Bert How, sole editor and publisher of Hilltop News in the UK, sent me this year’s publication. It ran to 21 pages of interesting reading. Long forgotten items of old comrades through the fog of 40 to 50 years, familiar names recalled, plus pages of local news gleaned from The Gazette and correspondence from members of the Hilltop Club from all over wot remains of the poor bluddy empire as well as America.

And Bert related a surprising story about the areas our own Gazette covers. It’s posted all over the globe.

Bert received a subscription from our own reunion group. He noted the Gazettes arrive in ones, twos, five and even six copies, some sadly the worse for wear and sometimes out of sequence—which now brings me to the item I want you people to know about.

He writes, “The Gazette has my name and address printed on the top left hand corner in Oct., 1985. On opening my mail I found this envelope containing a Picton Gazette 13 months late. The envelope was marked Papua, New Guinea.

“Later, reading The Gazette more thoroughly on page 3, written in ink but very small was an address. You see, readers, l assumed the postal authorities of New Guinea had just forwarded the paper on to me but the irony was that the message was from another source. It read, ‘Hello from Papua, New Guinea, somehow your paper ended up here. Hope it eventually gets to you. Greetings from Joe and Annette Keogh, Box 236, LAE, formerly of Picton.’”

Bert notes he intends to write Joe and Annette in the near future and must let The Gazette editor know the true outcome of the lost Picton Gazette.

Folks, it’s a small world. I have read where there are still head hunters in New Guinea. One thing I do know them savages didn’t use that particular copy of The Gazette to start the fire to heat up the cooking pot containing Joe and Annette, but it is a story I hope to hear the whys, hows and wherefores.