by Tim Flannery
TWENTY-ONE
The wildlife clan
Three years were to pass before I could return to the Torricelli Mountains to investigate this mystery further. It is difficult enough even at the best of times to raise funds to do research in New Guinea—but when I told people about the large, black claw and my feeling that it might be from an undescribed species of tree-kangaroo, their scepticism made it clear that it would be all but impossible for me to attract funding on such flimsy evidence.
I decided to ‘stretch’ some existing research money. In 1988 I received a grant to investigate the mammals of New Ireland in the Bismarck Archipelago to the north of New Guinea. A side-trip to the Torricellis would only cost a few hundred dollars extra. I somehow justified to myself this redirection of funding and hoped the granting body would never hear about it.
At Fatima mission I made the acquaintance of Father Patrick McGeaver. I must have met Pat in 1985 (although I cannot remember it) because when we met again in 1988 he greeted me like a long-lost relative.
Pat leads a rather Spartan life. His house lacks windows and is made of tin. His furniture is basic and he has none of the amenities most people in the west take for granted. His daily fare consists principally of boiled potatoes. When I visited his kitchen to drop off a few delicacies I had brought from Australia, the cook thanked me and grumbled that Father ate far worse than his parishioners. While this situation scandalised the cook, it did not seem to worry Pat, who has a fondness for the pratie that only the Irish can muster. On the night we met in 1988 he sat me down to a simple yet delightful meal of boiled potatoes and an egg.
After we had eaten, Pat produced an unlabelled bottle filled with a clear liquid and, his eyes sparkling, asked me if I was familiar with poteen. It was the real stuff, doubtless brewed in some illicit still on the west coast of Ireland—and it was wonderful. Glasses were filled and we settled in for a long evening.
We talked about the state of hockey, rugby, Australian and Gaelic football and a number of other sporting topics. The room began filling with moths. It was drizzling outside and the weather was mild. These are perfect conditions for flying insects of all kinds. Pat got up to close the wooden shutters. I begged him not to, as I needed live insects to bait my traps and this represented a windfall. As we sat there speaking long into the night, moths flew around us like a great living snowstorm. The room filled with them. Some were large and black, like great swallowtail butterflies. Others were smaller and every colour of the rainbow. Some, indeed, were exquisitely transparent. I have never seen such a cornucopia of gorgeous creatures. At the close of the evening I scooped them by the hundreds into my cloth bags while Pat went out to turn off the generator.
Father Pat is an Irishman for whom Gaelic is a first language. He is one of the new style of Roman Catholic missionaries and is a vital force in the lives of the people of the Torricelli Mountains. As we got to know each other, I began to see what motivated Pat. He told me that his own language and culture had been banned and belittled at the hands of the invading English and that he was certainly not going to see that happen to his Papua New Guinea parishioners. They had, unfortunately, been converted in the 1930s by Catholic missionaries of German extraction who had suppressed the local culture. Pat was determined to redress that.
Under Father Pat, the region had experienced a dramatic cultural revival. The Mass was now said in Olo (the local language) by this Irish priest dressed to a turn in Melanesian finery. His cuscus-fur head-dress and bird-of-paradise plume armlets shook gloriously as he sang. Indeed, hearing Mass said by Father Pat dressed in his full regalia was one of the most moving experiences I have ever had in a church.
It was with some pride that Pat told me that the revival of old traditions had gone so far that, as a special favour to the visiting Bishop of Vanimo, parish women had danced bare-breasted in procession through the church while singing hymns.
But the revival had gone much deeper than ceremonial formalities. Pat had questioned the old men closely concerning their pre-Christian customs and had incorporated traditional elements, where appropriate, into the celebration of the sacraments. Thus, traditional words from birth and initiation ceremonies, many long forgotten by the community, were now said at baptisms and confirmations. Pat also bought ochre for decorative purposes and sponsored festivals on these occasions.
For the first time in decades a haus tambaran (ancestral spirit house) had been built in Wilbeitei village and in it were stored the spirit masks, all newly made, for which the area was formerly famous. But the house now had a double purpose. Though great spirit masks, some five metres tall, were hung around its walls, at its centre was parked the new community truck, the result of an investment and savings scheme instituted by Father Pat.
Pat's revival of the village traditions had come at a critical moment. The Olo had been influenced by Christianity for the best part of sixty years. They were a lot further down the road to westernisation than even the Telefol. It was dismaying to find that Pidgin was commonly used, even in conversations between the Olo themselves, and that only the very oldest members of the community remembered what traditional clothing looked like. Had Father Pat arrived just a decade later, he may have found precious little to preserve.
Father Pat suggested that I base my research at the village of Wilbeitei. Here was a community which had been revitalised by this new brand of Catholicism. On our arrival, the village store was opened and a present of food was made to us. We were accepted with open hearts into the bosom of the people. Partly as a result of the goodwill of the villagers, I began a most wonderful period of study.
My most important contact at Wilbeitei soon became Kaspar Seiko. Kaspar is a traditional village leader who is old enough to remember the earthquake of 1934. This earthquake was one of the most severe ever felt in New Guinea. It devastated villages, gardens and forests throughout the Torricellis.
Kaspar knew about the tree-kangaroo which possessed black claws. He called it Tenkile, and he, Kaspar Seiko, was custodian of a ples masalai (forbidden place) called Sweipini, commonly referred to as as ples bilong Tenkile (the centre of Tenkile's world, its original place). Sweipini is located at the very summit of the Torricelli Mountains, in an area of dwarfed, mossy trees and eternal mists.
When I explained the reason for my visit and my desire to see a more complete specimen of the tree-kangaroo, Kaspar agreed to try to obtain one for me. He decided to search for Tenkile in his hunting ground near Sweipini but, because of the sacred nature of the locality, neither I nor anyone else was allowed to accompany him.
Kaspar explained that at the heart of Sweipini lies a small lake. The Olo believe that this lake is the home of gigantic eels. On the approach of anyone except Kaspar himself, the frogs inhabiting the lake take fright at seeing a strange face and begin to croak loudly. The noise awakens the giant eels, which can cause terrible weather, blighting crops and bringing widespread famine. Hundreds of people would die of hunger were this to happen.
Kaspar returned a few days later bearing a small bundle of fur. It was a tiny Tenkile joey. The little creature had been killed by Kaspar's dogs. Although saddened at its death, I was also elated and surprised at my first sight of a whole Tenkile. It was black all over—a condition then unknown among tree-kangaroos. Here, surely, was an animal which was unknown to the outside world. It was a major discovery, for it is rare for such a large mammal to have remained undescribed until the late twentieth century.
So in 1989, armed with funds gained on the basis of this more substantial find, I began an extended period of fieldwork in the Torricellis. My first move was to undertake a widespread survey to determine whether Tenkile existed elsewhere in the ranges. I began by questioning hunters about tree-kangaroos and collecting whatever pieces of jaw, skull and fur they had kept as trophies of the hunt. Through this I hoped to learn about its distribution and abundance, as well as a little of its biology.
My stays at Wilbeitei and other villages were often enlive
ned by stories of past hunts and of the excitement of tracking and killing Tenkile. The males, I was told, were far larger than the females and were very powerful adversaries. They also possess a pungent odour. Hunters said that it is impossible to keep a successful kill secret, for people can smell Tenkile on your hands for a week afterwards.
It became clear that Tenkile was a very distinctive animal. Measurement of the jaw and skull fragments established that it was indeed a large tree-kangaroo. They also showed that it was related to Doria's Tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus dorianus), the species distributed along the central mountain range of New Guinea. Tenkile differed from Doria's Tree-kangaroo in being black rather than brown, in aspects of its skull and dentition, and in possessing a more powerful, although not entirely unpleasant odour.
Following this initial investigation, I began to search for a living animal. I only ever saw one adult Tenkile, a male captured by a hunter in 1990. This was a precious moment.
Examining the rare creature, I discovered that what hunters had told me of its odour was no exaggeration. And even a week later, in Sydney, the smell was still clinging to me—a mixture of pine needles, musk and something I can only describe as ‘tree-kangaroo’.
It was disheartening to learn that this beautiful and distinctive tree-kangaroo was fast becoming endangered in the Torricellis. I questioned older hunters, and sometimes accompanied them to places where they had captured Tenkile in their youth. Many of these sites were now adjacent to gardens and quite close to villages. In some instances, Tenkile had not been seen in these places for fifty years. Its modern distribution was centred solely upon the sacred site at Sweipini and a remote ridge called Mungople, which was the most distant country from the settlements in the Fatima area.
Discussions about Tenkile drew talk of other creatures inhabiting the forests of Olo country. From Kaspar Seiko and some of the older hunters of Wilbeitei I heard stories concerning a creature they knew as Weimanke. Weimanke, they said, was somewhat like Tenkile, but its face was pale, like a white man's. Kaspar said that although he himself had never captured Weimanke, his father had once brought one to the village from Sweipini while Kaspar was still a child. I was confused as to what kind of creature Weimanke might be—if it was indeed anything more than mythical. In any case, I needed to concentrate my efforts on tracking down the more tangible Tenkile. I dismissed Weimanke from my mind.
Yet it was during our extended survey of the North Coast Ranges that the mystery of the mythic creature with the white man's face was solved.
We divided the survey work up between the team of researchers employed on the project. Lester Seri and Pavel German (of the Australian Museum) were to cover the far eastern and western portions of the ranges, while I was to cover the high, central blocks of Menawa and Somoro.
Lester and Pavel began in the east. They arrived at the airstrip at Sibilanga with the objective of surveying Mt Sapau, an isolated peak which defines the eastern end of the high Torricellis. As they were preparing for the climb, Lester fell sick with malaria. Unable to walk, he instructed Pavel to carry on without him and to accompany some hunters to the peak.
A week later Pavel returned with a very strange tree-kangaroo. The hunters who captured it called it Weiman. It was reddish, with a whitish-pink face. Immediately I knew that all I had been told of Weimanke was true. Amazingly, here was yet another kind of tree-kangaroo living in the Torricelli Mountains which was unknown to science!
At Wilbeitei I opened the drum in which Pavel had preserved this animal's skin. Kaspar saw Weimanke for the first time in at least sixty years. His eyes filled with tears. How good it would be to see Weimanke back at Sweipini again, he said. Yet the chances of this ever happening seem slim, for Weimanke is nearly extinct even on Mt Sapau, its last stronghold.
In assigning myself the Menawa block to survey, I had selected an area of singularly difficult access. There are few villages and no airstrips near the highest peak, Mt Menawa, and the community I suspected to be the traditional owners of the mountain seemed to be concentrated near a small village marked on my map as Fas. The distance between human settlement and peak was heartening in one sense: tree-kangaroos tend to live where people do not. The nearest airstrip appeared to be at a place called Utai. I would need to charter a small plane. Accordingly, I explained to the pilot that my destination was Fas village, and that Utai appeared to be the closest airstrip.
To my delight, he said that a new airstrip had just been opened at Fas itself. We could fly directly there, saving me a walk.
A mere fifty minutes later I stepped from the aircraft into the middle of Fas village. As the Twin Otter taxied back up the airstrip in preparation for take-off, I was greeted by the village head-man.
He strode forward and we shook hands. I introduced myself and explained that I wished to climb Mt Menawa. How long did it take to walk there? The head-man smiled and shook his head sadly. Mt Menawa, he said in perfect Pidgin, was about five days’ walk away. With a sinking feeling I got out the map and pointed to Fas's position, within, I thought, about half a day's walk of the mountain. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that is 3Fas. This is 2Fas.’
We looked up as the Twin Otter soared overhead, on its way to Vanimo.
Our situation was made all but irreversible by the state of the new Fas airstrip. It acted like an ant-lion trap: very easy to slide into with a load of cargo, but extraordinarily difficult to get out of. The trouble was that the strip was boggy and short. Any aircraft could land a large volume of cargo into the place, but only a Twin Otter was powerful enough to lift it out. I knew that the Twin Otter now flying away was the only one working in Sandaun Province—and that it was booked for weeks in advance.
To make matters worse, the local two-way radio used to arrange aircraft landings was broken. To get a message out, someone had to walk across the range to the next village, or else use the school radio and hope that whoever they made contact with would pass on our request to the airline.
This situation was particularly galling to the crew (employed by Gary Steer, an Australian documentary filmmaker) who were travelling with me. For them time was money, yet they were well and truly stuck. There were simply not enough porters in 2Fas to lug their 200 kilograms of film equipment anywhere.
We were destined to spend two weeks in 2Fas, awaiting an aircraft to take us on the twenty-minute journey to Utai.
Our misery at being detained there was increased by the plague of cockroaches which infested our hut. These were thick even by day. If a notebook was left open on the table for any time at all, you returned to find it covered in small black blobs. These were cockroach droppings, which rained incessantly from the thatched roof. My breakfast of sweet potato suffered the same fate.
By night the minor inconvenience caused by the roaches developed into a major problem. We relied on a decrepit hurricane lantern for light, and every now and again it would splutter and go out. One evening this happened just as we commenced dinner. I put down my plate to attend to it. The lamp, however, had other ideas and despite my best efforts it failed to spark into life. Disgruntled, I reached glumly for a dinner to be eaten by torchlight. I was saved the trouble, however, for when I swung the beam onto the table I found not a meal, but a plate piled high and spilling over with cockroaches. They scrambled wildly away from the light, taking my appetite with them. There were at least four species in the feeding frenzy.
Our time was not completely wasted, though. I engaged in numerous dart tournaments with the villagers and spent several delightful evenings with Tom, the local schoolteacher, whom I had met previously at Yapsiei. I am more than impressed with the job teachers like Tom do. Their life, if posted to such remote villages, is largely one of deprivation, yet the service they do their country and community is invaluable. I left almost all my pencils, biros and paper with Tom when I departed—although the school year was well advanced he was yet to receive his supplies from head office.
The stay was not wasted scientifically either, for by
questioning villagers I learned a little about the rare Black-spotted Cuscus. I also discovered an undescribed subspecies of horseshoe-bat roosting under a landslip near the village.
The Twin Otter arrived just as I was about to set out across the mountains on foot to Sissano Lagoon to arrange for its return. I left 2Fas with a small but interesting mammal collection from this hitherto unknown region.
We arrived at Utai airfield at about midday. As it would only be a four-hour walk from there to 3Fas (and an additional half day to the base of the moutain itself), I decided to go on to the village that day, leaving most of my cargo and the film crew to catch up later.
Some men from 3Fas were visiting Utai at the time and I asked them for help in reaching their village. I was amazed to find them reluctant to assist me; one even went so far as to suggest that, for my own safety, I should not go to 3Fas at all.
This entirely unexpected situation threw my plans into chaos. I had come all the way from Sydney to Utai, with an unwanted detour via 2Fas, in order to reach Mt Menawa. The two lost weeks had put me in no frame of mind to abort the project. Moreover, Mt Menawa is the tallest mountain in the entire North Coast Ranges. To return without surveying it would throw the validity of the entire project into doubt.
It was late in the afternoon by the time I decided to make the walk unaccompanied to 3Fas, despite the ominous reception at Utai. I found it difficult to believe that the disaffection with my proposed visit was shared by more than one or two individuals.
It was a long, wet walk up a river bed before I reached the village some time after the last rays of sun had left the sky. From what I could see, it looked to be a very traditional place, for there was no evidence of basic amenities such as a school or first aid post. A few men came into the village square to meet me. They seemed genuinely surprised and disturbed to find me standing there. I explained who I was and what I had come for, and was then led to a hut on the edge of the village.