Henry Chow relates how on returning to PNG he took advantage of Chinese connections and took on the position of qualified boat builder to run a slipway in Rabaul where he taught boat building.
Henry Chow states that after finishing high school he went straight to Brisbane to take up an apprenticeship at the Crowley shipyards in Bulimba. He relates how he moved into a hostel in Bulimba, and how he excelled by learning all he could from the shipyard owner.
Henry Chow relates that his family had a trade store in Rabaul, and how his grandfather built a boat with a Japanese boat builder to run copra from the plantation to Rabaul.
Henry Chow relates how 300 young men were recruited from the Sze Yap Clan in Guangdong Province to go to Rabaul in the 1870s, including his great grandfather who was recruited to work for a German officer in Kokopo. He relates how his grandfather at 19 years set out to find his granduncle in 1895, travelling to Macau and Singapore where he worked in a small boat yard waiting for seven months while waiting for a boat to go to Kokopo.
