Among the Islands

by Tim Flannery

  Eric had given me the address on 5th Avenue by phone, but I walked past the entrance several times before realising where I was. I’d been looking for a glass-fronted jewellery store with chains and rings in the window, not an elegant granite facade and a doorman. Eric greeted me, explaining that the party was to honour everyone who’d spent more than a million dollars in the store that year. This alarmed me, and it was only Eric’s extraordinarily warm welcome that prevented me backing out the door. He ushered me in as if I was the most important person there. Stunned at the unexpected turn of events I sipped my French champagne, munched on the caviar and took in the scene.

  The gathering was elegance personified; the room was filled with the most beautiful women and suave-looking men, who, I was hugely relieved to discover, didn’t notice me at all. Then I saw that the wait staff were converging on an elderly gent who had on his arm the most elegant blonde woman I’d ever seen. His trousers had somehow come loose and were around his ankles—a fact he seemed oblivious to. I looked on in astonishment as the waiters formed a human shield while a waitress gingerly raised the trousers and secured them. I had, I concluded, stumbled into a world more eccentric and singular than anything that exists in Melanesia. Indeed it was beginning to make stone-age cannibals look rather ordinary.

  Then Eric introduced me to a tiny black man who was surrounded by exquisitely beautiful girls, most of whom looked like they should still be in school. He was, Eric said, Baby Doc’s Minister of Art. When Eric had visited him in Haiti earlier in the year, he had carried $9 million worth of jewels in his briefcase. When he arrived at the mansion he found the minister in a dressing gown on his bed, surrounded by eleven girls in various states of undress. ‘Come and meet my god-daughters,’ he’d said as he invited Eric in. I began to feel that I’d travelled quite a distance since leaving the YMCA.

  I recalled this strange encounter as we flew into Goodenough. The airstrip is located on a parched, kunai-covered plain that lies in a rain-shadow on the northern side of the island. It was constructed during World War II and had served as a major base for allied bombers that were harassing the Japanese. Many damaged aircraft were abandoned there, and at the time I visited their remains were so abundant that several village houses had been built entirely of aircraft aluminium, some of it still bearing American insignias and other wartime markings. Another curious legacy of the war was that there were no traditional wooden spears to be seen. Instead metal spears, fashioned from war remanié and used for pig and wallaby hunting, were ubiquitous.

  The drought that was ravaging Woodlark and Alcester had not bypassed Goodenough. Indeed, it had been exceptionally dry there for almost a year. To make matters worse there had been a mass die-off of fish in the ocean around the island, perhaps due to volcanic activity or a red tide (a toxic algal bloom), leading to a critical shortage of food. By the time we arrived the dry season was in full swing and the mango trees were bearing immature, sour green fruit about the size of apricots. As far as we could see that was the only food that remained at all plentiful and the famished villagers had turned to eating them wholesale, so decimating the mango crop that they would otherwise have enjoyed around Christmas time.

  The dried kunai grass was ablaze on the slopes all around the landing strip as our aircraft touched down. The pall of acrid smoke gave a rather funereal air to the place. Nobody came to meet us, so we walked up the hill to the nearest village to seek out the head of the village council. We found him resting, listless, on the porch of his house. When we explained that we wished to climb the mountain in the centre of the island to search for animals, he assigned three young boys to guide us. The forest edge, they said, was no more than an hour and a half’s walk away. We began to prepare for an immediate departure, hoping to camp at the forest edge by lunchtime and to press on towards the peak the following day.

  There is something utterly oppressive in climbing a steep slope covered in recently burned tropical grass. The heat is ferocious, and ash rises in miniature willy-willies to choke the passerby. After only a short distance we were flushed and perspiring, our throats on fire. It didn’t help that our last night in Alotau hadn’t been entirely abstemious. Lester had run across some buddies who had insisted on a session of beer and billiards. Tish and I joined them briefly but, aware of our dawn appointment at the airport, we’d departed around midnight. On seeing Lester the next morning I doubted whether he’d been to bed at all. Now, with the kunai-covered ridges towering over us the SP Brownies (Papua New Guinea’s favourite beer) were beginning to tell, and we all cursed the merciless sun beating down upon our sorry heads.

  From our vantage point it looked as if a climb of around six hundred metres would bring us to the summit of the ridge and so to the edge of the forest. It wasn’t a great distance, but the slope was steep and we struggled under heavy loads of gear. The sun rose ever higher in the sky, and by the time we neared the crest we were suffering terribly. We held on by telling each other how delightful it would be to complete our walk through a shaded forest glade and to sip from the clear stream that no doubt flowed beneath the trees.

  When we finally crested the rise, in near exhaustion, we were appalled to see that ahead lay not a cool forest, but another burned grassy slope which, if anything, was even steeper and higher than the one we’d just ascended! Lester, whose hangover must have been a sore trial, beat the ground in frustration and cursed Goodenough’s inhabitants, saying that the Department of Environment and Conservation should take the lot of them to court for the senseless burning and destruction of their forest.

  By now we’d been walking for several hours, and ahead lay a climb of at least a thousand metres. I turned to our guides and asked them, really, how far was it to the forest edge? To my astonishment they answered that they didn’t know. None of them had been up the mountain before. Their uncle, in the hope that we’d feed them, had ordered the boys to accompany us. In situations like this, there’s just one thing to do—boil the billy. As we took a break and sipped our tea, we eyed off that blackened kunai slope. The heat haze rising from it looked like it was coming off an oven.

  It was almost dark when we made it to the top of that second ridge, only to discover that beyond it lay yet another kunai-covered slope, which had also been recently burned! This one, however, was shorter, and we could see the edge of the forest just beyond it. There was nothing for it but to camp where we were. Thankfully, nearby we found a very narrow shelter at the base of a cliff—more of a nook than anything else—just wide enough to accommodate a row of sleeping people. Before collapsing in exhaustion, I tried to work out where we might be on our map. I put our elevation at around 1500 metres. With our limited water supply, it had been a hell of a walk.

  To make matters worse, that night a drizzling rain set in—not enough to supply a drink, but sufficient to penetrate the shelter and thoroughly soak us. We were all up before dawn, wet, sore and miserable, and ready to tackle the last of the kunai. Though initially steep, the walk was bearable in the coolness of the dawn. Then, as we crested that final ridge, the trek turned into a pleasant downhill stroll, and within two hours we’d entered the forest where a small creek provided a much-needed drink. Soon after, we arrived at a campsite that was clearly used from time to time by the local people. Situated in beautiful, primary forest at around 1300 metres elevation, it was a perfect base for our investigations.

  The campsite was the most extraordinary I’ve ever used. House-sized granite boulders lay strewn about like pebbles, making the place feel like a land of the giants. The shelter we occupied lay underneath a particularly gigantic one, which seemed to be the size of a church, propped up by three smaller rocks at the rear and sides. Underneath it was a flat, comfortable surface the size of a small house. Most of it was too low to stand up in, and the best area for sleeping had a particularly low roof—the rock hung just a few centimetres from our faces. Despite the comfort provided by this extensive, flat and dry living area, there was something disturbing about it.
Whenever I lay on my sleeping mat I had an ominous awareness of the enormous weight poised above me. And the rocks holding it looked feeble. I worried that the smallest earth tremor might dislodge it, crushing us to atoms.

  Just outside our boulder camp flowed a frigid, crystal-clear stream. Both above and below the camp it cascaded over yet more boulders to form a series of waterfalls and deep pools. I later learned that the local people called the camp and the river Boitutudiadobodobona. The Goodenough language, which seemed to be full of such lengthy and convoluted words, was one that I never even attempted to learn.

  The forest around the camp was very distinctive. The trees were gnarled, relatively short and covered with a long, wispy, pale-green moss that I’d not seen elsewhere. It resembled the Spanish moss of the American south, and it moved in the slightest breeze, giving the place a fairytale feeling. One morning, as I sat beside the brook brushing my teeth, an extraordinary creature appeared from behind a curtain of moss. It was a magnificent brown-and-white brahminy kite, a bird resembling a small eagle. It swept silently downstream, following the torrent as it hunted for lizards and frogs. So narrow and hemmed in was its flyway that the raptor was forced to pass within a metre or two of me, and I got to look it straight in the eye as it glided past. The kite must have seen me, yet it displayed no fear—perhaps because it realised that there was nothing it could do except pass as unobtrusively as circumstances permitted.

  We soon discovered that evenings on Mount Goodenough were almost invariably marked by drizzling rain, while the mornings were often bright and beautiful. It soon became my favourite ritual to rise with the first of the light and enjoy a mug of coffee while I watched wisps of smoke from our campfire curl through the crisp air and disappear into the mossy crowns of the trees. On clear mornings you could see the sun striking the bare rock and grassland of the island’s remarkable summit more than 1000 metres above. Regrettably, a lack of time and food meant that we were unable to visit that intriguing habitat, so we decided to focus our efforts on conducting a thorough survey of the forested zone. Perhaps some future mammalogist will discover what lives in the frigid grasslands on that isolated peak, for as yet no expedition has ventured so far.

  Blue-breasted pittas abounded in the forest, their bright red-and-blue plumage surreal against the jungle green. And small snakes—which we eventually identified as a species of Aspidomorphus, a ‘venomous but not dangerous species’ according to the reptile guide—were daily visitors at the camp. One of the first sounds we heard upon arriving was a powerful, rolling, almost moan-like call that seemed to go on forever. Although not unpleasant, along with the wispy moss and great boulders the low, haunting sound lent a sombre air to the place.

  It was some days before I discovered where the sound came from. Looking into the gnarled branches I saw a sharp, blood-red eye peering down at me. It belonged to a curl-crested manucode, a relative of the birds of paradise, which is found only in the D’Entrecasteauxs and nearby islands. Predominantly blue-black, it looks somewhat like a large, iridescent crow, but its red eye and head gear of crisply curled feathers immediately set it apart. I observed it for some time as it sat on its perch. It would often cock its head at me quizzically, with more than a passing resemblance to Groucho Marx.

  The curl-crested manucode’s call is produced by an extraordinary trachea, or wind-pipe. During our stay, a boy shot one with his bow and arrow. Before assigning it to the cooking pot, he allowed me to take the skin for the museum’s bird collection, and as I worked I was amazed to find that its trachea was longer than the bird itself. It lay neatly coiled over its breast muscle, looking for all the world like some terrible parasitic worm.

  We had laid lines of box traps and strung up our mist-nets. These nets, which are around ten metres long, are made of fine nylon. Hoisted between two poles, they have five horizontal strings running their length, so that the nylon forms loose pockets below them. If a bat strikes the net it tumbles into one of the pockets, from which it has difficulty escaping. It is unharmed by the experience, and can be released or sampled as required.

  Wallabies cannot be sampled by any of the techniques we had, so although we saw abundant signs of the black gazelle-faced wallaby, including tracks and droppings, in the immediate vicinity of the camp, I couldn’t imagine how we’d ever get a sample. Even seeing one seemed unlikely, for scrambling over the boulder-strewn terrain was tedious, slow work, and wallabies are alert, nervous creatures.

  On our first morning, however, a surprise discovery provided us with a sample of sorts. Tish had gone to wash at the stream that ran by the campsite and had noticed some bones lying in a deep pool. They were clearly wallaby bones, left most likely by a hunter who had used the camp only a few days earlier. As we looked at them lying three metres down in the pool of frigid water, the question arose as to who would dive in and retrieve them. If there’s one thing I hate it’s cold water, so I was making only very reluctant moves in that direction. Tish, however, had grown up in Scotland and had no such qualms. She quickly discarded her outer clothing and slipped into the freezing pool. Eventually she surfaced, goose-pimpled and shivering, but triumphantly holding the larger bones—including a skull. As she took a place by the camp fire, the young Goodenough Islanders who accompanied us stared at her in disbelief, as if they regarded immersion in the frigid stream as tantamount to suicide.

  Such a sample, while good to have, is of limited value for the evolutionary studies we hoped to conduct. After several days at the boulder camp I had almost given up hope that we might do better when a dog walked casually into our shelter. Within half an hour it was followed by another, then a slight, grey-haired man with one arm strode silently up to our fire. His name, he said, was Agevagu, and he had come to help us catch wallabies. The boys at the camp were excited, telling us that Agevagu had the power to ‘call up’ wallabies. In times of food shortage, like the present, his magical powers over the creatures were much appreciated.

  Despite lacking an arm Agevagu clearly had something on his side when it came to wallaby-catching, and over the next few days he and his dogs brought the creatures in thick and fast. Doubtless the weather helped, for during the drier part of the year the wallabies congregate near the streams. Whatever his secret was, Agevagu was keeping it to himself, as the young people at the camp had caught nothing. Indeed, the boys told us that young people hardly ever came to the mountain anymore. It was too much hard work.

  The black gazelle-faced wallaby is a graceful creature with large, expressive eyes, short ears and a rather long, elegant snout. Its fur is shiny black and rather coarse on the neck, but as soft as silk elsewhere. When you ruffle it, a pure white underfur is revealed, to striking effect. Strangely, on some individuals one or both front paws are pure white. We speculated that white paws might be useful for signalling in the dense, dark forest, or perhaps as identifying marks of individual wallabies. If so, it’s likely that the wallabies have a well-developed social structure, for only animals with well-developed social structures need to recognise each other individually at a distance.

  One of the wallaby’s oddest features was the claws of the hindfeet, which were worn down to blunt stumps—something I’d not seen before. This might indicate a rock-dwelling habit, though the rock wallabies of Australia (which specialise in living among cliffs and boulders) have very different kinds of claws: they’re so small and the footpad so elongated that they’re protected from wear behind gripping toepads.

  The black gazelle-faced wallaby’s tail is also curious. As with the other gazelle-faced wallabies, the tail is held in an curve so that only the tip, which bears a hairless, cornified nubbin, touches the ground. I’m uncertain why this is so, but it has been suggested that it brings less of the sensitive tail into potential contact with leeches, which abound in New Guinea’s forests.

  One evening Agevagu let it slip that thirty-four years earlier he had helped Hobart Van Deusen of the Archbold Expedition to obtain his specimens—the first seen outside Goode
nough Island. He must have been the boy Van Deusen had seen with the older hunter. Perhaps the wallaby-calling magic and knowledge of the environment and the wallaby’s habits had been passed down through the generations. It is highly likely that Agevagu’s dogs were descended from those that caught Van Deusen’s wallabies, for good hunting dogs are essential to a successful hunt and their bloodlines are carefully preserved.

  Agevagu had me thinking about what makes an effective hunter. Dogs are important, as is an intimate knowledge of the environment and the habits of the prey. But what of the supposedly mystical power used to call up the creatures? It is activated by performing a ritual, and while I had not seen Agevgu’s hunting ritual I had seen similar rituals performed elsewhere in Melanesia. They’re complex, often involving special smoke and foods, and they serve to bond dog and hunter, as well as to communicate to the dogs that a hunt is imminent. It may not be mystical powers at work, but it’s easy to see how such rituals can increase the chance of a successful hunt.

  Today, the total habitat of the black wallaby is no more than one hundred square kilometres—all at elevations between 1000 and 1800 metres on the upper slopes of Goodenough Island. Thus, it has one of the smallest distributions of any kangaroo species, making it potentially vulnerable to extinction. Furthermore, females have only one young at a time. Only one of the five we examined was carrying a pouch young, which suggests a relatively low rate of reproduction. Partly as a result of these discoveries, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature has classified the black gazelle-faced wallaby as critically endangered—just one step away from extinction. Even though it remains common in a tiny area, fire is nibbling away at its forest habitat and climate change may also be a threat. But one big change is working in the wallaby’s favour: young people rarely climb the mountain these days, and this is easing hunting pressure on it. I don’t know how I feel about this. So much culture and knowledge is tied up with traditional hunting that its loss is surely to be regretted.