by Tim Flannery
The barrels of pickled cane toads that George had collected only made sense to me several months later when I saw the final result of his efforts. The toads—stuffed and dressed in eighteenth-century costumes stitched by his wife—had been assembled into miniature string quartets and baroque orchestras. They stood on tiptoes or sat in chairs, grasping their tiny violins and trumpets with great delicacy. George had even managed to imbue their limbs with a sense of movement and to express on their faces the concentration and passion seen in the best human musicians. Altogether the assemblages were a triumph of taxidermy—though admittedly one I hardly expected to see when I had waved our expeditioners off.
Compared with George, the other expeditioners on the 1988 voyage of the Sunbird had dull times. Pavel German and Lester Seri had been dropped at Normanby Island which, with Goodenough and Fergusson, is part of the D’Entrecasteaux Group. It is remarkable as the only island in all of Melanesia that has its own species of carnivorous marsupial. The Normanby dasyure is a relative of Australia’s antechinus, and is known from a single individual collected by the Archbold Expedition forty years earlier. I was hoping to learn more about it, but unfortunately it had eluded our expeditioners.
Pavel and Lester did, however, make a discovery that was almost as exciting. The D’Entrecasteaux islands are home to a beautiful tree-mouse with a rich reddish coat and a long, prehensile tail. Almost as rare as the dasyure, it was known from just two individuals—one each from Goodenough and Fergusson islands. Pavel managed to spotlight and capture a specimen on Normanby, thereby demonstrating the presence of this beautiful creature on all three islands of the D’Entrecasteaux Group. Apart from a few brief notes on its habitat collected by Pavel, nothing is known about the biology of this mysterious creature.
Tish had sailed to the south coast of New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago. It was our first venture in this large island group, and she had collected samples of a wide range of mammals. Among the most interesting of her discoveries was a specimen of the spectacular Bismarck giant rat. Around the size of a small cat, it’s one of the most beautiful of rodents, its coat being covered with long guard hairs that shine like burnished copper.
The work done by Tish confirmed the Bismarck Archipelago as an enigma. It has one of the largest landmasses in the Pacific, and lies adjacent to New Guinea, yet it possesses few endemic species of rats and bats, and no endemic species of marsupials. Perhaps not enough time has passed since the islands were formed for new species to arise. This conjecture is supported by the fact that some of the islands in the archipelago have emerged from the sea recently in geological terms—less than a million years ago. But there’s also evidence that the Bismarcks once lay far further from New Guinea than they do today, making colonisation from the mainland more difficult. We were determined to learn more. Clearly more work in the region was warranted, and the opportunity to do it would soon arise.
2
BISMARCK’S ISLES
The human history of the Bismarck Archipelago stretches back 33,000 years to when Melanesian seafarers colonised the islands. Then, around 3500 years ago, the ancestors of the Polynesians passed through, settling on coral islets and other places that suited their ecology and technology. Both old and new settlers thrived, and today the indigenous cultures of the Bismarck Archipelago reflect both groups. The Dutch seafarers Jacob le Maire and Willem Schouten were the first Europeans to sight the islands, in 1616. Although visited by many Europeans subsequently, including William Dampier, the Bismarcks remained uncolonised until towards the end of the nineteenth century.
The earliest European attempts at colonisation were haphazard, if not insane. During the 1870s and 1880s, the Marquis de Rays, a French aristocrat, sent four vessels filled with colonists to New Ireland. The marquis, who had never been to Melanesia, was a truly dangerous eccentric and fabulist who was inspired by the journals of various explorers. In 1877 he proclaimed himself Charles, King of New France, an imaginary empire encompassing all of the then uncolonised islands of the Pacific. He claimed to want to further the interests of the Roman Catholic Church, but at the same time he swindled seven million francs from his supporters.
De Rays promoted the virtues of his imaginary realm in the pages of a self-published journal, as well as in posters and broadsheets. He claimed to have founded a thriving town called Port Breton, supposedly surrounded by fertile farmlands, in New Ireland. It was, he announced, the capital of his great empire. The scheme was convincing. Would-be immigrants boarded vessels loaded with decorative ornaments for Port Breton’s imaginary Town Hall and other civic buildings, having paid large sums for the privilege. Hundreds of ordinary French, Italians, Germans and other Europeans were duped. And the results were invariably the same—death, desertion and disillusionment. But still the gullible rolled up.
The fate of the marquis’ fourth expedition is perhaps the most infamous. In 1880, five hundred and seventy colonists, mostly from Germany, Italy and France, sailed for New Ireland. They believed they were headed for the bustling capital of the Empire of New France, but instead they found themselves dropped off in a godforsaken hole, a part of the island that was so rainy even the New Irelanders avoided it. Surrounded by dense jungle, the settlers unpacked their boxes of supplies on the beach, only to discover hundreds of ornate dog collars and other fripperies, and few building or agricultural tools. Within two months a hundred of the would-be settlers had succumbed to malaria, other diseases and malnutrition, and the rest had either sailed off in search of rescue or were desperately awaiting salvation. Eventually, the disillusioned survivors settled in Sydney and New Caledonia.
Such madness ended in 1884 when Germany declared a protectorate over the Bismarck Archipelago, Bougainville and northern New Guinea. It was their name, Bismarck, that stuck, and they stayed until the outbreak of World War I in 1914 when Australian troops captured the German settlements. In 1919 the region was transferred to Australian colonial control under the Treaty of Versailles, where it remained until Papua New Guinea became an independent nation in 1975. It’s this layered and varied human history that gives the Bismarcks their distinctive contemporary culture.
On returning to Australia from the islands of southeast Papua, I learned that Peter White, professor in archaeology from Sydney University, was undertaking an excavation in a cave on New Ireland. He needed someone to help identify thousands of bones—the remains of ancient meals—from the deposit, and had asked me to assist. He was due to return to New Ireland in mid-1988, and thought it would be a good idea if I joined him. This was an opportunity too good to miss, for I stood the chance not only of learning about the local fauna, but of understanding, through the bones in the deposit, how the island’s mammals had changed over time. So, in June 1988, I found myself on my way north again, this time by air, heading for the northernmost islands of Papua New Guinea.
CHAPTER 6
Manus
I’ve often envied the ornithologists I’ve worked with. I’m usually up at the crack of dawn checking mist-nets and rat-traps that as often as not hold nothing. They, in contrast, tend to lie in their sleeping-bags listening to birdsong. By the time I return, wet and hungry and having logged just a handful of species, they’ve often recorded the songs of a third of all the bird species known from the island. The compensation, of course, is that, because they’re much harder to survey, there are many more undiscovered mammals than birds.
Because it is so labour-intensive and requires a great diversity of equipment, surveying the mammals of a large island in a few weeks is far beyond the capacity of one person. So as I contemplated working on the very large islands lying to the north of New Guinea, I again enlisted the help of Lester Seri and Tish Ennis. They were now experienced field mammalogists, and together we had a chance of making a successful survey. But with archaeological work, as well as a mammal survey to complete, all three of us would be kept very busy.
While planning our flight I discovered that the air service from Port Moresb
y to Kavieng on New Ireland was a ‘milk run’ which stopped off at the island of Manus, in the Admiralty Group. Breaking our journey there would not add to transport costs and, because I’d long wanted to visit Manus to study a large and distinctive kind of flying fox that lived there, I decided to spend a week surveying Manus prior to meeting with Peter White on New Ireland.
Another inducement for visiting Manus was that the head of the Papua New Guinea Department of Environment and Conservation, Karol Kisokau, who was a good friend, came from there. He’d told me lots about the place, and often urged me to visit. Sadly, we arrived in Manus as one of Karol’s relatives passed away. Busy with funeral arrangements, Karol was unable to join us in the field, but he opened many doors for us, making our stay on the island much more enjoyable and social than it otherwise would have been.
Manus had been seen and charted by the Dutch explorer Willem Schouten in 1616. Because its people are brave mariners who have sailed in their ocean-going canoes as far as mainland New Guinea and, according to local legend, even Singapore, Manus has also long been connected to a wider world. And recent history has not passed it by either. During World War II Manus was a vital stepping stone in General MacArthur’s advance against the Japanese, and ever since it has hosted an important naval base—Lombrum in the east of the island. Today, most Australians probably know the place as the possible location of a detention centre for asylum seekers. When we visited, Manus had a well-developed economy and education system, and had produced many of Papua New Guinea’s leading citizens.
Despite its history of human connectedness to the wider world, Manus is geographically isolated, lying hundreds of kilometres west of the Bismarck Archipelago and north of New Guinea. Yet, paradoxically it has a rich fauna, including several endemic bird and mammal species. This is doubtless due in part to its large size, its rich soils and its age. But one further factor has helped to enrich it: the island lies in the path of a watery superhighway. The Sepik River, which is one of the world’s largest, disgorges into the sea south of Manus. When it floods it carries huge flotillas of debris, to which clings an abundance of living things all of which are swept far out to sea.
Years after my work on Manus I saw this superhighway in action. I wanted to reach Vokeo Island just offshore from Wewak on New Guinea’s north coast. It’s a tiny volcanic landmass, lacking an airstrip and indeed any regular transport connections to the mainland, so I had to hire a power boat to make the journey. As we travelled towards the distant speck on the horizon, the water remained muddy and fresh far out at sea. When almost out of sight of the New Guinean mainland enormous rafts of vegetation—some carrying large trees, upright and still growing—drifted majestically past us. Such floating islands are more than capable of carrying a castaway possum or rat to a distant land, and were doubtless the principal means used by non-flying mammals to colonise far-flung Manus.
When we touched down on Manus, we were met at the airport by some of Karol’s friends, who were keen to show us a good time. Indeed the expedition took on something of a festive air as we were whisked into Lorengau, the provincial capital, to check in at a motel, and lay plans for supper. As we had arrived rather late, and needed to shop in Lorengau the following morning, we decided to relax and accept the local hospitality. Dusk saw us reclining on a tropical beach, with an SP Brownie in hand, and an impromptu meal of local seafood laid out under a coconut palm.
As we talked about the island, it became obvious that the war in the Pacific had had a tremendous and enduring impact. On many islands the arrival of ‘cargo’ in the form of jeeps, weapons and other war materiel had sparked ‘cargo cults’ whose adherents believed that, if they just prayed hard enough, and built enough replica radio towers out of wood and bamboo, the cargo would return. One group in Vanuatu even collected funds to purchase the President of the United States, believing him to be the ultimate source of the cargo. But on Manus the ‘cargo’ was very real and an ongoing source of wealth, for at the end of the war the Americans, unable to take the war materiel home, had wrapped it in waxed canvas tarpaulins and buried it. Just the week before our arrival, one man said, a tremendous trove of corrugated roofing iron had been unearthed. It was far superior, he told us, to the junk you could buy in a store these days and was worth a fortune.
As darkness fell we were invited to a local disco. I am the world’s worst and most reluctant dancer, but Lester and Tish were keen, so I went along in order not to spoil the party. The hall we were taken to reminded me of an Australian country RSL club, à la 1960s. There was a great band playing rock songs of its own invention, and the place was packed with locals. Tish was particularly keen to dance, and one man, noticing my reluctance to partner her, invited her onto the dance floor. The trouble was, he was not much more than a metre tall, leaving Tish with precious little to hold on to. She completed one dance with the fellow and was returning to her bench with some relief, when she felt a tug on her dress. The invitation to dance again could not be politely refused, and the sight of Tish apparently dancing by herself with a bemused look on her face was more than I could bear. So I made the ultimate sacrifice, and after another few brackets we retired to our hotel.
We had told Karol’s friends that we wished to learn about the large flying fox that is unique to the island and to trap rats in good primary forest. They responded that there was little hope of seeing the flying fox, for the population had been almost completely destroyed by a mysterious disease that broke out just a few years prior to our visit. Although we travelled widely we never saw a single one, which surprised and concerned me, for large flying foxes like to roost in large colonies and are very obvious wherever they occur. We later learned that the species had not become extinct, but that it would take many years for it to recover. Charting such epidemics is of course important to conservation, as they can threaten island species and may be spread by human activity.
We were more fortunate with the rats. Primary forest still abounded on Manus, and Karol’s friends suggested that the best location to base ourselves was the Department of Primary Industry’s research station at Polomou, right in the centre of the island. Arriving there, we discovered that Polomou was a raw frontier settlement, hacked from majestic primary forest. The trees were pretty much the tallest and straightest I’d seen in Melanesia, their splendour doubtless owing not a little to the deep, red soil of the region. We had travelled by PMV—a kind of minibus service that is the backbone of the nation’s public transport system—and were allocated a room by the staff. This allowed us to set to work quickly, erecting mist-nets and traps and preparing ourselves for a night’s spotlighting. Lester, however, seemed somewhat reluctant to come spotlighting with me, and finally confessed that the DPI staff had invited him to a feast to farewell a local man who was leaving the island to work elsewhere. The main attraction, one of them had intimated, was to be a night out hunting for, as they put it, ‘kapul e’ nogat gras’. I puzzled over the term for a moment before realising that many local girls would be present, and that the ‘possums without fur’ were likely to be a lot more fun than chasing rats and cuscus in the bush.
I was content to spotlight alone that night, and chose to begin work in gardens and secondary forest adjacent to the research station. Local people had told me that two species of rat inhabited the island—one was a tree-climber with red fur, the other a ground-dweller with a white tail tip. As there was no scientific record of either being found on the island, I was keen to learn what they might be. Shooting is the only practicable way to catch many arboreal rats, so I was carrying a light-gauge shotgun filled with very fine shot. Soon after setting out I came across a cocoa plantation—a favourite habitat for rats. Many of the cocoa pods had been chewed by rodents, so I stood in the dark and listened. It was a fabulous night, moonless, warm and humid, with a hum of insects all around. After a while I detected a rustle, and switching on my torch saw a large rodent with red fur in a nearby cocoa bush. It was climbing rapidly towards a tall tree when I pu
lled the trigger, trying to stun it so that I had a chance of grabbing it uninjured.
For a second I was uncertain of my success, but then I saw, lying on the ground at my feet, a rat the likes of which I’d never encountered before. Unfortunately it was dead and, on examining it, I saw that it resembled a tree-climbing species of rat known as Melomys rufescens (the red mouse of Melanesia) that abounds on the mainland—but this creature was a giant, half as big again as any Melomys rufescens I’d ever seen. It’s an evolutionary trend common on islands that small mammals tend to become larger over time, while large ones dwarf. Back in the laboratory in Sydney, I was able to demonstrate that this rat was an undescribed species. Its nearest relative was indeed Melomys rufescens, and its ancestors must have become isolated on Manus a million or so years ago, having been swept there by the ancestral Sepik River. I named it Melomys matambuai, Matambuai being Karol Kisokau’s middle name.
There was another creature on Manus I was anxious to learn about—a spotted cuscus that is endemic to the Admiralty Islands. It’s only half the size of the spotted cuscuses of the mainland and has a unique, brilliantly coloured coat. The females are rusty red and black, and the males black-spotted on a white background. Although the creatures turned out to be abundant near Polomou, I had no need to hunt one. They were widely traded as a food item. Everywhere I looked in markets they hung, live, in small, tightly woven cane baskets—the equivalent of Manus chicken, and costing about the same as a roast chicken in a supermarket in Australia.
The Manus spotted cuscus’s origins are mysterious. It is so distinctive in colour and body form that it must have been evolving separately from other cuscuses for a very long time, yet archaeological excavations on Manus have failed to find its remains in layers more than a few thousand years old. Perhaps it had been brought to Manus from another island, but which one exactly is yet to be discovered. Another possibility is that it is some kind of hybrid.