I was given a three month contract by the High Commissioner to coordinate the staff and contractors to try and finish – which we did.  Then on the 8 June 1992, we had the official opening the Deputy Prime Minister, Don McKinnon came up with a NZ delegation to officially open the High Commission, and I was given the task to help make this happen.

Unfortunately, the delegation did not heed our advice regarding eating seafood in June (there is an Indian saying that one should never eat fish in a month with an ‘r’ in it), and nearly everyone ate prawns that were served at the official banquet at the President’s reception.  About 80% of the delegation suffered food poisoning, making for some long trips in the plane back to NZ.

Attached is an article from a supplement in the Economic Times newspaper that was prepared for the event:

About 9 months into the posting, the following article appeared in the Times of India.  Despite the uncanny likeness, the person in the photo was in fact an Israeli diplomat (and maybe a possible Mossad agent).  You have to admire the Israeli’s  – they had clearly prepared their cover story, and unfortunately I was it.

My first multi million dollar aid project and perhaps the most demanding project I ever managed (talk about deep end).

The aim of the project was to plant 14,000 ha of denuded land in a small industrial plantation.  As well as the obvious environmental benefits, the project was meant to create a sustainable wood resource to generate a wood processing industry, and provide significant employment opportunities to the locals.

Unfortunately, on the one side we had to deal with corrupt NRDC government officials who wanted to control the funds and take ownership of all the vehicles, and corrupt local politicians who organised squatters to try and undertake land grabs every time we opened up a road, and on the other, we found that the province we were planting was the rest and recreation area for the Communist insurgents, who were worried that our roads would enable the military to access and attack them.  The Communists whipped up support from NZ NGOs using native Lumad customary land as a smokescreen, and applied pressure on the NZ government to stop the project.

Fortunately, the project hung together due to tight cooperation between Warren Ellis and later Peter Clark as Project Managers for FORENCO, together with Warren Searell at the Embassy and myself in Wellington.

A TV documentary was produced named Babes in the Woods – which in retrospect despite our good intentions pretty aptly summed up the situation.

However, the fact that we planted the best part of 14,000 ha in forest on denuded hills made all the tough times worthwhile.

Clippings from the Dominion Sept 1991