by R. B. Shaw
Robert Brian Shaw was born in Sydney. As an apprenticed aircraft engineer, his spare time was spent on racing cars, surfing and later, windsurfing. On taking employment in New Guinea. He spent over sixteen years exploring, caving, rafting and mountain climbing throughout that varied and exotic country. He learned Pidgin and met pygmies, former headhunters and cannibals.
While salvaging over thirty aircraft, he survived two air crashes and various tribal battles, was held hostage and was later made honorary chief of a Sepik tribe. Shaw’s travels through over fifty countries led to publication of numerous articles, including ‘Kingdom of Nokondi’, ‘Maui-Wowee’ and ‘Smoked Corpses of Aseki’. Many of his experiences have been fictionalised in Island in the Sky and Fire Cult.
Island in the sky
R.B. Shaw
Copyright © 1992 Robert Brian Shaw
Second printing 1994
This book is a work of fiction. No similarity to any person, living or dead, is intended.
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of study and research, criticism, review, or as otherwise permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.
First published 1992
Tropicana Press
PO Box 385
Padstow NSW 2211
AUSTRALIA
www.tropicanapress.com.au
First published as eBook in 2013
ISBN 9781925027112 ePub
9781925027129 Mobi
Original cover design by Anaconda Graphic Design
Second printing cover illustration and design by Tony Thorne
eBook cover redesign by Lisa Shillan
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Shaw, R.B. (Robert Brian), 1946- .
Island in the sky
ISBN 0 646 12397 1.
I. Title.
A823.3
TO SUSAN
Only one in a billion can combine such wit, bravado and beauty with such love and understanding.
IN MEMORIAM
To my mother, Iris Maude Shaw,
for her loving support
and my brother,
Flt. Lt. John Edward Shaw. 217436
Royal Australian Air Force.
A special acknowledgment must go to my father, Mr William Shaw, who laboriously sifted through my original rough notes and plot line. He advised and corrected over 900 scribbled pages coated with mud, mildew and oil, often written by firelight on location in native villages, mountain tops and salvage sites.
The original manuscript was typed by my beloved wife Susan, and a wonderful lifelong friend, Maria Wilson. Since that time, Susan corrected and retyped the reduced and edited manuscript at least six times, with constant chapter rearranging and retyping —all before we had access to word processing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Space prohibits listing all those who assisted toward the completed novel. However, I would like to give special thanks to the following people, companies and staff. My apologies to those I may have omitted.
Gerry Dick. David Foard. Bob Hawkins. Robert Hood. Katya Louca. Joan Lord.
Aeropelican. Aircair. Airfast. Air Niugini (George Lawson, Tom Underhill). Ansett Airlines. Aviation Salvage Company. Co-air. Douglas Airways. Divine Word Airways. Elomair. East West Airlines. Helicopter Utilities. Luta-air. Missionary Aviation Fellowship. Pacific Helicopters (Kevin Neuman). Panga Airways. P.N.G. Aviation Services. Qantas. Ramu Trading. Summer Institute of Linguistics. South Pacific Aero Club. Talair—Territory Airlines. Wirui air Services.
Aircraft salvage. Thanks to these key men, engineers and the pilots who ferried them out: Hans Aerberli, Ian Alexander, Dick Anderson, Ron Anstiss, Monty Armstrong, Peter Barter, Bob Bates, Denis Beahan, Phil Bennett. Seth ‘Sekis’ Bird, Jacob Bokowefu, Peter Booth. R D Buchanan, Dennis Caddies, John ‘Delay’ Daley, Keith Dievers, Dennis Douglas, Mal Douglas, Mike Eagan, Ray Fisher, Gordon Forsyth, Jack Francis, Peter Francis, Bobby Gibbes, Dave Griffiths, Doug ‘Pato’ Guthrie, Terry ‘Hux’ Huxford, Ain Kiiver, Frank King, Sukarno Kotuti, Canisius Lang, Bill Larson, Richard Leahy, Ian Leslie, Rolf Lotze, Dave Lourey, Paul Marques, ‘Yorkie’ Mendoza, Doug Macarthur, Dave McDonald, Graham ‘Jumbo’ McRae, Bryan McCook, Clive McIver, Graham McKinney, Peter Mitchell, Jim Mitchell, Geoff Mohr, John Muhl, Frank Newell, Alan Nicholson, Holger Nimz, Brad Noble, Dan Ottley, Brenton Paix, Chris Parker, Dave ‘Nosey’ Parker, Max Parker, Mike Patterson, Max Paynter, Wally Pendray, John Perkins, Jerry Perrault, Val Quinnel, John Seddon, Noel Spalding, Alan Stray, Paul ‘Poppa’ Raasch, Warwick Rankin, Roger Real, Colin Reedman, Ian Reid, Robbie Robinson, Col Roebuck, Andrew, David, Paul, and Richard Rowe, Mark Shanley, Don Sinclair, Mal Smith, Alan Stray, Graham Syphers, Merv Thomas, Peter Thompson, Dick ‘Muruk’ Trollope, Helly Tsuchnigg, Doug Valentine, Eddie Van Ede, Rob ‘Gus’ Vans-Colina, Noel Vinson, Eddie Vries, Sam Wanai, Alan ‘Waddles’ Wardill, Kennet Wawia, Joe Wielens, Dave Williams, Won Wolok, Ian Whitney, Bronte Zadow, Terry Zadow.
To some pilot friends. RIP: Peter ‘Groper’ Arnold, Fr Vince Cafarella, Fr Peter Cullen, John Fox, Peter Giles, Robert Gray, Jay Hardison, Fr Heini Hoff, Doug Hunt, Paul Johnson, Jim Johnston, Fr Doug ‘Quickdraw’ McCraw, Ian Rowles, Peter Slater, Robert Smith, Garth Stockell, Geoff Venville, Graham Walker.
FOREWORD
When I first arrived in ‘The Territory’ of Papua New Guinea in 1970, so stunning was its sheer savagery, so daunting its untamed and impenetrable jungle ranges, that it totally overwhelmed me. I was determined to complete my two-year contract, but would have ridiculed anyone suggesting I’d stay almost seventeen years. As a recently apprenticed aircraft engineer, I had been spoiled; now I was virtually ‘thrown in at the deep end’. Suddenly I was isolated, with minimal spares, no technical backup, and very basic workshops, but blessed with a friendly semi-skilled crew of jovial Sepik natives, all unable to speak English.
In those days, numerous single-engined aircraft serviced hundreds of frontier ‘bush’ strips, carved from virgin jungle. It was imperative that veteran and cadet pilots alike be able to trust their simple craft to return them across thousands of kilometres of jungle. Some regions were still restricted zones—’entry by permit only’—and often inhabited by primitive pygmies, headhunters and cannibals who had never seen a white man. There was a warm camaraderie between aircrew and ground-crew. All knew the results of a crash; search-and-rescue facilities were rudimentary only, crash beacons still under development, precautions usually limited to first-aid kit, survival kit and machete.
I’m proud to say losses were few, though accidents plenty. This was not extraordinary, considering the shocking conditions encountered in PNG—monotonous trackless jungle, and rugged mountain ranges rising to over 15 000 feet, treacherous weather patterns, torrential rain and muddy airstrips with poor approaches. It’s no wonder Australia has an enviable aviation safety record, as many current airline pilots served their basic training over the jungles of Papua New Guinea, reinforcing the adage ‘There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots’.
Just before I left PNG—I was then maintaining and despatching Airbuses and Boeings—it heartened me to see familiar faces in command, the former cadets that flew the perilous ‘puddle jumpers’ years before.
My aircraft salvage work began with simple retrievals from bushstrips and later progressed to crash repairs necessitated by ground loops and belly landings. Eventually, I was to spend two weeks at a time at wreck sites; in all, I repaired and recovered over thirty aircraft around the South Pacific. But it was dangerous. The basic agreement was that the salvage engineer would accompany the ferry pilot aboard the damaged or
suspect aircraft. On one occasion, I survived an air crash while en route to recover a plane, and came close to death in another serious incident during a dangerous take-off.
Though I had flown hundreds of thousands of kilometres across the nation to over eighty airstrips, climbed many peaks over 11 000 feet and descended PNG’s second deepest cave network, I subsequently purchased a 4WD Patrol and travelled more than 60 000 kms of rugged jungle and mountain trails. I covered thousands of kilometres, exploring inhospitable rivers and coastline on everything from yachts, coastal traders and rubber rafts, to native dugout canoes and windsurfers. All this time, I was unconsciously developing a love for the lurid challenge of PNG and its diverse peoples.
Eventually, New Guinea changed me. I developed a greater awareness and respect for the raw and ancient beauty around me, experienced at its glorious best and tragic worst. I was considered an authority on jungle survival, spoke fluent Pidgin, had a basic grasp of two tribal dialects and suffered the ravages of malaria, dengue fever and hepatitis. Once I was held hostage by an unpaid labour gang of belligerent Huri warriors. Soon I was inured and less shocked by the savagery about me, but still drawn by its infinite malevolence.
I’ve talked with former headhunters and seen their hideous souvenirs, witnessed many strange ceremonies and heard many a disturbing legend. I saw young warriors tremble in awe as I stepped from the first helicopter they had ever seen, screamed laughing in mutual delight as I shared an old warrior’s first stunned experience with a pair of binoculars. I’ve felt my skin crawl as four thousand feather-bedecked warriors around me beat spear to shield and stamped their feet in unison to the spine-chilling thunder of a thousand kundu drums. Even Jacob, my boss-boy, was from a family of former cannibals.
Luckily, my beautiful wife, Susan, shared my sense of adventure. Though we have travelled together through forty-four countries, there are sights and sounds from PNG that are burned into our memories forever. The powerful Ramu in flood, erupting volcanoes, violent earthquakes, ultramarine palm-fringed beaches of sugar-fine sand like crushed milky opal, the pyrotechnic miracle of night changing to day, viewed from the lonely windswept peaks of the awesome Bismarcks. It may seem that I exaggerate outrageously, but in PNG no superlative is too extravagant—extremes of everything prevailed. Soon I was impelled to photograph, record and write, to capture this raw and exotic beauty. The result was Island in the Sky, which was constructed from personal experiences; even the central plot is based on a factual wartime story of recovered lost bullion. Reality is strong in this fiction.
During salvage work, I would often ask local villagers where the ‘crashed plane’ was, only to be led to a previously unreported wartime wreck, in some cases, bodies still entombed. I also stumbled on old Japanese helmets, and an array of weapons and tanks. Evidence of the war is ever-present and always will be. Few people realise the magnitude of the wartime conflict there and the atrocious conditions under which it was fought. Only now have historians realised that this was a crucial turning point in the war, for, in the jungles of PNG, the Japanese troop advance was first stemmed, and then repelled, by the tenacious Aussies. Casualty rates were staggering—roughly speaking, thirty-five Japanese died for every Australian lost.
When I left this savage land, I did so with genuine regret. The unsettled curfews and regrets were drowned under a flood of fond memories, of good times and of friendships and of magnificent sights rarely seen by the less adventurous. Our son Ben, though born in Sydney, was raised in PNG; our daughter Karen was born in Goroka. They were lucky enough to share many wonderful adventures with us. Tragically, Lisa, born in Port Moresby, rests forever in the peaceful misty meadows below the beautiful Sogeri plateau and the forbidding grandeur of the Owen Stanley Ranges.
I will now suffer forever a frustrating nostalgia for this unique land and proud people I have learned to love.
Robert Shaw
October 1992
PROLOGUE
Tharis Naranjunga stumbled from the severed tail of the plane-wreck. He saw no other life, just a bare rocky wilderness, a stone forest shrouded by mist. He shuddered violently from the combined effect of shock and numbing cold, but nevertheless set off down the loose slope in search of other survivors, following a litter of mangled aircraft fragments.
Ahead was a ravine partly concealed by cloud. Had the fuselage gone over? Something symmetrical jutted from the rubble, a gun barrel pointing skyward, as though still searching for the enemy that downed the plane. Severed wing struts also protruded from the surface. Tharis hurried forward to the edge of the drop. There he found the forward fuselage relatively intact, most of it buried by the landslide it had caused.
The nose section jutted out above a deep river gully. Something moved in the damaged cockpit, so Tharis clambered toward it. Hans, the Dutch pilot, responded to Tharis’ repeated shakings, feeling the biting chill and the pain in his foot and forehead. He wiped congealed blood from his eyes and looked up at the Indonesian soldier.
“Who are you?” he said.
Tharis saluted out of habit. “Corporal Tharis Naranjunga, from the escort group.”
“How are the others?”
“All dead, I think.”
Hans turned to his co-pilot. The twisted body hung limply in its harness—his belt had been too loose. The impact had crushed his ribs into his lungs, the pink froth of blood around his mouth mute testimony to his dying breath.
Hans attempted to get out of his seat to check on his crew in the rear cabin, but found that his left foot was jammed by the rudder pedals. He used a knife to lever the rudder mechanism apart and release the vice-like grip on his foot. He panicked and broke the blade. In despair, Hans turned to Tharis.
“Have you a gun? If I can shoot that bracket off, it’d release the tension.”
“I lost mine on impact,” said Tharis.
Hans stemmed his panic. “We’ve got a cargo of guns and munitions back there. See what you can find!”
Tharis reluctantly squeezed into the buckled cockpit between Hans and the corpse of the dead co-pilot. He beamed the emergency torch into the dusty confines of the fuselage. It looked like an abandoned mineshaft. The heavy cargo had broken loose and skidded forward with devastating and tragic results. Moving like a great piston within the cylinder of the fuselage, it had reduced the navigation bay and its two occupants to a bloodied jumble of wiring, metal and flesh. Tharis deliberately turned from the mutilated human remains and forced his way aft. He trod carefully; a cargo box had burst open, spilling its deadly load of grenades throughout the forward cabin.
Another box had slid roughly into a bulkhead, the lid warped open. Inside he found twelve wax-sealed containers, and, unwrapping one, recognised it as a 9mm Luger PO8. He removed all the boxed pistols, looking for the clips of ammunition that might lay beneath. There was a steel separation plate with two hand holes, so he lifted it clear, picked up the torch and again peered inside. In the bright reflected aura, Tharis’ frozen features appeared jaundiced. The fuselage ceiling was lit with a warm saffron glow, a radiance that warmed Tharis’ soul more than a fire could ever do. After greedily studying the golden contents, he closed the lid and began levering open another case.
Meanwhile, Hans, unaware of Tharis’ find, squirmed painfully in his seat and pondered the strange events and misadventures that had resulted in this tragedy and his forced entrapment in the crushed cockpit.
The fighting on Java had been merciless. Out of a total of thirty flying boats only eight remained, when inexplicably, two aircraft and their crews were ordered to withdraw. Batavia was to be evacuated on March the fifth. Hans was ordered to safely transport strategic documents and munitions away from the Japanese, to Australia.
Hans rejected the original flight plan to Broome on the north-west Australian coast—too many aircraft had been lost to the Japanese over the Timor Sea. His revised flight plan was to Lae, in Australian New Guinea.
Tight security had surrounded the loading at Batavia and so
me armed Indonesian troops accompanied the flight. Hans eyed the load with suspicion; some galvanised iron boxes were lifted easily with a soldier each end, others could only be slid across the fuselage floor by four straining men.
The overnight fuel stop in Hollandia was quiet, the colonial town deserted, most of its residents evacuated in the face of the rapidly advancing Japanese invasion. In the pre-dawn light, he saw incongruous traditional Dutch houses mingled with native huts, bordered by swampy jungle.
There was only an average swell on the sea, but somehow the aircraft were sluggish. Hans hesitated and allowed the flying boat to flounder in the swell. Bert in the other aircraft had turned into the wind and a rooster tail of water formed behind the lumbering machine. The hull slowly lifted and the water spume trailed as a long ribbon of vapour. Hans was disturbed by Bert’s dawdling take-off run, far longer than normal.
Hans flew nearly due east into the colourless sunrise. There was no discernible sun, just an eye-searing incandescent glare, merging with a shimmering haze on the sea, the horizon non-existent. He caught sight of Bert’s plane and altered course to rendezvous for the long flight to New Guinea.
After their prolonged battle with the Japanese, the flying boats were in a very poor state, kept flying only because other combat damaged write-offs were cannibalised. As they droned on across the vast Sepik jungles, Hans was troubled; most of the flight instruments were now unserviceable. Flying at night, or in cloud, was out of the question. Visual reference to the surrounding terrain would have to be maintained at all times.
Hans remembered that first fateful radio call, the transmission heavy with static. “Lae tower calling Dutch flight ex-Hollandia. Lae under aerial attack, Japanese occupation force en route Lae, ex Rabaul. We are evacuating, and destroying all facilities. Divert Port Moresby and stay clear of Markham valley. Repeat …”