Chapter 3 Consolidation

Chapter 3

Consolidation.

Relaxing at the beach was terrific but consolidating our home base was our priority, and for that we constantly needed money for building materials, fertilizer, food, fuel and firewood. Many people were growing marihuana for money but we were against that idea because it was illegal, as in gaol time, and we believed in the adage, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.

At about the same time we’d tired of the constant compromise that was necessary to live in a group so we made the break and moved to another part of the property that the commune had recently purchased and began anew.

We erected a big army tent and set it up with carpeted floor, a lounge, and kitchen bench with sink. We were very comfortable and happy living there on our own despite it being just a cow paddock with some nice clumps of trees along the creek .

I soon began building our new house after our plans had been approved. Helen was so radiant when she was pregnant and we both looked forward very much to the birth of our child.

My brother came back from Fiji and with help from a backpacker we cut large tallow wood poles for building the frame from trees in the forest that had been knocked down by lightning strikes. When the big ones were hit by lightning they’d inevitably bring some smaller trees down with them. The commune had bought an old ten-wheel-drive Studebaker army truck so we used that to bring the poles down from the forest and onto site.

One of the commune members named Kim died about then. He was bitten by a tiger snake when he went to check his marihuana patch in the forest.

By the time Kim got back to his car he was almost unconscious from the venom so his girlfriend had to drive. Unfortunately she only had an ‘automatic license’ and the car was an old Holden with a column shift. She stalled and stalled until the battery was flat and he died there.

I wrote his factional story years later after I’d also been bitten by a tiger snake and knew exactly what he went through. It is not an easy death.

Kim parked the old Fairlane at the end of the dirt road where there was a turnaround bulldozed beneath the tall, lean, trees of an open eucalypt forest filled with cicadas blazing in the mid-summer sun, swarming from tree to tree across the spaces between the tall crowns.

As they got out of the car Kim felt a drip of sweat slide down his inner-upper arm. He wore only jeans; without a shirt, and Georgina had replaced her bikini with a pair of electric-blue shorts and a sky-blue tank-top. He took her hand and led her from the road up along a barely discernable animal track that dodged between the trees. “Wallabies.” he told her.

While gazing at his ripening ganja plants Kim felt a sharp bite on his left foot, and hopped out of the way, pulling her with him. Looking back he saw a tiger snake slithering away so with both hands he picked up a rock as big as a football and threw it down onto the escaping snake, almost severing its head behind the shoulder. The sinuous head-body junction tilted its parts over in different directions. A dry leaf stuck to the mucus on the lower lip of the mouth, open, trying to hiss.

Two tiny lines of blood on the side of Kim’s middle toe showed where it had injected the venom that was soon to kill him. Suddenly there was a pain in his head like a laser beam stretching from temple to temple and then spreading like oil on a stream as the venom overwhelmed him.

I’ll complete the story later, after I too was bitten by a tiger snake because by then I understood what Kim had gone through.

Of course I was shocked to hear about the circumstances of his death, the way he died there in his car because his girlfriend had flattened the battery. The girl had stumbled onto some tourists a few kilometers down the track but by then it was far too late.

A tiger snake has enough venom to kill eighty sheep. I’m alive because I got to a hospital that had anti-venene. Kim’s dead because he didn’t.

As soon as we had enough house built we moved our tent to a caravan park on the coast and drove back and forth in our little red ute spending a few days furiously building and then a few days relaxing by the ocean.

By the time Helen was ready to give birth the house was two-thirds built and we were decided on a home birth. She’d been attending pre-natal classes in town with a home-birth group for months so she had complete confidence in them. Just days before giving birth a friend took some beautiful photographs of her standing naked in the sun with her beautiful long black hair blowing in the breeze. Later, the photo album that photo was in, with all the baby photos, was stolen, used for ransom, but we’ll get to that.

Everything seemed ready when she went into labor. Two midwives arrived and the birth was progressing accordingly from what I could gather. It was all in the hands of the two midwives but the hours just kept dragging by, contraction after contraction, after contraction. I’d been along for most of the pre-natal sessions so I knew Helen had the correct breathing technique and she was doing everything else the mid-wives told her to do, but our baby just wasn't being born. I was trying to keep out of the way while at the same time staying close, in case I was needed.

One of the midwives should have known enough to figure out that our baby’s shoulder was caught and she needed turning, but they didn't, so we waited and waited while Helen kept pushing heroically for hour after hour with the top of the baby’s head visible; until it was finally decided that we had to shift Helen into the car, to take her to the hospital about forty-five minutes away, to complete the birth. We were so naïve. Poor Helen, without any pain relief at all, moved into the back of a panel van where she bounced around on an old mattress, with our baby fully engaged in the birth canal. Such silly young people we were. And so trusting.

Unbeknown to us there was quite an antagonistic scene happening between the midwives and the doctors at the hospital that had been going on for some time. We’d become unwittingly involved in a power struggle between ‘the hippies’ and ‘the straights’. I later found out that the same woman who was the midwife had stubbornly treated her grandson with herbs and hocus pocus, for headaches, when he actually had meningitis. He is deaf and dumb as a result.

By me finally deciding we had to go to the hospital, by shifting our allegiance from the hippie home-birth to the mainstream, we’d put ourselves in the middle of the power-struggle so when we got close to the hospital it was decided for us, by the boss midwife, “because of all the bouncing around“, that we should have one more try, at a friend of the midwife’s house. Very dangerously negligent.

By that time Helen had been in labor for about twenty-four hours and we were both getting so exhausted that we almost fell asleep in the room where we’d been left alone. Helen’s contractions had begun to weaken so I insisted, despite resistance, that we continue straight to the hospital. With hindsight we are extremely lucky a tragedy didn’t occur. Both mother and baby could have died.

Once there at the hospital all systems were quickly and very technically "go!"

With dexterity derived from proper training and experience our very tired baby girl was turned with forceps, and then born without further drama except for the actual delivery. Helen was alive and well despite the danger the hippie women had put her in so that was a great relief to all of us. She was exhausted but nothing a good rest wouldn’t fix and we had a healthy little girl who, when first born, looked just like her grandmother.

I’d never been so happy in all of my life. Our little darling was so perfect, and we’d waited so long for her.

We spent the next few weeks living in our ‘army tent’ at the beach where we christened our little girl with hands cupped-full of Pacific Ocean before heading back into the hills to finish off the house and to keep expanding the garden. Being totally organic, and still a fairly new garden, weeds were an ongoing problem. The soil was full of dormant seeds and they were floating around in the air. The use of herbicides was unthinkable so it required a lot of hand pulling and sickle work.

It was about that time Helen told me what happened when she was looking after a small child when she was about fourteen-years-old. The child had run out of the house onto the road and it was run down and killed by a passing car. She didn’t ever mention it again but I wondered how much that had affected her.

Our little baby girl was so sweet and perfect in every way. Our home was ‘complete’ at last, but a few weeks or months after Tina was born Helen started waking me up at two or three in the morning to tell me about how she was feeling, but it was stuff that didn’t make any sense to my young, previously deep-sleeping, inexperienced self.

I was too tired to comprehend. From dawn until dark I was doing one thing or the other. At first light I’d be up, take a pee outside, kindle a fire for hot water and then change baby’s nappy. I’d built a single four-poster bed with mosquito net exactly the same height as our bed so Helen could easily slide bubs in for a feed. She was having no trouble breastfeeding and the few stitches she’d had were well and truly healed. I was constantly busy and pleased with the progress. There was so much work to do. It was endless. Even keeping track of tools was an ongoing problem because it was too easy to put down a tool with the intention of returning but then get caught up in another project.

I knew nothing of post-natal depression and I certainly didn’t have it. Everything seemed perfect to me so I couldn’t understand what could be wrong with Helen, or what I could do about it, if there was something wrong, or there was anything I could have done about it.
The outer western wall was still not finished, although the stones were piled up outside. We’d been cooking on the central fireplace since we’d moved in even though it was still only a temporary arrangement. A squat fifteen hundred gallon tank was mounted next to the house at just the right height so that it could both catch the rain from the roof but also deliver it back to the kitchen and bathroom with good pressure. We had solar-heated water for bath shower or sink so it was nowhere nearly as primitive as it had been a few months before, and, our first crop of watermelons were ripening up, big, round, and sweet.

We’d been cutting planks and posts from a huge, old rosewood log we found lying on the forest floor on a nearby mountain. Only the outside of the log was discolored and there was a neat hole about as big as a baby’s head straight down the middle that made slicing long lengths with the chainsaw that much easier. Ideal for tall verandah posts.

We had more raw materials than time to attach them to the house, or money for fasteners. My brother had been helping me, as well as Ralph the backpacker who stayed with us for months, but we needed money to finish off the house so we packed the car and went to Sydney where I started working with a landscaper until I decided, after seeing an advertisement for their ‘expeditions’, that the best job I could possibly get would be as a tour guide with an adventure travel company.

I approached the company and they wanted to try me out but for that I required a first aid certificate so I did the course and a couple of months later I had my first group to lead, across the Kokoda Track again!

The first verse of a song I made up while trudging along through the dripping forest.

I called it The Kokoda (Cock Odor) Blues

I’ve been on this track for almost a week.

My heads getting light and my back’s feeling weak.

Got a pack on my back makes me move like a snail.

Oh lord get me off this cock odor trail!

My two Canadian clients were a father and his sixteen-year-old son. They’d teamed-up to do a bit of bonding, initiating, and toughening up. We were putting the X back into expedition! They both looked like they needed it.

The trip went exceptionally well and it felt good doing the job. Half way across the trail, after three days and a couple of wet nights in the forest, trying to sleep in the hammock the boss had insisted on me buying, we arrived at the village name Kagi.

I knew that village were Seventh Day Adventists so the little trade store would be closed the next day, being Saturday, so upon arrival I asked an old man sitting on the step to get the key to the tiny shop so we could buy some tinned meat and biscuits and sit down to a steamy hot cup of tea. While he went for the key another old guy mentioned, in pidgin, that a man had a broken leg. It took some effort to tune into what he was saying but I soon worked out that he was telling me that a plane had crashed, sometime, and there was a man with a broken leg down at the airstrip five minutes’ walk away.

When we went down to the end of the village I still couldn't see an aeroplane anywhere but there were lots of people on the airstrip and in amongst them was a young fellow sitting on a plane seat with his leg up in a make-shift bamboo splint.

I was relieved that my first-aid skills weren't going to be tested on a broken leg with bones sticking out through the bloody skin, so as an expression of relief I waved the tiny medical kit I was carrying and asked loudly, "Doctor here. Who's the worst injured?"

The crowd cleared a bit to reveal two more casualties, which caused me to adjust my attitude. I went over to where they were lying on the ground and found one guy to have two long gashes down the side of his head. Where the hair and scalp were stretched apart the skull was bared all silvery and bloody. His face was severely bruised, and also his chest, and one ankle was obviously broken, but the man who needed the most assistance was Reg, the pilot.

Because the plane had landed nose-first into the forest while trying to get onto the airstrip Reg had smashed his face into the dashboard very hard. One of his eyes was swollen tightly shut as part of the dark bruise that spread across his forehead and cheek but a lens from the glasses he’d been wearing had been pushed out of the frame and forced through his other eye socket severing enough flesh to leave his eyeball and a lot of thick mess hanging out on his cheek with hair stuck in the drying blood. He was still partly conscious, although incoherent, and I must say it gave me a shock and a feeling of dread to realize that that poor man was going to be my first-ever patient. But I noticed Reg had already relaxed when he’d heard my voice, and that boosted my confidence as well. I gave him two aspirin, from the first aid kit, and re-assured him he’d be okay.

Soon water was boiling and Reg appeared to be asleep as I cut away the blood-matted hair and cleaned him up as best I could before gathering his eyeball and goo with a piece of gauze in my cupped hand and slid it back into the socket from whence it had come. And then taped it up.

The villagers had hurriedly built a thatch-roofed bambooshelter because heavy rain was about to fall. They’d also made a couple of woven bamboo ‘stretchers’ they used to shift the injured under shelter.

While still applying a decent splint for the guy with the broken ankle the rain cleared and an army Caribou appeared in the distance obviously searching for the missing plane. Within minutes it was circling above us below a ceiling of ever descending cloud which already obscured the seven thousand foot peaks around the deep valley.

Kagi airstrip is not only short and precariously placed, having been built in the desperate heat of war, but it also has an average gradient of twelve degrees. In three steps!

I knew the Caribou couldn't land but in Nuigini you have to be ready for anything, so when it flew off I had the impression it might send back a helicopter and sure enough within forty-five minutes a Bell Jet appeared out of the hazy distance and landed just near the makeshift hut sending lengths of hastily woven coconut leaf and locals flying in all directions..

The doctor who’d come on the helicopter took a look at what I’d done, and then we quickly transferred two of the injured into the chopper before lifting off and heading for the capitol. Waiting for us on the tarmac was an ambulance into which our patients were transferred while we taxied for a second flight.

The Korean pilot lifted off  the tarmac like he enjoyed being in emergency mode so within minutes we were skimming across the rugged mountains on our way back to Kagi where the other guy and the doctor were collected and flown away into the darkening sky.

"Now for that cup of tea," I thought, "and still three more days of hard walking to get to Moresby." Even though I’d just been there and back in only an hour!

Before the injured parties had been evacuated, I had, with their consent, scavenged the best and lightest food from their backpacks and put it in our hut to pack later. We spent two nights and a day there resting up and enjoying the friendly village life. It was a vibrant kind of place but there wasn’t a school or clinic, which I found out later, had been promised by the Australian army after it had fought through that area in World War Two, forty years earlier.

The ‘fuzzy-wuzzy angels ‘who’d been celebrated at the time had been forgotten once the Japanese had been turned back and the soldiers returned home. Understandable, but a shame for the people who lived in this isolated place and had to send their kids many k’s through the bush to get to a school. The exercise was good for them but I penned a letter to the local paper and it was a pleasant surprise to find that in response some local veterans had chipped in to have a school constructed.

Before I had a chance to distribute the extra supplies I’d harvested from the injured I discovered that Jerry the Canadian had thrown all of the unopened food down the stinking pit toilet. It was all wrapped in plastic, inside a plastic bag, and he somehow thought it was garbage? I never could figure out how he could have been so stupid, and I was slightly tempted to retrieve what I could, but I didn’t, so I’m sure one of the locals would have been pleased to discover the treasure. If I hadn’t been working at the time I definitely would have retrieved the sealed parcels, shit or no shit. You don’t throw away good lightweight food in the middle of a jungle. Sealed plastic can be easily washed.

The last three days of the walk were typically hard and slow but without any more dramas except for me getting diarrheic one night from drinking too much of the Staminaid salvaged from the plane crash. I’d never drank it before, and it was pretty tasty.

We were camped on a gravelly sand-bar in the middle of a large stream. As I squatted over a hole dug in the sand looking up at the endless clouds of flying foxes almost blotted out the clear moonlit sky. Flying foxes have huge ecological advantages on Pacific islands which may explain the difficult-to-believe numbers of them feeding in the forests and spreading seed far and wide. Some species of trees absolutely relied on them.

The final climb up from the Goldie River was hot, steep, and seemingly endless but as we reached the road we were typically relieved to be back in the world. That night we went out for dinner at the best restaurant in town, at Jerry’s insistence.

A few days later I flew back to Australia. As usual the first thing I did after all the more obvious first things you do after arriving back was to walk around with a brush-hook to check out the most recent batch of trees I’d planted. To see how much they’d grown and clear away any competing weeds.  I’d been planting hard-to-get timber trees and some of them required extra attention. When they thrived it was very satisfying; and almost all of them did.

I’d missed my girls so much being away from them for a week that I decided I didn't want to do it again but when the offer came shortly after for me to join another ‘expedition’ I couldn't resist because Mt. Wilhelm is the tallest peak in Nuigini and a mountain I’d always wanted to climb.

Helen had begun waking me up at three in the morning again, at least a couple of times. Same thing, basically an expression of general doubt, what may be referred to as free floating anxiety. I just couldn’t get it, to me life seemed almost perfect. All of our hard work had come to fruition. The house was very comfortable, we had the sweetest little baby darling anyone could ever imagine, all the fruit trees were established; so what could be wrong? My perspective was askew, my judgement defective. Having smoked some home-grown heads before bed I was still stuck between dreams, sleep and vagueness about what she was saying.

Helen’s insecurities were outside my range of thinking. One element may have been the darkness. At night, in our house it was absolutely black unless there was a bright moon. When I awoke at three to listen to Helen’s incomprehensible concerns I couldn’t see her face. There wasn’t a light switch next to me to illuminate the scene so I couldn’t see anything, and being tired and cosy and warm beneath the blankets it was just too easy for me to fall back into the deepest part of the night.

So, when the time came for me to leave for the Mount Wilhelm trip I wasn’t completely sure it was the best thing to do but I was very excited at the prospect and confirmed by the company’s faith in my abilities. There is a lot of responsibility involved in leading a group of twelve people up a fifteen thousand foot mountain in an unpredictable country like Nuigini, even if I would have my own guide for the last five thousand feet of the climb.

After almost missing the plane because I was behaving too cool and laid back at the airport I met up with one of the bosses in Kundiawa after changing planes in Moresby. His name was David and I got the impression that he was moving up to bigger things, to some world-wide adventure travel organisation, and I was taking his place. We had a day to kill before our clients arrived so we played tennis at the hotel and had a look around town; a mix of primitive and fast food. Primarily bare breasts, feathers, filthy t-shirts, deep-fried bread and saveloys. The place was dirty but hadn’t yet taken on the aura of danger.

Next morning we collected the dozen people from the airport in two Land cruiser troop carriers and headed out of town up the winding pot-holed road that led to the starting point for the trek at about eight and a half thousand feet above sea level. There were quite a few Chimbu villages along the way and food gardens spread out across the sides of the mountains. It was as exciting for me as it was for the guests because I’d never spent any time in the highlands and the mountain landscape was completely different to anything on the coast or the islands. Most notable was the palisade-style housing, the short stature of the people, and their really primitive manners and appearance.

At about eight and a half thousand feet we arrived at Keglsugal where we left the Toyotas. David assembled the pre-arranged carriers, some tall, some short, and handed out size twelve boots to all of them which they put on without socks before shouldering the packs assigned to them. It was already unexpectedly cold so we all put on jackets and beanies then set off in single file with David up front and me in the rear looking like the last expedition into darkest Africa. The typical two hundred millimetre path zig-zagged ever upward through an unfamiliar mountain forest of pines and oaks and other types of trees I didn’t recognise. As the steep track skirted rocky outcrops, sometimes following a small stream with plenty of lively waterfalls adding their music, the tree cover began to thin out and transitioned to a type of landscape I’d never even expected to see in Nuigini; a great deal of open space dominated by tree ferns and dark coloured boulders interspersed with stunted trees, bushy shrubs and colourful flowering plants.

As usual in that type of situation we plodded along in single file without anyone saying much, too busy looking for the next place to plant their boot on the slippery surface, each of us breathing hard from the exertion and the continually thinning air. The path wasn’t remarkably steep but it was constantly gaining elevation as we moved up a broad shallow valley with the horizon always well above eye level.

The group was evenly divided between males and females, mostly young, in their mid-twenties, but it wasn’t until we arrived at the huts on the lake at approximately eleven thousand feet that we had time to get to know each other better after the porters had dumped the assorted backpacks in a pile, the sleeping arrangements had been sorted out, and the wood stove put into action.

From the verandah the scene was stunning. The lower lake, called Iunde, covers about a hundred and fifty acres and all around the low side were tussocks of dark green grass amidst black granite rocks but on the far side was a sheer rock wall disappearing almost vertically up into the dense white clouds.

Across to the left beyond some clumps of vegetation dwarfed and distorted by the freezing winds, was a two-stage waterfall about five hundred feet tall that joined the lake we could see with another one out of site, but soon enough the clouds slumped down and the entire scene was obliterated and we’d all retired to the warmth of the cabin to escape the moist and chilly atmosphere outside.

Drinking coffee and milo we sat around on the floor leaning back against the walls chit-chatting and discussing the plan for reaching the summit the following morning. David had done the climb several times before and we had a local guide, typically named Joseph, who would ultimately be responsible for none of us getting lost in the fog. The path to the top had almost no ‘signage’, actually none at all that I can remember, so as soon as the cloud descended visibility was almost zero and every rock looked just like every other rock and being so cold the possibility of dying from exposure was very real.

An Australian guy had disappeared on the mountain in 1971 even though he was part of a group, on a clear sunny day, and was last seen within a thousand feet of the summit by his friend who had sat there awaiting his return. Despite an intensive search using planes, helicopters, the army and civilians he was never found, dead or alive, so it was a serious business. Conditions could change in minutes and the cold wind could cut through almost any type of clothing.

The first part of the trek had only taken about five hours and my guests weren’t even carrying their own packs, but it had been a long day for them so soon after dark they were all asleep. We’d agreed that everyone who wanted to try for the summit had to be up and ready to leave by midnight. Half of the group were happy to stay by the lake but nevertheless by eight, probably because it was so cold, they were all snuggled up in their sleeping bags and sound asleep.

About eleven Joseph the guide stoked the small fire and woke everyone up just by moving around. A couple of the clients were reluctant to get out of their bags but the others were obviously keen and so they were soon fully dressed, booted up and sipping on hot drinks. The sky was clear, absolutely saturated with starlight, but so cold you didn’t want to bump your fingers.

By midnight we were on our way, Joseph leading us along a barely discernible path that skirted around the lower lake until we reached the bottom of the waterfall where the path continued straight up, pretty much hand over hand until it began to level off and emerged out beside the higher lake. We then skirted that lake, each of us carrying a torch and headed north-west across fairly open country past where I’d been told was the wreckage of a B29 that had crashed during the Second World war, before they’d realised how tall the mountains actually were in Nuigini. Soon after the path became increasingly steep, narrow and wound continually between jagged rocks and huge boulders before reaching a saddle at about fourteen thousand feet.

I wasn’t the only one feeling the effects of the altitude, the pounding headache and dizziness, combined with the bitter cold accentuated by a slight breeze that had arisen.

With only fifteen hundred feet left to climb and the darkness dissipating we pushed on despite the pounding head and inexplicable fatigue because it had been repeatedly emphasised that if we were lucky enough to get a clear view from the top the opportunity may only last for ten or fifteen minutes. Driven by the desire to reach the peak at sunrise and get the photos to prove it, we kept moving. As the sky lightened the black, sharp and slippery rocks began to shine but at no stage was it particularly dangerous, as in potential for falling, so requiring little more than one-foot-after-another determination we were soon enough there.

After the initial wave of relief and mutually reinforced sense of achievement, which more or less settled on all of us as we stood there catching our breath, we gazed at the magnificence of the three hundred and sixty degree panorama. To the north there were thick banks of white cloud all the way down the Ramu valley, thousands of feet below us, but in the distance the ocean gleamed, the coastline stood our clearly, and we could also see what I guessed was the huge volcano on Karkar Island, all looking like toy land from our privileged perspective.

Photographs were a more considered art in those days but after everyone had taken their turn alternately posing and shooting the temperature and altitude encouraged us to team up and begin the return journey. It should have been much easier going downhill but the pounding headache and lethargy made putting one foot in front of the other surprisingly zombie–like and made it a lot easier to understand how the Australian guy had made the fatal mistake of losing his way. From high above we had a beautiful vista of the two lakes far below at the bottom of a gully torn out by a glacier and we had time to stop and marvel at the scattered remains of the aeroplane. What a terrible surprise that must have been!

Pride Cometh Before the fall is a statement that had stuck in my mind since I first read it in childhood. Helen’s anxiety didn’t register in my brain because I was too satisfied, tooproud of myself for getting such a good job and being praised instead of insulted, and that must have made me an insufferable egomaniac. I’d shaved my beard, bought new clothes, wore a solar powered Seiko diving watch and probably an arrogant air. Helen would have been surprised by my change of appearance. It was nice to have people saying complementary things about me after years of total opposition to the idea of me wasting my life trying to change the world by fighting the system through communal living and enthusiastic tree planting, but combined with post-natal depression and being left ‘alone’ while I was working at being ‘Jungle Jim’ she might have felt like I was leaving her behind. My new status had become a problem.

Sometimes big groups of us were planting out entire re-entries or hillsides in single sessions, but "sitting around under a tree smoking dope" was the general interpretation of what we were doing. Of course these days environmental awareness, organic food, and tree farms are quite respectable. But not back then. Hippie was a negative term even though idealism was the driving force and environmental repair the centre-point of my actions.

Planting trees was obviously positive but even more important was preventing the destruction of remnant forests. The next valley over from our property was Terania and when news came that the virgin rainforest at the head of the valley was to be logged we began to get organized for a peaceful response along the lines of Gandhian passive resistance. A protest camp was set up right next to where the loggers would begin building a road to access the virgin forest.

Despite our colorful protest, after a couple of weeks the loggers had managed to get their machines into the virgin rainforest, and even felled a few large trees but we successfully lobbied the government and caused them so much expense for the hundred or so police continually on duty pulling people out of trees and from under bulldozers that the premier passed a rainforest policy through parliament and the forest was saved. Birdsong and butterflies.

During the protest I was assaulted by three police because I suggested to the crown sergeant, after he called me a worm, that he was “just a fat little cop”, and for that I was charged with ‘assault’ and ‘resist arrest’. Fortunately my volunteer QC found that Channel Nine had the entire incident on tape so when he informed them of that the police dropped the charges, although they are still on the police computer. Terania Creek is now part of the Nightcap National park and one of the waterfalls up there is called ‘Protester’s Falls’. You can see a very professionally produced movie of the protest by Goggling “Give Trees a Chance” on YouTube. It was the first time, anywhere in the world, where a forest was saved by direct community action.

With our new house mostly built and some money in the bank we were feeling a lot more secure, especially when Helen’s mother sent her a few thousand dollars. I didn't know it at the time but some people in Nuigini seemed to think a gift of money buys the rights to interfere in other people’s lives.

Later I realized that Elsie must have thought we were short of money and the money was intended to be spent on a wedding. I shouldn’t have been suspicious. It was a generous gesture and I should have taken the hint; by getting married.

Helen and I’d never been married in a church although we’d exchanged vows in our own simple ceremony, which was totally, entirely sincere, and holy-ish, in our own way.

Too many people jump to the conclusion that if a man doesn't marry his woman then he isn't totally committed but we were involved in a radical anti-establishment happening so going along to a church to get a license to sleep with the women you loved seemed ridiculous.

Trouble was I didn't realize at that stage that Helen’s mother had been left stranded when she was pregnant with Helen so the guy who’d always lived as Helen’s father, Albert, was not really her father so Helen's Mum had very strong feelings about marriage which had increased greatly since the birth of her grand-daughter.

I was such a fool, but there was worse to come as I continued to orbit around myself in an alternative universe.

We decided it was a great idea for us to live in Sri Lanka for a year so each of us could learn a creative skill so that when we came back to our little house in the hills and the fruit trees were all bearing we could spend our time and earn money by making unique authentic art instead of having to go away to work. I was very keen to learn to carve stone and Helen wanted to play an exotic musical instrument. We’d picked plums, and peaches and grapes of course but the farmers had too many tricks, and it was a long way to go, so we took some home-grown pot with us to Sydney, to pay for the air tickets. It had become crazy not to grow a few discrete plants because a pound of grass was worth more than a ton of cabbages, and we’d tried selling cabbages.

We had a manicured pound of choice heads and an ‘elbow’ was worth quite a bit in those days.

Anyway, the overnight train arrived early in the center of the city and I called on a public phone but the friend who was going to buy the pound  wouldn’t be able to do the deal until later, after work, so we had all day to kill in the city, and not spending money unnecessarily was part of the hippie code.

During the afternoon we wandered into a general store in a slightly sleazy inner-city street. We were just looking more than anything else, killing time, but on the way out of the shop, without having bought anything, the cashier guy insisted on looking into our bags. We only had one bag each but one of those bags had a pound of marihuana in it.

It was an odd stand-off until I let him look. He saw the tightly wrapped package and probably wondered what it was but he knew we weren’t trying to knock anything off so we walked out and kept walking. Small mistakes can spoil big plans.

With our ill-gotten gains we bought tickets all the way to Colombo with a stopover on Elsie’s island so she could meet her one and only grand-daughter.

Elsie was so pleased and proud to meet her perfectly beautiful little ‘coo-coo’. We called our baby girl Wonder-One, because she was so wonderfully beautiful, but also perhaps because we’d had to wait so long to have her with us.

Elsie was a decent person with a few character faults like the rest of us, but she did like to “have a few beers” in the evening so I had to make a point of not letting her carry Tina up or down the steep stairs, which caused a bit of a rift. I saw photos of her when she was younger. One of her boarding a plane looking very pleased with herself. She was wearing a blue floral dress and waving to whoever was taking the photo. Her first flight I’d guess...

As soon as we met I knew she had a broad sense of humour, especially after a few drinks. Which happened every afternoon wherever we went.

On the occasions when she’d get mad with someone she’d stand there shouting and waving one arm around, laying down the law, if the person was a subordinate.

She always took care of her appearance in a basic, modest way; no make-up or nonsense. Reportedly she was a great fisher, and her  impishness gave an indication of how obviously pleased she’d be when pulling up a decent sized fish. But she could also be very serious. Such as when she spoke of the massali. It was no joke.

All went well for a while until one night after I’d gone to bed I woke to hear Helen’s Mum talking loudly to her in the lounge room saying, "I'm a bastard, you’re a bastard, and your daughter is a bastard." Of course she’d had a few beers, and afterwards I’d be told “It was just the beer talking”, but I could hear the anger in her voice and I also had the impression that she wanted me to hear her.

I couldn't believe my ears but I got up and went out to the lounge-room to tell Helen that it was time for her to come to bed. I had absolutely no doubt whatsoever about Helen’s love for me but I didn't realize that I was in the process of setting up a power struggle between her mother and myself. It wasn’t until much later that I realised what a simple solution getting married would have been, because not being married really was the only problem. Actually, conforming to the hippie orthodoxy was the underlying problem.

Helen’s uncle, Elsie’s brother-in-law, was some mix of Chinese, but very dark. Quite black. Much more than the locals, and his wife exaggerated his dark skin by being pasty white. I knew Elsie’s family had both German and Scottish, and maybe Spanish blood swishing around in them but it was more of a melting pot than I’d expected. Helen’s two cousins were there but I wasn’t convinced that somehow they weren’t her sisters. Just to top things off the youngest daughter was just as white as her mother. And Helen’s ‘father’ was Filipino. Maybe passions run hot when you straddle the equator.

I learnt that Elsie had given birth to another daughter after Helen but the baby had been strangled by the umbilical cord while being born. No wonder she was dismayed by our hippie attitudes. She must have thought we were insane to have had a home birth so far away from a hospital, and she was right. Those midwives nearly killed our daughter. And Elsie knew they could have. From a distance.

The next night we sat around the table downstairs talking and drinking beers when after some random, rambling discussion the subject of marriage and its religious sanctity came up again. In my typically, totally tactless way I gave Elsie an overview of history concerning the church and explained to her why god doesn’t exist and marriage is unnecessary.

What a pompous turkey I was, and deserved all of the trouble I caused myself.

My clearly articulated denial of the existence of god blew her mind. Her God. Anyone’s god. It simply didn’t exist. It was all nonsense. According to me.

Anyway, at the end of the rather heated discussion Elsie just didn't know what to do, think or say, so she reverted to puri-puri level. Sanguma, sorcery, the force behind all primitive power.

It soon became obvious how angry she was so when she stood up I knew something was coming. She lifted her right arm and thrust her index finger out toward me, "I curse you!" she said emphatically. Looking straight into my eyes.

So Elsie was truly torn between two worlds. She’d grown up in customary society but considered herself to be a Christian, yet she’d instantly reverted to tribal magic when she became angry. The words “I curse you” seemed to reverberate to the dark perimeter and back; over and over.

Fortunately for me I’d crossed my wrists in front of my face and by doing so congested some of the evil force and reflected it back at her; unintentionally dispersing it onto the other people seated around the table as well. What animated me to do so I have no idea? Some kind of genetic memory perhaps. A reflexive instinct from the primal mind?

Immediately after the outburst Elsie sat down again; but she was still fuming. Everyone was very quiet and just sat looking at their beers until a married couple arrived from the oil-palm mill and as the greetings and introductions progressed gradually things returned to ‘normal’.

I didn't take the curse lightly and no-one else did either.  For her to fly off the handle like that showed how angry she really was. I’d just paid the price for being very dumb and disrespectful. What a drag! I was such a pompous little prick in those days.

Bone-pointing and spell-casting was, in my opinion,generally only self-hypnosis, but years before in Mossman during the cane season I’d been told about an island guy who’d opened his matchbox to light a smoke but found something that’d been put inside the matchbox.

“I’m going to die” he’d declared to the other workers while walking away in a daze, and within a week he had.

Several years earlier the national government had enacted a sorcery bill in an attempt to deal with witch burning. It was a national problem that all deaths were attributed to ‘puri-puri; but who could say they weren’t. There was no-one to do post-mortems and black magic was deeply ingrained in the culture.

Magic usually involved the use of hair and fingernails but ways to gain influence over the victim also included taking soil from a footprint or willing evil incantations. I tended to think that ‘spells’ required a kind of self-hypnosis but, whatever, the well-documented accounts proved they could have definite negative effects.

The next morning things seemed to have settled down but I was glad to be asked to do a mapping job that would take me away for a few days. Out toward a crater lake I’d always wanted to see. It was the home of the massali.

The road I drove the five ton truck on had only just been bulldozed for the first time so it was soft and badly drained. In all of history that old truck was the first wheeled-vehicle to have ever reached that village beside the incredibly beautiful lake at the extremity of a fifty kilometre long peninsular formed by several active and dormant volcanic cones with names like Mount Bangim and Big Mount Worri. The peninsular has the shape of a needle with the lake as its eye.

The volcanoes are part of the pacific ring of fire and associated with the deep oceanic trench that runs parallel to the island and describes the junction of four of the Earth’s tectonic plates.

The lake, which is sixteen kilometres broad and extremely deep, wraps around a four hundred meter volcano in the centre that last erupted in 1973. The lake is home to the freshwater crocodiles and the frog-eating birds that constitute their diet. Not a single fish lives in the lake despite the shallow areas supporting dense beds of aquatic plants, sponges, molluscs, and aquatic insects

In 1993 a large animal was filmed swimming in the lake. It was taken by some as proof of the existence of the masali and some cryptologists began to intimate that a mosasaur with short black hair survived in the lake while others suggested that it might be a cretaceous alligatoroid. Due to the ‘short black hair’ others suggested it might be a modern-day protocetid archaeocete.

People living near the lake were shown a reconstructed mosasaur and they likened the creature to the animal they’d seen in the lake but nobody ever really looked into the story in any more depth so whether people really saw a peculiar, black-haired, aquatic creature we will never know. I certainly didn’t see one.

The rim separating the lake from the sea’s salt is tall, with steep cliffs of black obsidian disappearing down into the lake for most of its perimeter that varies in width from four hundred meters to several kilometres. Hundreds of short streams flow down the outer side of the jungle-smothered rim to the warm ocean alive with tuna, marlin, dorado and wahu.

The coral reefs that surround the peninsular offer protection for an endless variety of bright and beautiful fish, sharks, and turtles. Gannets, frigates and terns adorn the sky; at home in the air watching the sea as they glide by or circulate on thermals.

The peninsular is covered by equatorial rainforest that overhangs the shores of the calm bays which have black sandy bottoms and grow thick crops of sea grass for the gluttonous dugongs which still graze and breed there.

Stands of massive vine strung trees cover the slopes and valleys between the volcanoes.

They contain a multitude of bird species and there are fantastic butterflies and orchids, marsupials, amphibians and reptiles that fill every niche.

Three main villages sit on the edge of the sea with several small palm fringed islands just off the shore with hot springs and thermal pools emitting clouds of steam.

The local people enjoy a lifestyle which co-operates to a large degree with their environment. Gardens and fruit trees grow easily in the deep soil as do cash crops of coconuts which enable them to purchase fuel for the few outboard-powered ocean-going canoes, called "mons" in which they transport tons of copra across the open sea. The locals are masters of their environment in a traditionally mellow way.

Axe-head quality obsidian was mined and traded far and wide from there at least eleven thousand years ago, according to artefacts found on the south coast.

Very little is known of those people because they lived organically in every sense. Only the intricately decorated pottery, bones, shells, ash and pollen remain to tell their tale.

Myths tell of a time when the sky stayed black for many days and a layer of ash is found in soil profiles from all over the country so it probably indicates an enormous volcanic eruption, perhaps the one which formed the lake and ended that previous culture.

To map the area I had a team of men who rode on the tray of the truck and then accompanied me into the forest with my tape and compass so that they could cut a walking track ahead of me while I wrote notes that described the profile. We saw some fantastic virgin forest, especially the largest tree I’d ever seen, a huge fig where the otherwise hostile tribes would meet once a year to trade. After a week the job was completed and I returned to the mother-in-law’s house.

The general tension in the house continued to be unpleasant so I decided to go on a trip into the past and find the village where my daughter’s great-great grandmother came from. I had a photograph of her with her daughter taken around 1908. She was only wearing a lap-lap but she also wore ‘bilas’ around her neck which distinguished her tribe/clan. The village she came from was on a long, narrow island nearby which had been ‘discovered’ in 1616 and later had become a popular watering place for whalers, traders, and ships sailing from Australia to China.

The island is mostly limestone covered in equatorial rainforest. It has many offshore islands and more magical ritual and secret societies than just about anywhere else. The duk-duk controls and enforces. Magic abounds.

I hadn’t expected a stop-over on the way but the pilot prepared to land into the gusty wind on a tiny airstrip on the edge of a flat island. I sat directly behind the co‑pilot’s position but of course there was no co‑pilot so I could see the instruments and look out through the windscreen.

The pilot was bored and looking forward to a cold beer. We were all sweating because of the extreme heat. There were a lot of us aboard and in we came onto a strip of white coral running parallel to the sea on one side and a trimmed back coconut plantation on the other. Amongst the trees I noticed, as we did a small skip on touchdown, an identical plane to the one we were riding in, except for the damage to the fuselage and the missing wings.

After dropping off some mail and waving bye-bye we taxied back to the far end for take-off experiencing both mild fear and an all accepting complacency. We lifted off like a leaf into the roaring wind and  soon came into sight of the north coast, after flying over sparsely populated mountains with huge trees and spectacular waterfalls. The intersection with the coast allowed our trusty pilot to turn right and thereby find his target.

It was great free sightseeing and everything was just peachy, except for the pilot’s complexion. He looked to be about fifty, but could have been younger or older depending on the meaning of the red blotches and squiggly patterns all over his face, culminating on his nose.

He looked like the character playing "the pilot who has a sudden heart attack”, or something just as whacky in a Mel Brooks movie. "And look at that sharp mountain over there”, I thought quietly. I was a bit nervous but only because I was unfamiliar with the techniques employed by pilots of light aircraft when dealing with strong winds.

We’d arrived by a slightly roundabout route to the next place so as to land directly into the strong wind. I was looking between the head‑rests and could see nothing much ahead or below until, within the blink of an eye, the motor died and we were heading down at a very steep angle toward a grassy area beside the foamy ocean.

People could be seen running around on the ground below as the motors came back on with a rush as our forthright pilot pulled us out of a heart stopping dive just at the right time for a slightly crooked but otherwise perfect landing on the damp grass.

All pilots look bored, it goes with the job, but this guy looked like an exhibit from Madame Trousers.

Children swarmed around the plane enthusiastically welcoming us. Once again a mailbag was delivered and two more people came aboard. I felt like I was part of the crew by then having shared in two great landings already that morning. From there we flew over the site of the biggest hoax ever perpetrated in the South Seas. A fantastic settlement with busy streets, a thriving port, and flourishing plantations worked by coolies all under the control of prosperous pioneers that only ever existed in the imagination of a bogus French noble though his fancifully illustrated prospectuses sent four shiploads of French, Italian and German citizens to an inhospitable cove where three hundred inches of rain fell and the only inhabitants were crocodiles and cannibals.

Many people died from fever and hunger after they were deserted by the ships that brought them, but many escaped to Australia to start several Italian communities there.

All that remains of the "colony" is some rusted machinery and a huge millstone meant to grind the wheat the settlers planned to grow, if it hadn’t been a swamp.

By late afternoon we were stepping out onto sun-baked earth.

A nun was helping to unload goods from the cargo bay. She needed a shave. That is all I can say. I’d met my first nun with a five o'clock shadow and she was lovely, in a homely sort of way only God would really appreciate.

I wandered down the street that led from the airstrip to the wharf. Along the waterfront were a row of trade stores and an electricity sub‑station. The derelict wharf was still good enough for a bit of fishing or leg dangling.

I stayed the night in a small hotel near the beach and could barely imagine there ever being much passion stirred in such a sleepy little backwater. The night was hot so I sat on the concrete steps with new friends smoking to the night sounds while learning more about local traditions.

My daughter’s great-great-grandmother was a full blood from the region so I’d been pleasantly amazed to realize that a wood-carving in the Australian Museum that had intrigued me since childhood was part of my daughter’s cultural tradition that is now almost extinct.

I knew the intricate carvings took a long time to create using charred hardwood and shells to burn and scrape out the intricate designs but I learned that they were only one element in the culturally complex arrangement of rituals and exchanges.

The island people have been through enormous changes yet a photo of today’s village is almost identical with that of one a hundred years ago, except for the ubiquitous Japanese utility parked out the front.

The climate and position of the village determines the lives of the inhabitants over and above all else. The natural rule is that all guests are offered food and shelter as a matter of kindness. The best way to avoid unnecessary embarrassment at the generosity is to take with you a bag full of interesting gifts, like bright-coloured kid’s clothes, to spread around as you visit. "If in doubt, be generous."

The coral road that follows the coast is mostly straight and smooth with many remnants of the pacific war, occasionally big guns and rusting tanks and landing craft clearly visible in shallow water on the fringing reefs.

Japanese regularly came to search for remains of relatives lost in action during the war. To respectfully cremate the bones. Many soldiers barricaded into bunkers and caves shot themselves rather than surrender so until now they are still finding skeletons and crashed aircraft in the forest-cloaked mountains.

Along this coast and the offshore islands shark-calling has survived. The villagers paddle into deep water beyond the fringing reef and drum on the side of the canoe with their paddles and shake rattles made from shells and banana seeds attached to long-handles. The sounds attract sharks and when they come to the surface the hunter snares the shark with a noose made from bush rope. Strangely simple but directly effective.

I heard many bizarre stories so it was very hard to determine what was worth being taken seriously but I found it wise to consider all of the stories about rainmakers, spirits and even children born with the heads of flying foxes believable, to encourage the telling of more fantastic stories.

During the morning there were small markets selling bananas, mangoes and of course betel nut. My new-found friends on the bus introduced me to lau-lau. They are red fruit, a bit bigger than a cherry, but with a lightly textured flesh, hollow in the middle and very smooth on the outside. Quite delicious when completely ripe.

At one stop they also showed me a fruit which grows on a tall rainforest tree but I had to wait until they could knock some down by hurling sticks up into the high branches. The fruits were excellent eating, the few we actually knocked down, but with four or five different people hurling missiles into the tree it was too wackily dangerous.

I alighted the bus during the mid-afternoon at the northern end of the island in a fairly small town set on the edge of a harbour with coral reefs and a rather dirty beach lined with casuarinas. Basically it was a sleepy little south pacific town which appealed to me strongly despite the slightly neglected look.

After showing people the photograph of the full-blood relative they recognised her bilas and directed me toward a nearby village. There I was told, because the culture was matrilineal, and my daughter was the last female, she still owned much land covered in cocoa and coconut. That was a surprise!

It was an exceptionally picturesque village where one could easily dream the rest of one’s life away but I’d fulfilled my mission and felt a need to return to see Helen. There was a coastal trader leaving next morning for Kimbe so I took the chance.

Back then communication was a completely different thing to what it is now so I didn’t find out, until I was almost back at the house that Helen, Cecilia and Cheryl had been in involved in a car accident.

The first vague report was from the PMV ‘taxi’ driver, in pidgin, but when I arrived at the house, despite being told three different stories by three different people, there was no doubt Helen had been injured and hospitalised, while the other two were unhurt.

I was shocked and deeply concerned, and felt guilty for not being there to help her so I quickly borrowed a car to drive to the hospital, desperate to find out how bad her injuries were.

Apparently the three of them were in the front seat of Cheryl’s small van heading out to her place when they collided head-on with a small truck on one of the single-lane bridges. Fortunately Tina had stayed behind in the house with Elsie and the house-girls.

The bridges were the cheapest functional pre-fabricated structure preferred by the military and disaster relief. The standard third-world design. Single lane with two planked timber tracks laid down at axle width.

Those bridges each side of town were notoriously dangerous because the rise going up onto the bridge made it difficult to see if a vehicle was coming from the opposite direction until the last moment, and right - of-way didn’t automatically apply to the first vehicle on the bridge.

Apparently Cheryl had actually come to a halt on the bridge when she’d seen the small truck laden with logging equipment and workers coming toward them but it had so much momentum that it slid right into them on the damp hardwood planks. There was nothing unusual about bald tyres.

None of the ladies had been wearing seatbelts, because nobody did, but Helen was the only one thrown forward due to her precarious position in the middle.

She’d impacted head-first into the rear vision mirror sustaining a deep gash right in the centre of her forehead. One person said the mirror support had snapped off and stabbed straight into her head but she’d remained conscious. I wanted to see for myself

The other two were uninjured and Helen had been taken to the only hospital by a passer-by, with Cheryl holding a shirt to the wound to try to stem the bleeding.

Within twenty minutes I was at the hospital. Elsie was there, pacing up and down. She was glad to see me despite herself. 

Helen was heavily sedated. Her head was wrapped in a bandage that looked like it had been put on by a kid. The doctor wasn’t there so I wasn’t allowed to see the wound which had either sixteen or twenty-two stitches, depending on who I asked.

She was badly injured but it was by no means life-threatening.

Having established her state of health my main objective was to get her out of that dirty hospital and back to Australia. There was betel nut spit on the walls, flies cruising around like they owned the place, and general grime but the staff were obviously used to the messiness. Just outside the door was a garbage can with the lid half off with blue-arsed flies zooming in and out of it.

In the thirty-six hours since the accident Elsie had stamped her authority on the situation and seemed to be okay with Helen remaining where she was but I wanted her out of there and into a modern facility but the last thing I needed was a power struggle with Elsie in her own territory. Maybe she couldn’t see how unhealthy the place was because she was used to it, but to me it was obviously a hotbed of infection.

Helen was barely conscious but wanted a kiss. I sat quietly with her while calmly assessing the situation. She’d been given morphine for the obvious pain so she wasn’t showing any signs of discomfort. Not a surprise because the nurses had kept injecting her with it whenever she moaned. That was about all they knew how to do.

Three days later we were on a plane to Moresby to connect with a flight to Brisbane where she was admitted to Lady Cilento hospital. Elsie had conceded. We’d made it back to civilisation. At the hospital the staff all seemed reassuringly competent and the surroundings clean and modern. Tina and I stayed in a budget ‘motel’ not far away but it was expensive and boring, and difficult so we were glad when that was over.

By week’s end Helen was home and comfortable in her own bed. We changed the dressing every day. The doctors had restitched the wound but she was still going to have a big new-moon scar right in the middle of her forehead. I don’t know if that was why, but she seemed morbid and moody, lethargic and disinterested when she got back home; as though the injury was not only superficial.

Helen’s convalescence proceeded smoothly so she was soon back on her feet, as good as new I liked to say, but that would be to ignore her change in attitude. She seemed unsure of herself, almost disoriented, and often expressing self-doubt. It wasn’t just the scar.

During a chance encounter, and thinking Helen needed some female company, I just at the wrong time asked a female friend to drop by for a cup of tea. That turned out to be a bad mistake. The feminist thing had caught on like wildfire and spread far and wide and ‘my friend’ had become one of the most obsessed prostelyzers.

After a month Helen was doing so well the accident was just a memory except for the still red and angry-looking scar on her forehead, so I was finally convinced to do another paid trip. Two weeks up one of the biggest and least explored rivers in the world. There were plenty of bulk supplies in the house, a good store of dry firewood and kindling, and neighbours not too far away so I felt not needed while she completed her recuperation.

A few weeks before I’d noticed unusual vehicles driving up the nearby mountain road and found out that although the rainforest in the next valley over had been saved from destruction the forestry focus had shifted to the main mountain only a kilometre from our house. Pretty soon a new forest protest camp had been set up. It was ‘on’ again.