about it the next day.  Easy peasy! Earthquakes are no problem!  It was 5.1 on the Richter scale so small and fairly typical of what we could expect.

Then came Tuesday last week.  We were just in bed and not yet asleep.  The bed began to shake, the window started rattling and then it felt like we were being picked up and shaken violently.  The whole event was probably less than a minute but it was so intense.  Bottles fell over and things fell off shelves.  The fridge and stove both moved, doors swung on their hinges and drawers opened.  It was quite scary.  We were lying in bed through the worst of it debating whether we should run outside, or maybe climb under the bed, and then it was all over.  The adrenaline hit meant it was awhile before I got to sleep.

The quake measured 6.7 on the Richter Magnitude Scale so was quite a big one, in the 'strong' category - no-one at work had felt one that big before in Lae.  In the event the house was undamaged, and we were only shaken up.  I wouldn't want to be in a moving car if it happened again, or walking, but if that's the worst we can expect we'll survive.  There was no damage reported in town.

It has made me conscious though of every shudder.  There have been a few after shocks, but sometimes it's just the neighbours downstairs jumping around.  I've become a bit paranoid but I think that will ease.

One dismal thing about the earthquake that was discovered a few days later is that it damaged the overflow pipes from the swimming pool and now the pool is closed for the foreseeable future - not high on the priority list for fixing it seems.  Sad, as now I'll have to use the gym for exercise instead - the exercise bike has a very uncomfortable seat!  The pic is from a few weeks ago when I was swimming every day.

We don't get out of the office often but this week we wangled an invite to go with some visiting CSIRO soil scientists and the review team from ACIAR on a day trip up the Markham Valley.  It was a bit 'last minute' and permission from AVI was only granted the day before - we breathed a sigh of relief.  One of the CSIRO team was able to point out the discontinuity in tectonic plates where a slippage of around 8 cm had resulted in last week's earthquake.  We could see the line through the rock strata in the side of the Markham River valley (in the pic below).

We had a lovely day out networking with stakeholders in various agricultural industries.  The last thing on the agenda was a meeting with the farmers at Oriori village near Mutzing, held under a huge old mango tree.  Lydia, one of the spokespeople was quite inspiring.  She spoke only in Tok Pisin but we could understand her clearly and she was so passionate.  In the pic below she is sitting on the rug, in front of the wheelbarrow.  The village had provided fresh fruit to have with our lunch - watermelon, pineapple, cucumber and sugar fruit.  And the wheelbarrow had arrived full of coconuts.  We were each handed one with the top cut off to drink the very refreshing juice inside.

It was a picture postcard village.  The residents made us very welcome.

Next week it'll be back to 8 - 5 in the office.  I'm hoping for some progress on my project at a meeting scheduled for Monday and there's always plenty to do.  

I'll report back in a fortnight, Jenny.