Ten years ago Maria Laracy certainly did not expect to contract typhoid whilst working in Papua New Guinea, let alone live through a typhoon and witness a professional hit in Macau, experience the Hong Kong hand-over first hand, see the devastation caused by fire in the Borneo jungle, or get caught up in riots in Port Moresby and Jakarta.

She was only looking for a way out of Rockhampton - and IT seemed like a good career move.

"I had no idea what I wanted to do when I left school, and I started working in the office area at the Mater Hospital in Rockhampton, just admitting and discharging patients, but I ended up doing the payrolls as well," Laracy said.

It so happened that the payroll system the hospital implemented came from Brisbane-based software developer Concept Systems International.

"I was getting kinda sick of Rocky (Rockhampton) and I half jokingly asked if Concept had any vacancies going in Brisbane," Laracy explains. "They called me back within a week and I moved down to Brisbane to work for them."

However, IT consulting is more often associated with office cubicles, than exotic settings, and given that her first port of call was Brisbane, Laracy still had little indication of what was to come.

In 1995 Laracy found herself posted to Hong Kong to assist in a technology roll-out with one of the then-British colony's universities. While the initial stint was to last for a matter of weeks, Concept Systems International managed to wrangle contracts from under the noses of major internationals like Oracle, and PeopleSoft, and Laracy found herself implementing the software across the territory.

"I was there for the handover in 1997, that - was really exciting," says Laracy. "There was more apprehension than anything else, a lot of people were afraid their lives wouldn't be the same, a couple of people I knew made sure they had valid citizenship for other countries in case they needed to get out later on. After the hand-over it didn't change much, or not to the extent that a lot of them were thinking it would."

Laracy's next sojourn required a little more diplomacy. After lengthy stints in Hong Kong she found it difficult to settle back in to the pace of Brisbane - and set her sights on the jungles of Borneo - where Concept Systems International had a contract with a mining company.

"At the time I'd been back in Brisbane for six months - I was going to Adelaide or Melbourne occasionally but I wanted another major project, I was getting itchy feet I wanted to get out," Laracy says.

However, she first had to convince the management that she would be able to cope living in the isolation of a mining camp.

"It was thought that because you had to live and work on the camp site, females couldn't go there," Laracy says.

When she did make it over there, it the jungles and isolation of the camp was the least of her concerns. In the wake of the Asian financial crisis Indonesia was beset by civil unrest.

"There were riots in Jakarta so we tried to avoid it as much as possible," Laracy says, describing how the ex-pat mine workers would often be forced to loop around the Pacific, via Singapore and Brunei, in order to skip Jakarta and go directly to Borneo.

However, with the jungle still recovering from fires the region was more barren wilderness than ecological paradise.

"I only saw one family of monkeys towards the end of the time I spent there," Laracy says.

From Borneo it was back to Brisbane, and on to Hong Kong - and Macau, where she came uncomfortably close to the country's powerful Mafia underworld. One afternoon, as the sunset poured in through the office window Laracy witnessed a professional hit on the street below the offices where she worked.

"We were looking down onto the street, at a man who worked on the same floor as out offices," Laracy said. "The next thing we knew this guy in a full motor bike helmet stepped out from behind a truck and shot him twice in the head, then walked back up the street - jumped on his motorbike and rode away."

The realisation the murder was a professional hit was quite a relief, without connections with the underworld, she was unlikely to become a target.

"As soon as it happened everybody I was working with was saying it was a professional hit, it was definitely scary but I wasn't worried about my own safety," Laracy says. "They recognised it right away, it happens quite a lot in Macau, there is a lot of gambling and a drug trade that keeps it going."

However, Macau is not just dangerous for those with mafia connections, it also sits in a typhoon belt, and Laracy managed to liver through the worst the state had had for well over a decade.

"It was fun at first, then windows started breaking so I had to hide in the bathroom of the hotel for safety," Laracy said.

And while her next destination, Papua New Guinea, is often subject to civil disruption and violence, it was the unwanted presence of a micro-organism that finally brought Laracy home.

A mild dose of Mondayitis - which finds many Australians curled up on the couch on a Sunday night, developed into the whole gamut of dizziness, nausea, and lethargy by Monday morning. Diagnosed with Typhoid, Laracy spent a "few weeks" in hospital being feed antibiotics through a drip, then made the mistake of attempting to go back to work too soon immediately afterwards and suffered a relapse.

"It definitely knocked me flat, it has only been within the last week that I have had the energy to do more than lie on the couch, it's so aggressive, it just saps all the energy out of you," Laracy said. "I wasn't sick enough to be medivacked out, but it is good to be back here where I have family that can help me."

And while she says it initially appeared like some kind of tropical paradise, the civil unrest makes it an uncomfortable place for ex-pats.

"Working in Papua New Guinea was a bit like being in jail - you get shuffled to a hotel with security guards - and from there you go off to where you are working - then the security guards come to pick you up before dark," Laracy says. "Sometimes I forget that I am back at home, and I feel a little panic if I am not at home by ten at night, then I remember that I don't need to be."

Nonetheless she is already planning her return.

"Port Moresby is not the prettiest of places in the dry season, you have to be careful because there is a lot of crime, so there are some places you just don't go, but you get used to it," Laracy says. "Next time I think I'd like to go somewhere more stable, without political violence, or that isn't prone to natural disasters."

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