by Tim Flannery
The forest damage caused by the tailings will eventually affect many square kilometres. It will be visible from space. But in the context of the lowland forests of southern Irian Jaya, the area of impact will be small. The greater damage to the forests is revealed as one flies out of Timika, for it is then that the logging tracks can be seen snaking out in all directions. When I first flew over the forest in 1990, there was not a logging track in sight. Today they seem to cover the region, reaching almost as far as Etna Bay in the west.
The damage that logging does to the forest comes with no side benefit to the local people and the extent of the area affected is staggering. There is no way that these operations will be curtailed, however, for the military and other wealthy Javanese are making far too much money from them. It is logging, not mine tailings, that will cost southern Irian Jaya its precious forests.
A Living Dingiso
1999
IN MID-OCTOBER 1994, as I sat in my office at the Australian Museum, I received an unexpected telephone call from Terry Owen, who was by now a close friend.
‘We have one of your tree kangaroos,’ he said. ‘A live one. You’d better get up here in a hurry!’
Barely a week later, I was on a plane, once again bound for Timika before being whisked to Tembagapura. And there, in an enclosed balcony of a company house, I found that a miniature rainforest had been re-created.
As I opened the screen door to peer in, Ding, as I came to know the half-grown Dingiso that had brought me back to Irian once again, hopped out of the foliage and came towards me.
Ding had been cared for by the Owen family, and was in excellent condition.
The discovery of this animal was an unprecedented event. For years the people of Tembagapura had lived in ignorance of this wonderful creature, even though it inhabits the forests surrounding their town. Now, a living one had hopped into their midst. It was found in a disused machinery shed at the mine site. An Indonesian worker had entered the building so that he could relieve himself out of the rain. His micturition was cut short, however, when he noticed a black bundle of fur huddled in the corner. He ran to tell his American boss there was a bear on the premises.
Although no biologist, the American engineer knew there were no bears in Irian Jaya. Sceptical of the tale, he asked the man to retrieve the creature from the shed. A few minutes later the worker returned with a very cute, black and white animal in his arms. News of the discovery reached Terry, and soon thereafter myself.
Having handled a number of wild tree-kangaroos, I was surprised to hear that Ding had allowed himself to be picked up at his first meeting with a human. But it was further confirmation, if any was needed, of the stories told by Lani hunters about just how tame Dingiso is.
One can only guess at what Ding was doing in the shed. His coat was besmirched with oil, which is hardly surprising given that he had to cross a large industrial site to get to the disused shed. Perhaps he was moving out of his mother’s territory. This is always a difficult period for young tree-kangaroos, and Ding was doubtless being given a hard time by adult males whose territories he was passing through. The forest surrounding the mine site seems to possess a particularly high density of tree-kangaroos. This is because hunters are excluded from the area. Ding had probably been chased from one territory to another, until he finally found refuge in a dark corner of the shed. The sheds and their heavy machinery may well be the only places in the vicinity of the mine that do not form part of the territory of an adult male Dingiso.
I spent several days photographing and observing this gentle animal. Ding, I found, was most happy when he was munching on a fistful of young fern leaves. He was not a particularly fussy eater, and would take new leaves from a variety of plants. He appeared to have no clear activity pattern, but instead seemed to become animated whenever anyone entered his enclosure carrying fresh food.
After a few days I had done all I could, and the time came to release Ding. Terry arranged for a helicopter to take us to a high valley about three kilometres east of the mine site. It seemed to be equally distant from both mines and hunters, and Ding stood a good chance of surviving if he were released there. We carried him in a hessian bag, which he liked, feeling perhaps that it was akin to his mother’s pouch. I had put a tag in his ear, just in case he should encounter a human again.
When we released him into the alpine herbage, Ding hopped away very slowly, sampling leaves as he went. He was in no hurry to leave us, and it was only after several minutes that he disappeared into a dense tangle of bushes.
Even though only six months had passed since my last visit, noticeable changes had occurred at Tembagapura by late 1994. For one thing, tension between the local people and both Freeport and the Indonesian Government had risen markedly. I was fortunate in being in a privileged position to hear both sides of the story, for by now I had excellent connections with the Freeport management and the community leaders.
Six months earlier, the local people had only spoken openly in the forest, away from others who might hear them. Now, they spoke out everywhere of their hostility. One village leader said to me, ‘Everyone here, from the smallest child to the oldest man, knows that war [with Freeport and the Government of Indonesia] is inevitable.’
Every day in Tembagapura brought new alarums and rumours of hostile actions by the OPM. This was the week the war would begin, said my Dani, Moni and Amungme friends. The recent murders of respected men at Singa (by the Indonesian military), and all the deaths of the past for which compensation had not yet been paid, would be avenged. There were eighty armed OPM rebels hidden in the hills surrounding the town, they said. The water or electricity supply would be cut, or the town attacked. Maybe some Europeans would be shot.
Curiously, neither the Freeport administration nor the Indonesian armed forces seemed to be aware of the changes that were taking place in the local community. Indeed , they remained remarkably unconcerned, and life went on as always in the mining community. Whenever I raised the issue with people in authority I got a polite hearing, but also the distinct impression that they thought I was crying wolf.
One evening at dusk I was sitting in my room in Tembagapura , when I heard the strident notes of trumpet and snare drum approaching. A military detachment marched briskly by, and wailing fire engines and ambulances screamed behind them. These were followed by a long line of police and emergency vehicles. My heart was in my mouth. I expected to hear at any moment that the war had begun.
Then I saw a very strange thing. A fire engine drove slowly along the road, its siren wailing and all lights flashing. Something stood on top of it—it looked like Batman! This was followed by an even more bizarre sight, for behind came marching a strange collection of tiny devils, witches, lions and other creatures.
This, I suddenly realised, is how Halloween is celebrated in Tembagapura.
Watching the procession I thought incredulously of all I had heard over the past few days. How cosseted a world is this Tembagapura! Mist hangs over the forest and town like cottonwool. The guard-posts that stand at each entrance keep Melanesia and its rumours of violence out. It is utterly cut off from the real world .
Tembagapura’s lifeline is perilously thin. A single road, a pipeline, and an airfield. All are vulnerable. The flight to Timika often meets with massive turbulence. It feels like riding a bicycle over great angular blocks of concrete. One day a bicycle tyre will burst, and the steaming swamp forest might swallow a passenger jet. Maybe an earthquake will cut the road. Or a kilogram of Semtex, or a few rifle bullets, will bring the flow along the lifeline to a halt.
PART II
Ground Zero
1999–2003
The Sandstone City
1999
ON 6 FEBRUARY 1788, Sydney was ten days old. The men of the First Fleet, both soldiers and prisoners, had already been ashore at Port Jackson for much of that time, preparing the ground and setting up camp. Now the women convicts were set ashore. There were more than 700 convicts
but fewer than 200 of them were female, and the sexes had been kept apart in hulks, prisons or transports for at least a year.
The women had enjoyed solid ground beneath their feet for only an hour when the sweltering summer evening was lit up by a prodigious thunderstorm. Lightning knocked a sentry to the ground and temporarily blinded him; a pig and at least five of the colony’s precious sheep were electrocuted. The storm was a manifestation of austral nature at its grandest, and it terrified many of the newly arrived Europeans, who cringed in their cabins or prayed by their bunks.
With authority blinded or cowering under cover, the lower orders seized the moment. The sailors of the Lady Penrhyn obtained a double ration of rum to celebrate the offloading of the women convicts, and fortified with the ardent spirit they soon found amusement singing, fighting and fucking.
A few days later the prudish Lieutenant Ralph Clark lamented at what he had seen, presumably intermittently as lightning struck the various unfortunates: ‘Good God what a Seen of Whordome is going on there in the women’s camp…I would call it by the name Sodom for there is more sin committed in it, than in any other part of the world.’ Clark’s comparison with Sodom soon proved more accurate than he imagined.
The tempests continued for several days, but the mornings were tranquil, steamy and sodden, as is so often the case after the passing of a summer storm in Sydney. The record of what happened on one such morning is incomplete, but from the evidence I can imagine the scene that unfolded. In the dawn light a party of marines is trudging through the mud towards the women’s camp. They search tent after tent, evicting scrawny, rag-clad convicts and poxy sailors nursing hangovers. Sometimes one, perhaps two or three emerge from a tent, holding their heads as a convict moll screams at the soldiers, ‘You can kiss my c…’ Grim-faced the marines continue with their task until out of one tent is dragged a ship’s carpenter. ‘You’re for it, mate,’ whispers a marine through clenched teeth to the malefactor, whose transgression is all the worse because he is supposed to be one of the few figures of respectability in the settlement. The carpenter’s paramour follows, but then to everyone’s surprise a third figure emerges. It’s the cabin boy from the Prince of Wales transport.
An exasperated Arthur Phillip, governor of the colony, seems to have been as uncertain of the appropriate punishment as he was of the nature of the crime, so he ordered the cabin boy and the carpenter paraded out of camp to that sprightly, sardonic tune ‘The Rogue’s March’. The fife-players probably gave a fine rendition, for they were doubtless well practised; the ceremonial salute in reverse was heard more often than any tune in the early days of the colony, except perhaps ‘God Save the King’.
The scene that followed was a sort of prototype for Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. The hungover convicts, scurvy-plagued sailors and red-coated marines were assembled into files, through which the curious procession of miscreants marched. First came the fifes, playing the mocking air with all the vigour they could muster. Close behind came the disgraced carpenter, his hands bound behind him, while bringing up the rear was the cabin boy, arraigned in petticoats and heartily jeered by the crowd. When the motley procession reached the camp boundary there must have been a moment of hesitation, for beyond the rough clearing there was nothing—no European settlement for thousands of kilometres. Their punishment over, the cabin boy and the carpenter straggled back into camp. There was simply nowhere else to go.
After that first night of debauchery, Governor Phillip desperately needed to restore law and order. He held a formal parade, adding to the agony of the revellers’ hangovers with a reading of his ‘letters patent’ establishing his own authority and the various courts. He further assured them ‘that if they attempted to get into the women’s tents of a night there were positive orders for firing upon them’. The order did little good, for the party continued.
And so passed Sydney’s first weeks, its first crimes and its official founding. It was a salty, saucy and insolent affair full of irony, colour and sex. It was as if the constraints of old Europe had been irrevocably left behind in this vast island prison, and the unbuttoned nature of the town, which remains characteristic, was stamped indelibly on it from the first.
It’s hard for us to imagine the excitement and furore created when the destination of the First Fleet was announced, for the enterprise was breathtaking in its audacity. Eleven ships carrying about 1500 souls (roughly half of whom were convicts) would be launched on an eight-month journey halfway around the globe. Once at Botany Bay they would establish a beachhead settlement on the last of the habitable continents to be drawn into the realm of European imperialism. In its breadth and ambition, the announcement of the English expedition was every bit as monumental as the mission to land a man on the moon.
Soon the words ‘Botany Bay’ were on everybody’s lips and the great publishing houses of London rushed to the principals in the endeavour. John Stockdale of Piccadilly signed up Governor Phillip and Captain John Hunter to produce accounts, while Cadell and Davies in The Strand got Judge-Advocate David Collins, and Debrett of Piccadilly retained chief surgeon John White. Botany Bay ballads were forming on the lips of singers, and broadsheets everywhere carried factual as well as fanciful accounts of the antipodes. From the very beginning the history of Sydney would be recorded in detail.
Some sense of the strength of the impression made by the expedition can be seen in the persistence of the name ‘Botany Bay’ for the new settlement. Botany Bay, in which James Cook had sheltered for a week in 1770, never was settled, for it had insufficient water and soil. The First Fleet stayed there a few days only before moving on to the more suitable Port Jackson; apart from the First Fleeters, no convict was ever sent to Botany Bay. The bay, however, has played an important role in Sydney’s history. It was there, on the very day the First Fleet chose to abandon the place, that the ill-fated La Perouse Expedition, already years at sea, sailed into view. The French stayed six weeks, walking overland to visit Governor Phillip at Sydney Cove, but then sailed into oblivion. Decades later it was discovered that La Perouse’s ships had foundered on a reef in what is now Vanuatu. Botany Bay, of course, is once again the gateway to the city, for with the passing of the great passenger liners that brought tens of thousands in through Sydney Heads, most visitors now step ashore beside Botany Bay at Sydney’s Mascot Airport.
Unlike modern visitors, those sailing on the First Fleet were launching themselves into a great void, an isolation unimaginable today. While they were away the United States of America would ratify its constitution, France would have its revolution, King George III would go insane and then recover and Mozart would stage the first performance of Don Giovanni. Those lucky few destined to return from Sydney Cove would find a dramatically changed Europe, just as they themselves would irrevocably change Australia.
For half a century Sydney Cove was synonymous with European settlement in Australia in the European imagination, and because the settlement had such unusual beginnings it was under the microscope from the start. Enlightenment Europe was vitally interested in the moral and philosophical questions posed by the establishment of the colony. Could transportation redeem socially degraded felons? Could fallen women be made fertile and bounteous by the change of clime? Could the Aborigines be brought into the European fold, and could Europe itself be transplanted successfully into this strange antipodean world? Visitor after visitor penned opinions on these matters in everything from secret reports to popular books, while official documentation, letters, diaries and newspapers recorded how the city’s inhabitants saw these issues. This book covers the first hundred-odd years of Sydney’s life when such questions were urgent and the answers elusive. By the end of the nineteenth century, when Mark Twain made his triumphant visit to the city, and the journalist Nat Gould discovered that Sydney was the place to be on New Year’s Eve, the character of the modern metropolis was largely formed.
Sydney thus represents the great experiment of the Enlightenment—the proving
ground in which new philosophies and ideas were to be tested. What the savants of the Enlightenment did not have, however, was knowledge of the deep history of the region in which their experiment was being carried out, for geology is one of the newest of the natural sciences. This was a critical lack, for it was to be the mix of earth, water and people that was to determine the shape of the city.
One might imagine that Sydney was a purely British creation, but that would be quite wrong. Quite apart from the Aborigines who had been there for 50,000 years, the Maoris and Pacific Islanders, West Indians and Americans, Malays and Greeks put in early appearances, just to name a few. Within a few years, Muslim sailors would be constructing extravagant temples and filling the streets of the town with exotic Eastern festivals. It’s important to remember that this great social experiment was taking place in a strange natural environment whose impact was to be profound, for the timeless interplay between earth, water, air and fire that helps shape all cities was felt in Sydney from the very first day. To understand how this interplay developed we need to see the world in a very different way.
Imagine if you can an utterly upside-down and inverted Sydney. The atmosphere is water and the sea is air. You are sitting in a boat afloat in the harbour, but you are on the wrong side of the line between air and water. Yes, you are a creature of the briny, approaching the land, fishing line in hand, in hope of a meal. You cast your line out of the water and into the air, directing it to the bushes growing at the water’s edge. What do you think will happen? How long will you wait for a meat-eating creature to come and seize the bait, and how long before you are snagged on some vegetation?