In Memorium- Frank Henry Papprill: 25 July 1922 - 12 September 2009

Frank Papprill

What can one say about Dad? What words best describe him?
Whatever we do we could never find enough to say about him or words to describe him.

For us he was always that big generous, loving, humorous, passionate, warm-hearted, big-hearted even, down to earth, involved, unassuming, surprising, concerned, neighbourly, a teller of stories, a raconteur, a lover of the bawdy as well as one of great tenderness.

Dad loved life as well as loving intensely with a devotion I can only hope I can emulate. For when Mum was diagnosed with cancer he saw it as his duty to look after her, to nurse her through her long illness and then, despite our shared joke that with all his lawn-mowing, gardening and shared meals he did with his friends on The Hill he was serving twelve widows, to remain loyal to his love right through until his death.

My Dad, our Dad, our children’s grandfather, their children’s great grandfather, was a man who continued to surprise us and will continue to be a role model we and they can look and live up to.

For he was a man whose bluff good humour would become the focus of a party - at my 60th his often embarrassing tales of my childhood, here in Wanganui, created much amusement for my friends who, every time we met, would ask “How’s the old man? Still telling stories?”

His intense pleasure of life and all it gave him was shared equally between us, as family, and his neighbours. I learnt, only recently, of his early morning gardening done for an army friend, an ex POW, whose ill-health prevented him from getting his garden into shape - who else but an overly generous man would get up in the pre dawn mist and go and dig a neighbour’s garden over before going to work?

But, then again, nothing should have surprised us for I recall Jocelyn ringing me one weekend, full of concern, when she discovered that Dad, when he was a regular hut warden for DOC, had met a young English couple honeymooning on the river and,after talking to them, had not only given the couple his jersey because theirs was wet but offered them the keys to the house to stay over in Wanganui while he was up the river. His generosity actually did include giving the shirt off his back!

Jocelyn, Des, Alan & Frank. 25 July 2009

Dad was also a man who enjoyed life and all the humour it held. For him living was a divine comedy. At our last family gathering, his 87th birthday, the evening ended with us falling out of our chairs with stomach aching laughter as he told and then encouraged others to tell story after embarrassingly funny story about himself, ourselves and his childhood. Each story often tinged with poignancy even as the punch lines threw themselves at our solar plexus and doubled us up with laughter.

It was an evening of great good humour that only finished when the final whiskey was drunk and Dad had decided that he’d had enough and said his good nights.

Heather, Joy, Frank, Jocelyn 25 July 2009

That enjoyment of life, his unquestioning generousity gave him rewards that he was astonished, surprised and humbled at receiving. The QSM for his services to the community that is Durie Hill, to the community that is the Wanganui River, the organisations and people along it and to his War time mates left him tongue-tied and speechless and, I think, awed by the honour given to him so freely.

And when, just a few months ago, the RSA awarded him a life membership for his care, his ongoing friendship to his mates, his comment to us was: “Christ, son, they called me up and gave me a life membership.I don’t know why they gave it to me. I was only doing what I normally do.... and ... bugger me if I didn’t start to cry ... stupid old fool eh?”

But that was Dad. He did what he always had done and carried on doing it because it was the right thing, the only thing, to do.

For a man that lived life to the fullest I know Dad was always perpetually surprised that he had survived to reach 87 and to see his family hit those magic numbers of 63, 61 and 50 themselves. He once said to me: “You know son, I told your mother when I reached 40 that I didn’t think I’d see them reach 40... least of all see Jocelyn reach that age.And now, look at us - you’ve passed 60 and Jocelyn’s going on 50 - where did the years go?”

To which I said -”Keep asking Dad ‘cos we expect you to be still here at 90.”

Unfortunately that won’t happen.

Yes, Dad was a great father, a welcoming and loving father in law, a great grandfather and great great-grandfather who has had a huge influence on our lives and on the lives of our families.

He has been great neighbour to many - an established figure on Durie Hill as, after all, you don’t live in one house on one street for 66 years without becoming part of the fabric of the suburb.

He has been a great friend not just to us as his family but to all he came in contact with.

His death will leave a huge hole in our lives but his memory will survive, his stories will be retold, relived and embroidered on for many years and his presence always felt whenever someone begins a sentence with: “Remember when Poppa said or did...”

So let us all remember Frank, remember Dad, Remember Poppa and celebrate his life and mourn his passing.

Back in the Doha Haze

Our Apartment in Bin Mahmoud

It is hard to believe that we've been back in Doha for two weeks now as the days seem to have merged into the heat haze that is Qatar in summer. With temperatures regularly in the mid 40s during the day and lows of 30C the idea of doing anything really active during the day disappears as one contemplates the comfort of air conditioning in the cocoon that is our apartment.

On top of the heat induced lassitude it is also Ramadan here which means that the day starts with the dawn call to prayer at 4.00 followed by the sunrise call at 5.15. For the locals it means that there can be no eating or drinking after 5.00am until the sunset call at 5.45pm.

It also means that the working day becomes compressed into a 4-5 hour slot between 8.00 or 9.00am and 1.00pm. (For the workers on the building site behind our apartment the day starts with the shriek of an un-oiled pulley at 5.30 and finishes at around 10.30 or 11.00am when the heat is too much for any outside labour.)

There are several advantages to this situation: getting on with some reading both for recreation and professionally, polishing up PD presentations for delivery once schools start, writing up exemplar lesson plans to take into the schools for teachers to follow and for us, as ATs, to demonstrate as effective teaching to the staff, watching the news on TV, having organisation meetings with the ATs with both companies involved with the contract and socialising with our colleagues.

It does mean that we are getting ourselves well organised for the coming school year.

I've been on site at the school the team I'm on is working in for the past three days meeting the staff, sorting out our work space and getting ourselves ready to swing into action this Sunday when we meet the full staff for the first time.
This year the school is an ex-Ministry one that has become an Independent school. The plan is to operate out of the old site for 2009-10 then move to a new site in 2010-11. In the meantime the old rooms are being given a make over with new plant installed ready for the students by the 27th. Consequently the parking area looks like a building site with stacks of student desks, old filing cabinets, broken blackboards, chairs, papers, bottles and hunks of timber and broken masonry on one side and an army of labourers busy painting, reassembling and moving new materials into the classrooms while teachers hunt their way through the movement to find a space to work or talk about the new year in their departments.

It also means that the English Coordinator and I have to sit down and sort out the resources needed to ensure that the Department can deliver both in quantity and quality as there appear to be no text or consumerable resources left from the old MoE school for the staff to use to develop lessons from.

We are, however, impressed by the energy and organisation of the Management team who have been coordinating the changeover for some weeks now. Every discussion we've had with them has shown that they have a solid and well thought-out knowledge of the challenges and requirements of the change from a MoE to an Independent SEC school will mean for the staff and the students. It should also mean that come the 27th the school will be ready to spring into operation.

On the home front Joy and I have settled into our apartment and, following a long exchange of misdirection and misunderstandings, unpacked our final boxes of gear to make the place more homely. Joy has hung her canvases of NZ scenes on the walls in the lounge and lined the walls of the spare bedroom with blank canvases and her paints as a studio and I've set up an alcove in the lounge as a workspace and library. I also picked up a cheap DVD player so we can now enjoy films whenever we want rather than surf our way through the 1050 channels available on the satellite TV to find a programme worth sustained watching.

Joy and Priscilla, as the current surviving "Doha Darlings", are busy plotting and planning their next foray into musical theatre which means they are off most mornings to explore the air conditioned halls of the souqs on the look out for material and items they can put to use. They are waiting on the return of Jan to complete their trio and the "Darlings" will spring into action.

Joy with one of her paintings at the Souq Waqif

Joy and I drove down to the Souq Waqif one evening to check out the "Summer in the City" exhibition Joy had had two paintings exhibited in over the July-September period and were impressed at the range of work and styles the local artists are working in. I think it would be great if Joy could, with other Kiwi artists here in Doha, do a totally NZ art exhibition at sometime. The contrast between the intense colours of the Pacific and the haziness of the Gulf would be interesting to say the least.

On Wednesday we were the guests of the Bloomsbury-Qatar Foundation Publishing House for Iftar, the post fast meal, and a poetry reading by four local poets. The poets read their work in both Arabic and English to a very receptive audience after the meal. The poems revealed the differences in attitude, thought and imagery between male and female in the Middle East as well as the linguistic accomplishment of the poets.

The male poet's work resounded with discords and clashes of images while the women's work focused on the issue or the meaningful moment with intensity and controlled passion which left the audience in earnest discussion after the reading.

This coming week will be interesting especially as I,with my colleagues, will be beginning our work proper and as Ramadan nears its end. Joy and I are also trying to work out what we will do over the Eid break that follows Ramadan - there is a public holiday from the 17th through till the 27th - so we are looking at a trip to Turkey, which would allow us to visit places we didn't get to see when we first went there in 1997, or to Abu Dhabi where we could catch up some of our colleagues from last year as well as drive to Oman and as explore another Gulf State.

Choices!!

The Return to Doha.

Assured of a contract for the 2009-10 Joy and I settled ourselves into organising our lives for a full year in the Gulf States.

This meant setting ourselves up to become landlords, clearing our house out to place everything in storage during our absence and ensuring that our estate was to be well managed. This was a task and a half as we moved, packed and sorted out all we had accumulated over the past 11 years in Franco Lane.

While we concentrated on this task the contract negotiations meandered their way through the hallways of the various Government departments in Qatar towards final signatures. This took time and left many of the team in the twilight world of waiting, waiting, waiting for the call to return to the Gulf.

During this hiatus Joy and I, along with the rest of the family, celebrated my father’s 87th birthday in Wanganui. We flew south from Auckland on a typically windy,wet N.Z. winter morning in a small commuter plane which was uniquely suited for flying through up and down draughts. Thanking our lucky stars we weren’t flying Yemini Air and the wings remained on the plane we watched our, thankfully empty, coffee cups fly into the air to bounce onto the heads of those in front as at one stage we dropped several hundred feet to bounce back up through the clouds to resume level flight.

Dad’s birthday celebrations went off well despite Dad having been to New Plymouth to his Brother-in-Law’s funeral on the Friday. As Dad said at his age farewells are more common than celebrations.

Back home Joy and I cranked up the house cleaning and packing in the expectation of the flight back to the Gulf.

At the beginning of August we were all ready, the house rented out for the year, the storage unit booked, the removal men coming in and the tickets in our hands for a flight out on the 19th.

Then, a glitch, a pause, a hiatus, a spanner in the works for some one in Qatar had suddenly decided that it would do our souls good to wait a little longer with a question about several consultants’ ages. At 55+ a small group of us, inn the different consulting teams, suddenly became too old to perform the tasks we’d been competently performing four weeks before and so we were put into the holding pattern while representations were made on our behalves to the Qatari bodies responsible for the contract we were employed under.

This snafu meant that we had to review our options and begin looking to plans B through to Z in case our personal contract could not be fulfilled. Our plans all took us to the UK where, with an EU passport, I could secure work for the 2009-10 academic year as a supply teacher and, if Joy wanted, she, too, can work. So now I registered with half a dozen recruitment agencies and sent my CV to a couple of colleges enquiring about possible job vacancies.

My qualifications and character were being checked out to ensure I was of sufficient good character to minister to the tender psyches where ever I was offered a job.

All that remained was, given that the Gulf contract could not be fulfilled, to make urgent phone calls to relations to beg bed space until Joy and I were in full employment and had secured a flat for ourselves.

On Tuesday (11th) Joy & I went along to Howick College to be properly fare-welled from the staff as I had been merely offered best wishes as I took off on an extended leave in November 2008.

The fare-well speeches were complementary and,as Joy said later, a pleasure to receive. I also ended up with two & half days of cover and the offer of more if we were still around till the end of the month. At least being busy doing something productive kept me from worrying myself into a panic about possibilities that may or may not eventuate.

In the meantime; the management team in Doha continued to make optimistic and pressing representations to allow us to continue through this contract and we practiced deep breathing and patience.

I practiced the deep breathing by doing relief work at Howick and packing all our possessions into the storage unit along the street until, after much deep breathing and other calming techniques, Qatar finally decided that our ages did not weary us and we could continue in our roles as consultants.

This meant that we were finally on our way on the 26th and the associated 28 hours of traveling time once one counted in waiting time for connections and other delays.

Our first encounter with travel delays was at Auckland Airport where the Airport Authority had installed carry on bag weigh people whose job it was was to stop travelers and weigh their hand luggage to ensure it was below 7 kgs. Of course our bags were 3 - 4 kgs over each so it was back to the check in to summon back our suitcases and off load any excess to the lightest case.

After an hour and much argument Joy and I finally succeeded in off loading enough to allow our cargo case to be within limits and our carry on bags to be 7 kg.(as long as we didn’t pack our reading and some miscellaneous items of clothing we couldn’t pack in our main cases, without going over weight, but were needed on arrival in Doha. These we packed into a couple of small hand bags, weighing an extra 2 kgs each, and carried, along with our carry on bags, back to the departure hall where our carry ons were weighed.. they were now 7 kgs each ...and we were allowed through passport control.

Once there we repacked our small hand bags into our carry ons, bringing them back to 9 kgs each, and headed off to our departure lounge and the wait for the off and the 3 hour trip and a 90 minutes transit wait to Sydney.

From Sydney it was a 19 hour flight to Dubai and a 150 minute transit wait until our 45 minute flight to Doha, Ramadaan (22 August - 19th Sept) and 43 C heat.

We were met by Priscilla Ellis and taken to our new apartment at Bin Mahmoud not too far from our familiar area along Al Miqrab Road. This apartment is larger than our Mazda one with the added advantage of neutral furnishings, a land line and a stable internet connection.

Neville Henry, from Mazda, came round and, with his help, we moved the bits and pieces we’d left in 12 to Bin Mahmoud and got in our groceries and supplies. This effort, while not huge in terms of weight and difficulty, was exhausting as the outside air temperature was 43C and, to us, rising.

Anyway, we’re now comfortably established back in Doha and waiting on the arrival of the boxes we freighted up on Tuesday so that Joy can unpack her painting gear, music for the 2009-10 Doha Darlings and I can find any extra teaching materials I’ll need once we start back in the schools sometime next month.

Amman and Home

13 July:
Our decision not to drive to Wadi Rum before heading back to Amman was vindicated when we drove back to Amman from Petra. Saber (saber.alhamad@yahoo.com ) picked us up at 8.30 for the four hour drive back to Amman along the desert highway.
With a stop off for a visit to a souvenir stall and lunch at Tawaheen Al-Hawa (The Windmill) restaurant in central Amman we didn't get back to the hotel till 3.30pm.

Woman making breads for customers at Tawaheen Al-Hawa Restaurant

If we'd done the Wadi Rum side trip we could have added an extra five hours to the day which would have made it somewhat exhausting especially as we had to repack our bags in preparation for the long trip home the next day.
The meal at Tawaheen Al Hawa was beautifully prepared and presented - a generous platter of "starters" - hummous, pickles, salads, olives... followed by a mixed grill of chicken, lamb and beef and topped off with coffee and water-melon which proved the theory that taking a long, lingering lunch is one of the pleasures that needs to be cultivated and practised often!
Back at the hotel we repacked our bags for easier travel - especially as we had picked up a few more souvenirs of our travels than we'd started with. Joy had had great fun bargaining for a silver arabic styled mirror and several other tangible memories of our trip at different stops along our way which meant we needed to ensure that our packing allowed us access to our immediate needs while protecting the articles.
Outside our hotel the street was hosting a wedding which, like the others we'd passed by in our first days in Amman and, later, in Petra, meant a parade of cars as the groom and his family set off to bring the bride back to the ceremony, lots of excited chatter as the guests arrived and prepared for the arrival of the couple and, as the call for prayer echoed over the street, lines of men facing Mecca praying before the wedding celebrations began in earnest. Then, as the wedding neared its end a series of firework displays climaxed the evening.
The next day it was on to Dubai for an overnight before the 15+ hour trip home to N.Z.

Our brief stop-over in Dubai allowed us to take a walk through the Mall of the Emirates - one of the huge shopping malls that provide tourist destinations in the city-state. Here the attraction is the ski-slope which provides the chance for people to go skiing in the middle of a desert! Otherwise the mall was like every other shopping mall one can see and experience anywhere in the world. So, unless one was a shopping mall addict, as far as we were concerned this was a good excuse to enjoy a walk in air-conditioned comfort after sitting in an airplane constraint for much of the day.

The next day we flew on in the Airbus 380 to Auckland and home and the organisation needed to allow us to return to the Gulf sometime in August.

The Welcoming committee

We were welcomed home by a boisterous and enthusiastic scrum of family and grand-children who draped themselves on our legs and arms as we existed the customs hall and entered the winter damp of an Auckland afternoon.

Now begins the setting up and organisation for a new experience in the Gulf later in the year.

Jordan Tripping; Petra, Little Petra to Amman

12th July:
We decided, too,to abort the side trip to Wadi Rum on our way back to Amman as the heat of the desert would not have made the experience of a two hour jeep ride and walk into the cliffs of the area very pleasant. Without the extra day of walking around Petra we elected to drive out to Little Petra,an outlying village on the route towards Petra itself.

Before we left Joy and I walked down to the corner store to buy a couple of bottles of water. We walked past a couple sitting on their doorstep eating breakfast and drinking tea. Joy greeted them with a breezy “salaam alaykum” and was promptly offered tea and food by the couple. We politely declined the offer as we’d only just eaten at the hotel and headed off to meet our driver, Saber, and take off on our drive to Little Petra.

Elephant Marker indicating routeto Petra from Little Petra

Here we saw the sophistication of the Nabataean engineering in the huge 1.2 million litre cistern cut into a sandstone bluff which acted as one of the catchments for both Little and Big Petra and the surrounding villages when Petra was at the height of its power.

Joy, tempted by the acoustics of the place,sang “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” so she can now claim to have sung in the cistern chapel.

Little Petra or Siq el-Barid was a way station on the trade route which means that the buildings carved from the cliffs could have been inns and shops to supply the traders on their long walk through the sandstone desert towards Petra.

Little Petra, like Petra itself, is built amidst the sandstone rocks with all the holes, indentations and caves that such a landscape creates. We couldn’t help but imagine that the place would sound like a strange and wild orchestra at night with a desert wind blowing and whining over the rocks and through the holes. It would become a place of night djinns and spirits wailing for release from whatever torments they were experiencing. Not the place for a camping trip with the grand-children?

Here the surviving large wall painting from the Nabataean period was undergoing restoration by a couple of archeologist restorers who were perched on scaffolding in a room that could only be reached by climbing a series of sand slippery steps high above the siq floor.

Otherwise the area was deserted to echo to the chirrup of insects and the occasional whirr of a bird flickering through the cliffs.

From there we headed into Wadi Mousa to explore the souvenir shops where Joy bought an arabic style silver mirror decorated with silver chains and charms and I got a Petra tie and a pack of genuine Jordanian coffee to savour with Koro on our return to New Zealand.

I also cleared the e mail to discover that there will be a Cohort VI and the possibility of a new contract in the Gulf was ever nearer.

Tomorrow it is back to Amman with a shopping stop before booking into our hotel for our final night in Jordan.
Sunset over Wadi Mousa

Jordan Tripping, Amman to Petra.

10th July:
This was to prove a long day - a journey that took us from Amman to Mt Nebo to Kerak and then on to Petra. This part of the trip forced me to dredge down to my childhood Bible lessons at Sunday School to recall the Old Testament histories of the Israelites and their wanderings in the wilderness as they moved out of Egypt in search of the “promised land.”

We drove to the Citadel being shown, on the way, that Amman was built on seven hills that surround the valley in which the Greeks and Romans had built their houses and theatres. The hill that dominates the central city is topped by the Citadel which looks down onto the Theatre in the valley below.


The Citadel hill appears to have been settled from neolithic times as the Archeological museum show-cased flint knives,pottery and other artifacts covering every period through to the Islamic Empires which culminated with the Ottoman in 1916.

The Citadel is dominated by the ruins of a temple to Hercules and the remains of other Roman temples. The Hercules Temple must have been huge if it was to accommodate the statue of the god as the fingers, the sole remains of the statue, are enormous.


The site is a record of the successive waves of occupation and history of Jordan as there are the ruins of a Byzantine Church and the restored Omanyyad Palace - the remains of the christian and early islamic occupations of the site.

We explored the site and the associated archeological museum before heading off to Mt.Nebo,Madaba, Kerak and Petra.

Mt. Nebo is presumed to be the site where Moses died and was buried so it has religious significance to most Judeo-Christian religions as well as Islam.

The site was one of the important ones on the 7th century pilgrimage route from Jerusalem , Jericho, Ayun Moses and Mt. Nebo and recently for Pope who celebrated mass there. However, when I walked through the gates the roosters, who were lording it over their flocks of hens, promptly crowed three times... something they probably didn’t do when the Pope entered the site.

The remains of the Byzantine monasteries that had been built there from 393AD have revealed mosaic floors and other fragments from what would have been a large religious site.

Before we headed off to Madaba we stopped in at the Arts-River Mosaic centre where Joy bought a mosaic of the Tree of Life as well as a few pieces of glassware and pottery as souvenirs of our visit.

Madaba has been settled for over 4500 years. It was the centre of the Moabite kingdom and is mentioned in the Old Testament as Medeba. When the area came under the rule of the Romans the site became an important christian site and the centre of a bishopric. It’s importance in the present comes from the mosaic map of the biblical lands inlaid in the floor of the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George.


The map shows all the important towns and geographic features from the River Jordan through to the Nile delta in a mix of linear and figurative detail.

We were also shown an icon that was the object of local veneration as it had been the focus of a local miracle. Apparently, when the icon was being displayed to the congregation a shaft of light had struck the picture leaving a hand reaching up to touch the infant Christ. So now the icon was kept in the crypt and was the object of worship for the local Greek Orthodox congregation.

From Madaba we drove to Kerak Castle. The ruins of a Crusader Castle dominating the trade and pilgrimage routes along the Kings Highway.

The castle could cater for a garrison of 3000 men with 17000 other families living in the town below so it was a substantial power base for the Crusaders.

Kerak Castle, which appears on the Madaba map, dominates the hill above the town with its battlements running along the rim and providing a sheer drop to the rocks below. Apparently one of the Crusader rulers,Chatillion, of the place used the drop as a convenient way of disposing of his enemies. He put a wooden box over their heads to ensure they remained conscious while falling to their deaths on the rocks below.
His cruelty was rewarded when he lost in battle with Saladin in 1187 as Saladin personally beheaded him.

Joy and I could imagine Carl roaming the walls and rooms busily working out the defenses and purposes of the site as he relived the history of the place in his imagination.

The drive from Kerak to Petra was along haul through the unrelieved desert down into the sandstone valleys that surround the site and its town of Wadi Mousa.

Here, too,we found ourselves the sole guests at the Petra Diamond Hotel... a mixed blessing result of touring Jordan in the off season!! There is nothing more daunting than being the sole breakfasters in a restaurant. The hotel proved to be friendly and comfortable with a helpful staff who were prepared to make conversation with two solitary guests.

11July: Petra:
Wadi Mousa, the town that services Petra, is, reputedly, the place where Moses struck the rocks and brought water to the Israelites as the wandered in the wilderness. The town is built on the sandstone hillsides with narrow, winding streets that follow ridge lines into the valley which is the entrance to Petra itself.

From our hotel window we watched horses, hens and goats wandering over vacant lots and meandering along the streets while local residents pruned their grape vines or checked their fig trees as their children perched themselves along the walls to watch the animals scratching in the dust below.

The summer heat may have all too short a day but in Jordan it proved to be exhausting and served to put a crimp on our original plan to spend two days exploring the Petra site before heading to Wadi Rum and Little Petra on our way back to Amman.

On Saber’s advice we left the hotel at 8.30 for the entrance to the walk into Petra and, perhaps, dodge some of the heat of the day.

Tickets duly bought we set off along the 1500 metre path through the siq or fissure in the sandstone cliffs that winds its way into the ruins. Above us the rock reached up over 100 metres to shade out the sun while allowing a cooling breeze to flow around us.

As we neared the siq evidence of the Nabataean civilisation became obvious in carved sandstone blocks - the Djin Blocks that,apparently, represent the Dushara God of the Nabataeans and the Obelisk tomb which appears to marked the starting point for the mortuary rites that were the centre of their culture.

Shortly after we entered the siq itself along which processions of travelers have clattered and chatted their way for thousands of years. At several points along the path evidence of Roman occupation in the form of cobble-stoned paving appeared while the Nabataean water system carved into the cliff faces showed us an earlier time and culture.

Eventually the siq does its final twist to open out into an Indiana Jones moment - the revelation of the facade of The Treasury.

Legend had it that this royal tomb, carved for the Nabataean King Aretas III, was the hiding place of pharaonic treasure from Egypt which had meant that the local Bedouin had been highly protective of the site even though they had tried to shoot out the urns that decorated the facade in the vain hope that royal treasures would spill out.

We paused there to both summon up the energy to head off into the sun to explore the site and to marvel at the artistry of the tomb and the time taken to carve out this 40 x 28 metre facade and the vast empty room inside.

The path led us past the facades of buildings that might have been both homes and government offices towards the theatre and the tombs of Petra.

Here the Urn tomb and the vaulted chambers below dominated the cliff face. This building had been converted to a church in 447 AD until Petra faded from the trade routes to be forgotten until its rediscovery in 1812 by English explorers.


All around the site the local Bedouin had set up trading stalls and shades for hot and weary walkers for which we were much relieved as the valley was a heat trap as the morning drifted into afternoon. Joy found comfort and conversation in one stall while I climbed the carved out steps to the Urn Tomb and the associated Silk, Corinthian and Palace tombs.

While I marvelled at the intricacy of the carving and engineering of the tombs Joy got into conversation with the young woman, who had been born in one of the caves in Petra, running a stall from whom she learnt about the way the local Bedouin live in the caves and ruins herding their sheep, goats, horses, donkeys and camels around the area in search of fodder as well as providing opportunities for tourists to ride in early explorer style from place to place within Petra.

We wandered past the remains of the Nymphaeum or spring in honour of the water nymphs towards the temples of the gods Dushara and el-Uzza, the remains of the Winged Lions Temple and the museum where we sat and contemplated climbing to either the Monastery or the Place of High Sacrifice in the afternoon heat.

In the end we decided to begin the walk out of the site rather than risk heat exhaustion on the side of a sandstone cliff.

The walk out convinced us that returning the next day to climb to either site would be pushing our luck as there was little real shelter and our legs were beginning to stiffen up from the climbing and scrambling we’d done that day.

Jordan Tripping Amman, Jerash & Dead Sea.

7th -8th July:
Long day of 16 hours of travel and shifting time zones. Left Swansea at 11.30 on the train to Paddington - arrived around 2.30- then by tube to Heathrow to check in for Dubai. We had a four hour wait around Terminal 3 until our seven hour flight which, of course, meant a time zone shift of three hours effectively lengthening our day.
We then had to amuse ourselves for seven hours before flying on to Jordan. This meant that with the lack of sleep on the trip over the day was punctuated in periods of dozing amidst our luggage which doesn’t make for a great sense of completeness!
Arrived at Amman Airport at 4.00 p.m. to be met by our AtlasTour guide inside passport control and ushered through the routines rapidly and smoothly only to discover that our luggage was to be the last bags off the rack.

Once we were luggaged up our host introduced us to our driver, Saber, and escorted us to the Hotel where we discovered, somewhat disconcertedly,that we were the only guests for the night!! Being the sole guests meant extremely generous meals - the evening meal of chicken, rice and vegetables was bigger than we would otherwise eat as, we found the next morning, was breakfast.

9th July:
Next morning we set off to visit the first of the sites on our itinerary - the Greco-Roman city of Jerash which is on the outskirts of Amman.

We also discovered one of the advantages of touring Jordan at this time of the year.... few tour groups blocking the entrances and sites for when we arrived at Jerash there were about six cars and a mini-van in the car park.

Jerash was one of the ten important cities in the Roman Empire - the Decapolis of Philadelphia (Amman), Damascus, Gadara until the collapse of the Roman Empire.

The city ruins were entered through a triumphal arch built to honour Emperor Hadrian in 129AD into a huge oval plaza which leads into a street of columns that seems to stretch to the horizon. Along this street we could see the remains of temples to Zeus, Dionysius,Artemis and other Roman deities. The temple to Dionysius was converted to a christian church in 359AD which, to my mind, seemed an ideal god’s temple to use as a church as it inversely parallels the way some libraries have been converted to pubs in New Zealand.(Galbraith’s, in Auckland, is a good example of this sort of cultural inversion).

Beside the temple of Artemis stands the Nymphaeum built in 191AD and dedicated to the water nymphs. This building was an impressive one with niches for each representation of the nymphs in the wall opening onto the street and the remains of a fountain in its courtyard.

I explored the South Theatre of the city before heading back to the hippodrome to watch a reenactment of a Roman legion’s drills, a gladiatorial combat and a mock chariot race.

The South Theatre seats 3000 and has what appeared to be perfect acoustics as I, sitting in the top centre of the auditorium, could hear every word spoken by tourists standing on the stage and in the pit below. The theatre was being prepared for a month long cultural event with famous singers and players performing every evening under lights so there was a constant bustle of technicians and sound and light directors mixed in among the few tour groups exploring the site.


The re-enactment group was an enthusiastic presentation of Roman drill manouvres and demonstrations of fighting techniques performed by the 6th Legion of Jerash in full armour. They were followed by Gladiators from the local Gladiatorial school who demonstrated the different types of combat used in such exchanges all to loud calls from a couple of young boys of “Kill Him!! Kill Him!!” as each exchange reached its climax.
They were followed by three teams of charioteers who raced around the hippodrome at great speed in clouds of dust and loud cries of encouragement to their horses.

We left Jerash and drove,literally, down to the Dead Sea for lunch and a float in the heavily salted water. We picked our way across the hot sand and sank into the warmth of the salt lake to watch other groups liberally coat themselves with mud, let it dry into some sort of black armour then wash it off and repeat for as long as good humour held out.

Feeling the heat we retreated to the coolness of the Resort’s swimming pool before driving back to Amman and preparation for day two of our adventure.