by Tim Flannery
I squatted far longer than necessary, watching these wonderful birds. It seemed that the pair liked being together, for they followed one another closely as they picked their way through the thin foliage. At last they passed from view. I reached down for a handful of wet moss, followed by a handful of a drier variety—so much more comfortable and ecologically friendly than paper!
The business of my trip was mammalogy. But I was disappointed to find the mammals of Dokfuma less obvious and interesting than the birds. As in the Neon Basin, the tiny faces of the Moss-forest Rats and Mountain Melomys were those encountered most commonly when emptying the trapline in the morning. There were clearly other mammal species about, but it was difficult to trap them.
One particular track near our camp fascinated me. Still very fresh and broad, it clearly belonged to a largish mammal. Every evening I placed a trap either on or near it. But I never did discover what the animal was—every morning I returned to find the trap knocked out of the way by some unknown, yet clearly very muscular beastie. My best guess was that it was a giant rat of some kind. My failure was unfortunate, for the identity of the giant rats inhabiting the Star Mountains remains mysterious.
Freddy and Serapnok would depart from the camp each morning with dog in tow. By afternoon they would return, more often empty-handed than otherwise and we would sit by the fire chatting. During these intervals I learned much about both of them. Freddy was one of those generous people who is always delighted to see his friends happy. Serapnok is happy-go-lucky and good-natured. He delights in nothing as much as playing the village clown.
After discovering the lighter side of Serapnok, I was amazed to learn one afternoon that it was he who had single-handedly almost exterminated Bulmer's Fruit-bat. He had dangled on a rope hundreds of metres above the ground inside Luplupwintem in order to reach the bat colony and had, he said, taken Bultem's very first shotgun with him, along with his five boxes of cartridges.
It was a tricky descent. As he went over the edge he shouted back to his wife that she had better get a move on and marry someone else, for he was sure to slip on the way down!
When he reached the bottom of the cave, Serapnok took up his gun and shot directly into the thickest part of the bat colony. He was nearly knocked unconscious by the rain of stricken bats falling on his head. After that, he shot at an oblique angle to avoid the falling bodies. Time after time the shots rang out and Serapnok gathered at first hundreds, then thousands, of bats. He filled bilum after bilum with them, tying each load to the rope to be hoisted aloft. Finally there were no more bats to be seen and Serapnok tied himself to the rope and yelled to be pulled up. That night, the Wopkaimin ate bats till they were farcarted.
Serapnok and Freddy's hunting forays here at Dokfuma, however, were proving so unsuccessful that at length I began to suspect that they were walking only just far enough to sit down and light up a Paradise Twist undetected, before returning to be fed in the afternoon. But all scepticism was dispelled one day when they did return triumphant. Freddy came in the lead, carrying a large brownish bundle of fur, while Serapnok followed, burdened only with a bilum, the mouth of which had been fastened. The pair had caught a tree-kangaroo. As I examined the dead female carried by Freddy, Serapnok unfastened his bilum and a tiny joey poked its head out. Dokfuma, as he became known, soon became the camp favourite.
The adult tree-kangaroo looked rather unusual, and I suspected that it may have represented an undescribed subspecies of Doria's Tree-kangaroo. This eventually turned out to be the case, and we gave it the name stellarum, meaning ‘of the stars’. As events turned out, this was not an entirely appropriate name, for later survey work showed that it is distributed right across the mountains of western New Guinea, from the Irian Jaya border to the mountains just east of the Paniai Lakes. Recently I bestowed the common name of Seri's Tree-kangaroo upon it, in recognition of the lifetime of effort which lewa bilong mi (my close friend) Lester Seri has put into documenting the fauna of his country.
As the time passed here at Dokfuma there proved to be no wallabies, and neither was there evidence of Long-beaked Echidnas or pigs—again in contrast with the Neon Basin. Just why these species should be absent at one place yet common at another I have never discovered. As if in compensation, Dokfuma had plenty of New Guinea singing dogs. These diminutive, dingo-like creatures are descended from the dogs brought to New Guinea about 2,000 years ago from islands to the west. Like dingoes, they howl in chorus. The haunting call is usually heard at day's start and end. For me, it is always evocative of the mountains of New Guinea.
New Guinea singing dogs are extraordinarily shy. Although I heard them often at Dokfuma, I saw them only once, and then almost by accident. One morning everyone except me had left camp to hunt or hike to the west. Hal had gone in search of further specimens of an undescribed frog he had found. I had to stay behind to maintain the trapline, and I spent the first few hours after the party departed relaxing in my tent. Suddenly I heard the chorused yodel-like howl of the dogs much closer than ever before. They had clearly been watching us and had seen the departure of the party earlier that morning. Although they are almost preternaturally canny animals, they are unable to count. On seeing the bulk of the group depart, they assumed the camp was deserted. Lying motionless in the tent, I watched the dogs approach. When they came within a few hundred metres they became alarmed and turned back. They must have somehow detected my presence.
The time finally came to leave Dokfuma.
Looking forward to being warm and having something underfoot except slush, I was not unhappy when we heard the sound of the returning helicopter. Deng was kind to us, and we enjoyed pleasant weather all the way home.
PART V
NORTH COAST RANGES
TWENTY
Torricelli Mountains
Back in July 1985, after a stint at Telefomin, I decided to travel to the Torricelli Mountains to assess their suitability as a site for a faunal survey. The Torricellis form part of the eastern end of Papua New Guinea's North Coast Ranges. They run roughly parallel to the north coast between the Irian Jaya border and Wewak, a distance of about 200 kilometres. Only a narrow coastal plain separates the mountains from the sea, while the vast floodplain of the Sepik separates them from the taller central ranges. Long ago the Sepik floodplain was occupied by the sea, and the North Coast Ranges would have formed islands lying many kilometres off the coast.
The Torricellis are a low mountain range, reaching only 1,500 metres in elevation. They had been largely ignored by previous researchers. My interest in them was piqued by a scientific article, published a few years earlier, describing a new species of large gliding possum, which was apparently unique to the Torricellis. Given the long isolation of the ranges, it seemed possible that the gliding possum was not the only mammal unique to the region. A whole undescribed fauna might be awaiting the patient researcher.
The easiest access to the Torricellis is via Lumi, a small settlement lying at about 500 metres elevation on the southern slopes of the mountains. By 1985 a road led from Lumi most of the way to Fatima Mission at the foot of the highest peaks. Over years researching in the Torricellis, I have watched this road progress ever deeper into the mountains. By 1992 it was possible to drive a truck into virgin bush on the upper slopes of Mt Somoro itself (the highest peak in the range). This road, I fear, heralds the end of Somoro's forest.
It is always slightly unnerving arriving at a new location in Papua New Guinea. You have no idea what the locals will be like or how you will be received. Stepping out of the Cessna at Lumi that first time I would have been met by a small, wizened fellow known to one and all as Lumi Man. Lumi Man looks official. He wears a clean white shirt and blue shorts. Sometimes he carries a clipboard and pen. Lumi Man greets each stranger as they step from their aircraft with a long, detailed harangue. This harangue can be disconcerting, for Lumi Man delivers it in a language which no-one else can understand.
On subsequent visits to Lumi I have seen
Europeans stand puzzled and embarrassed for long minutes as they strain to understand Lumi Man and his function. Meanwhile, everyone else in Lumi enjoys the joke enormously. The best response, apparently, is to shake Lumi Man's hand rather formally, an honour which he delightedly returns with a crisp salute.
My first reaction to Lumi Man must have been the same sort of embarrassed immobility I have witnessed so often in others—but I have no memory of it, or indeed anything else much about Lumi in 1985. As for the rest of the expedition, my recollections of it are few and dream-like.
On that first exploratory trip I decided to stay in the village of Wigotei, about half a day's walk from the Catholic mission centre at Fatima. I was feeling slightly unwell when I arrived. This, I thought, probably heralded an incipient bout of malaria. Malaria is the constant companion of mammalogists working in lowland New Guinea, for our work leaves us very vulnerable to infection with the malarial parasite.
Most New Guinea mammals are nocturnal. To observe them, one must be in the forest at night, which is when the Anopheles mosquitoes are active. Mammalogists are often occupied for hours at a time at a mist-net, attempting to disentangle bats without hurting them. All the while you are surrounded by a buzzing cloud of mosquitoes. Because both hands are fully occupied coping with live bats, you cannot even wave them away. No matter how well protected you are by clothing and insecticide, there always seems to be a dozen proboscises inserted into your bloodstream at once.
Anti-malarial drugs offer only partial protection. Malaria, it seems, mutates so rapidly that it becomes resistant to each new drug soon after it is developed.
As a result of these problems, I have learned to live with vivax malaria (the most common and least dangerous strain) while in New Guinea. Indeed, malaria often seems to cause my worst troubles in Australia. One attack in Woolloomooloo was particularly dangerous. I was enjoying a pub lunch with some friends when the first symptoms came on. The attack developed rapidly and my friends went off to find a cab to take me to a doctor. I began to feel cold and decided to take a stroll in the weak winter sun.
As I paced up and down the street, a police car cruised by. The police seemed to take a great deal more interest in me than they usually do. My first impulse was to stop and ask them for help, but something in their expressions made me stop. Then Irealised how I must look: pale and sweating, shaking violently, with my arms clasped around my chest. And I was walking along a street notorious as a shooting gallery for heroin users.
I could just see myself in King's Cross police station, trying to explain that I was not a junkie, but was in fact suffering from malaria. The enlarged liver and spleen that develop with malaria are exquisitely vulnerable to physical damage. A vision floated before me of my untimely demise from a ruptured spleen inflicted by a constable's boot, its owner having decided I was an obnoxious, smart-arse junkie. With these thoughts swirling around my head, I rushed into the pub and hid in the toilet, to await escape, some minutes later, in the cab.
I have had to take a philosophical view of this inevitable infection with malaria because I simply could not do my field-work otherwise. The 1985 expedition was so expensive, time-consuming and difficult to organise that to pull out just after arriving in this remote and fascinating region was not something which, in all conscience, I could do.
So—just a few days work, I told myself now, would repay all the trouble. I swallowed a couple of quinine tablets (still the most effective if oldest anti-malarial) and resolved to stick things out at Wigotei.
The next afternoon I went out to set up a mist-net. On the way back to the village I was struck down with a ferocious bout of fever. It was as if someone had delivered a blow to the base of my skull with an axe. I had a blinding headache and could not walk nor focus my eyes properly. With the help of some villagers, I struggled back to my hut and took more quinine, certain that I was suffering the mother of all malarial attacks.
From what I can remember, time passed strangely at Wigotei. Nights were an absolute torture, for sleep was banished and I lay soaked in sweat in a fevered state. The seconds ticked by through the hours of darkness as I longed for a sip of water and the balm of sleep. In place of sheep, I counted the pandanus leaves which made up the roof. I never got to the end of a row, for my disordered brain lost track, even among the neatly arranged fronds.
The days were little better. I lay in the insufferably hot hut, parched and aching for water. A stream of people passed by, each one sticking their head in the door as they muttered ’tarangu’ (a term of sympathy in Pidgin, roughly translating as ‘commiserations'). Somehow, I failed in my efforts to communicate to them my need for water. Thankfully, every now and then a kind woman would come by with a bamboo cane full of the precious stuff and I would drink it and down a few more quinine tablets.
My thinking was not clear enough to ask the people of the village to carry me to the mission hospital and they did not take the initiative themselves. Perhaps they were waiting for my European bulk to reduce itself before they were willing to shoulder me for hours over the rough terrain. I continued to take quinine. Worse, I became confused as to how many tablets I had taken. This is highly dangerous, as quinine is not a drug to fool with.
Death from quinine overdose is horrible. It is impossible to reverse the effects of the drug, so death is inevitable. As time went by, what began as a slight ringing in my ears increased in volume until it resembled church bells. Soon, the bells turned to cannons. This is a common side-effect of quinine and it finally alerted me to the fact that I had probably already taken far too much.
I sometimes seemed to have a lucid period around midday, which lasted about twenty minutes. During one of these intervals I arranged to be carried by stretcher to the mission clinic. I remember very little of the journey, but do recollect a series of semi-hallucinatory visions, including one which featured an extraordinarily large snail sitting on the trunk of a tree. From my unusual orientation, I also recall being intrigued by a black claw which one of my bearers was wearing on a string around his neck. When we arrived at the mission, I somehow managed to buy the necklace from him.
This, it eventuated, was the most important specimen I acquired during the short expedition.
At the mission hospital, the Catholic nursing sister in charge took one look at me and said, ‘You have the worst case of malaria I have seen for some time. Have some quinine.’
I was beyond debating the point with her, indeed almost beyond caring, and swallowed the bitter pills once more.
That evening, lying in a mission hospital cot, an extraordinary sense of calm came over me. The torture of the thirst and fever, the terrible tension that pain creates, all left me. I was at peace, simply lying there in utter tranquility, experiencing a level of relaxation deeper than I had ever felt before.
At one stage I was aware of a nun coming in and undressing me. Her hands and eyes searched every part of my body. I grew up a Catholic and spent my primary school years being taught by nuns. It did not occur to me to wonder why she was touching me like this. Normally, I would have been embarrassed beyond words by such intimate contact, but that night I merely lay there, blissfully peaceful. It was as if it were all happening to someone else.
I don't remember anything at all of the following few days. My next memory is of lying in a bed in Boram Hospital in the coastal town of Wewak. The ward was full of dying people. It was primitive and dirty. A large and menacing male nurse, ears and nose pierced in traditional fashion, advanced towards me bearing a hypodermic syringe. I swear that he wiped it on his grubby shirt sleeve before jabbing it into my arm, saying, ‘I'm sure you have the worst case of malaria...’
After he had taken the blood sample, I crawled out of bed and kept moving until I saw a friendly face. It was the hospital dentist. He took me home with him, where I stayed until I was fit enough to travel back to Australia.
I had been suffering from scrub typhus. Victims of this disease who go untreated for six or more days have a fr
ighteningly high fatality rate. Years later, when I again met the nun who first treated me, she told me that she only thought I had another twelve hours to live if I did not receive treatment.
Her search of my body, she later told me, had yielded the bite mark of a scrub typhus tick. This tick is not stupid. It tries to bite on the genitals, knowing that this part of one's anatomy is likely to come in contact with another animal, which may harbour a partner for it too.
Fortunately, the nun had a supply of the appropriate drugs on hand and after administering them she evacuated me to Wewak. I owe her my life.
It took me a long time to recover. For several months I did not experience an uninterrupted night's sleep. My short-term memory was devastated. It was impossible to remember a new face or name, or use a telephone, simply because I could not retain a string of digits for long enough in my mind to dial the number. Eventually I found a way around this particular difficulty—by writing the number I wished to dial on a piece of paper and sticking it to the telephone. Other problems persisted, however, and my inability to remember faces and names provoked a million embarrassments and inconveniences.
Eventually I was able to examine the small collection of mammals I had made at Wigotei. Of all the specimens I had gathered, it was the claw I purchased from my stretcher-bearer which proved most difficult to identify. I felt it must be from a tree-kangaroo—yet it differed in detail from anything I knew about. The fur at its base was black and it was larger than any tree-kangaroo claw I had ever seen.
Only one species, the Grizzled Tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus inustus), had previously been reported from the Torricelli Mountains, but this was not its claw. It seemed that at least one other species of tree-kangaroo was present in the mountains, but what was it?