VAN DAMMNED IN HELL ON A FAST BOAT

Whenever anybody mentions fast boat my stomach always gets a little queasy and my mind travels back almost involuntarily to a ferry ride I once took from Penang in Malaysia to Medan in Sumatara. Now I have never been a fan of boats in general, I prefer to travel serenely across the water, but this fast boat is apptly named. It goes flat chat across the Melacca Strait, in a little under three hours, come wind, hail or shine, or perhaps more importantly gale force winds. It rides low in the water and the sitting area is actually below the water level. Tinted windows, which are always fogged over, make it hard to see anything but the sun reflecting off the water, and air-conditioning combined with all of the men on board smoking makes it hard to breathe. The port in Penang is on the peninsular side of the island so that day when we boarded we had no idea of what were we facing. It didn't take long to find out though. The wind was blowing a gale and the wind chop was probably about 4ft, breaking in all directions. Rather than slowing down the boat this only seemed to encourage the boat to go faster, which meant that the pitch and roll as we hit the chop was even more violent. After about 15 minutes everybody on the boat, from the little tackers to old grannys and all in between had hucked up their guts in to the plastic bags we all received when we boarded. New bags had to be handed out three more times during the trip as they were constantly being filled. The combination of the background sound of wretching, the smell of vomit in the air, and the sight of plastic bags filled with spew rolling around on the floor combined with the movement of the boat pushed me to the edge and I thought I was going to succumb and join my fellow chunderers. Howeve r I was distracted by the slowing of the boat, and the crew scambling around opening the side doors, never a good sign when you are surrounded by ocean with no land in sight. If you think Indonesian aviation is dangerous then let me just say that Indonesian marine transport makes planes in Indo look as safe as houses !! Somehow we finally made it, vomit and all, and I swoar I would never ride on a fast boat again.....until next time.

So there I was sitting on the fast boat again, fortunately the seas were calm, lost on my own world listening to music on my headphones trying to drown out the combination of engine noise and bad Indonesian karaoke, when a Van Damme movie appears on the TV screens. Now anybody who knows anything about action movies will tell you that Van Damme is in a class of his own. Somehow he has managed to make 20 or 30 movies in which basically the same thing happens, Van Damme gets challenged, then disillusioned, then a work out montage to get him back to peak fitness, and usually ending up with our man Jean kicking some arse, literally, and saving the day. As the noise of the boat was so loud I decided I would watch the movie without any sound to see if it made any difference, and the strange thing is, it didn't. I didn't need to hear any of the dialogue to understand who were the good guys, who were the bad guys and what was going on. The guy is a true genius. The added bonus was that the continuity errors were all the more apparent. (Van Damme went from no beard to full beard about 4 times, in no particular order)
The one thing I didn't quite understand was why if the movie was set in a Russian prison was everybody speaking English, including the fellow prisoners and the guards. Another one of those mysteries of the universe I guess.

Nias - Earthquake and tsunami to cargo cult

Nias had the misfortune of being struck by two massive natural disasters in the space of six months – it was hit by a 3 metre high tsunami wave on Boxing Day 2004, and then wacked again by an earthquake and another tsunami in March, 2005. Enough to make most people pack up there bags and move else where but Indonesians in general are a resiliant (and foolhardy) lot. I first visted Nias in 1995, and suprising not of the physical landscape has changed – which I guess in 12 years is fairly exceptional. Rebuilding after the disaters seemed to have occured at a fairly brisk pace. It seems the damage was so intense that most buildings were completely destroyed, so there isn't that much evidence of the destruction – other than a few buildings which appear twisted like mirages in the desert or Dr Seuss houses. Almost all of the losmens (small hotels) at Sorake Beach have been built – and no one seems to have learnt anything from building so proximate to the shore. I wonder if the builders ever paused to look at the foundations and ruins as they built the new places only metres away. The one big change I did notice was what appears to be the creation of a cargo cult by the descent of a proliferation of NGOs – the number and stripe were incredible – from UN agencies like UNICEF and UNHCR, to the Red Cross -from Spain, Belgium, Australia, UK etc etc, to private NGOs like HELP, LEAP, Save the Children, Oxfam etc etc. And they all have their own offices, there own shwanky Toyota Land Cruisers (which you can't normally get in Indo) and of course their own agendas. Whilst no doubt a lot of good work has been done, it does seems to have generated a mindset of what have you got for me ? So any foreinger faces a constant barrage of requests for everything, from money, to food to clothes to even surfboards. All in all it makes for a fairly unenjoyable time as there is no escape from the hassle – even in Bali they give you a break. The annoyance is amplified by the apparent unwilligness of any of the locals to actually do anything, most simply sat around waiting for the surf, and my UNICEF friend said they were struggling to find people to volunteer their labour for the community projects that they were funding. All of the tourists I met said they had experienced the same thing to the point that they didn't want to return to Nias.
And the wave... well the reef has lifted up a couple of metres, but it is still pretty much as perfect as a wave can be – even letting me get barreled a couple of times !!

Goodbye to some old friends

One thing I recently discovered is that going back to a place can sometimes be a big mistake - some things change for the worse, and what doesn't change is usually improved by the mists of time. Returning can also generate a bit of lament for the loss of institutions, and in the last two months I saw the death of two big ones.
Anybody who has been to Penang and not had much coin would have spent a night in the Hotel New China - a former grand old colonial house turned in to a rat warren/guesthouse. The old chinese folks running the place looked as old as the advertising on the walls - apparently from the 19th rather than the 20th century. The dorm was a couple of bits of plywood blown together by the wind and if the bed bugs hadn't got you by the morning the rats should would have. I once left some things in the stored luggage room, and I swear I saw a single fin surfboard that had been there since at least 1985 !! Most suprisingly of all it has been replaced by a boutique chocolate shop - the rats must be in heaven !!!

The second was two great waves in the Hinakos, small islands off Nias. These islands bore the full brunt of the earthquake in March, 2005 (hot on the tails of the tsunami in December, 2004) The earthquake pushed the islands up further out of the ocean, so much so that the tide line at Bawa is now about 20 metres further out than it previously was. This has had a disasterous effect on the waves. Bawa no longer has a wave and Asu breaks only when the swell comes from just the right angle, and it is shallower than it was before.
I returned to Bawa for a week in December, and stayed in the one remaining hut on the beach. Each day I would stare out the window watching the point reminiscing about the good old days, from when it was 15ft and a washingmachine too big to surf, to the last 30 days of perfection that I spent there in 2003.

RIP

The Kimberley Walking Epic (Part 1)

Finally after 15 months in the Kimberley I managed to catch a fish !! After the three week tour of Kimberley with Mum and Dad I headed off to Drysdale River National Park, Western Australia's largest and most northerley national park, for a 6 day hike. Curiously WA is littered with national parks and conservation reserves (and heaps more are being planned) but there is no money allocated to doing anything on them. Thus Drysdale has no management plan, no access road and no staff, but plenty of feral cattle from the neighbouring cattle stations. They were our only companions for the six days - along with a few skittish crocs.
During the revious three week tour the trusty steed (dubbed Esperanza on her maiden voyage without a hint of irony) had developed a little mechanical trouble, nothing that a quick bit of bush-mechanicesque canvas and wire fashioning couldn't fix. However when consulting professional help in Kununurra, the Italian mechanic told me that Esperanza, she no good , So after frantic last minute ringing around Kununurra I managed to hire a ute to get up to the park. Leaving Kununurra before dark I managed to belt along the Gibb River Road, knowing that its endless corrugations and drift would feel like a runway compared to the Kalumbaru Road. As the ute was a hire car the constant vibrating caused by the corrugations didn't cause quite so much angst and I could put my Corrugated roads are best taken at 100 kilometres per hour theory in to practice. (It was only later when I returned the car and found out that insurance runs out at the Pentecost crossing, only the first 100 kilometres of the 1200 kilometre round trip) The Gibb River Road, as rough as it was did seem likke tarmac as soon as we the Kalumbaru road and its seemingly endless road wide corrugations. Somehow the car made it to the Carson River Station turnoff using rough details I had got off the internet. (Even the Department of Environment couldn't tell me where to go) However arriving at the small camping sign near the old cattle yards I took a right instead of a left and then started following dust from a car. It seemed to be going at great haste, and a small fire with the leftovers of a killa (a deceased cow) explained the apparent hurry. (Carson River is a station owned by an aboriginal corporation/community supposedly run as a business. Sometimes the efficiency of the business is challenged by community members going out on country and surreptitiously helping themselves to a stray killa here and there, though to the perpetrators this makes perfect sense because being members of the community they are the owners of the cattle.) As darkness fell swags were brought out and a dry river bed formed a very comfortable mattress.

The Kimberley Walking Epic (Part 2) Sand Glorius Sand

The next day was when the hard work really began. All our supplies for the next six days were packed in to two backpacks - tent, trangia, food, fishing lines and all. Considering the high quality of our map (a photocopied 1:100,000, with the creases in the crucial places), the prudent decision to follow the river was taken by consensus.
The intensely rainy four months of the Wet and the equally intensly hot and dry eight months of Dry means that for a short period every year rivers in the north flow at full tilt, going from trickling streams which you can jump over to raging torrents that are tens of kilometres wide, and 20 or thirty metres deep. When the waters recede in its wake are huge amounts of flotsam and jetsam - as big as whole trees, and kilometres wide of golden sand. Thus sticking to the river often meant we found ourselves trudging through knee deep sand under the blazing sun far from any cooling breeze coming off the water, for what seemed like forever. Perhaps it was the effect of the blazing sun, I started having flashbacks of the Sahara Episode.

Not long in we found ourselves scrambling up rocks on the far bank of west side of the river and the view was awe-inspiring, looking down the valley the river had carved out, imagining it at its full flow - probably four or five kilometres wide, the surrounding hills covered in thick forest as far as the eye could see in all directions. It is at times like that the enornmity and the isolation of the north really sink in. There were probably no people, roads, lights or any other scars of civilisation within 300 kilometres. There aren't many places in the world where you can say that.

The day dragged on with a little drudgery under the hot sun, which seemed to become more intense as it moved toward the horizon in the afternoon. After a few entertaining discussions about where exactly we were on the map, a wholesale ignorance of the needle on the $6.50 compass, a river crossing at shoulder height and a misjudged attempt to cut a corner by hiking over a point and coming down the other side through a couple of hundred metres of thorns as sharp as a chef's knife, defeat that we wouldn't reach the waterfall that day was conceeded. Camp was set up on the bank, with the massive rockwall on the opposite bank echoing the sound of running water and any noise we made.

The next morning we set out fairly early, and not long in came across a loose, thick wire cable running along to river bank. Following it out of curiosity, after 400 metres or so it finally snaked its way up the rock wall to a pully, cemented in to the cliff. On the opposite bank I spotted what looked like some sort of engine surrounded by a housing made from corrugated iron. So maybe we weren't quite as remote as first thought !!!

About 20 minutes from where we had camped we finally heard the roar that we had been attentively craning to hear for the last days, and ten minutes later the falls, in all their glory, came in to view.

The Kimberley Walking Epic (Part 3) The Perfect Campsite

The amount of water tipping over the edge of the horse shoe shaped cliff in to the deep pool below more than matched the thunderous roar that echoed across the plain. After a rest and a few photos we then proceeded to find and make a path to scramble up to the top of the waterfall. When we finally made it, the views both ways, looking bacck down the river as it snaked across the plain, and looking up the river as it wound its way down from the rocky hills covered in the afternoon haze were equally iimpressive.

About a kilometre further on from the falls we found a large rock ledge, with a few small caves offering protection from the sun, plenty of driftwood, a large patch of sand for sleeping and only 20 metres away from the water' edge. This was to become home for the next four days.

The handlines that we had brought along proved very useful, and the fish were soon biting - even for a novice like me ! I didn't catch anything too big, but what I did catch was big enough to eat, and when grilled on the fire, it tasted delicious. Fortunately no crocodiles showed up to compete against us. A swim in the river was a refreshing escape from the heat of the day, and the caves provided an ideal location for a relaxing read of some books I had meant to read but never had the chance to start. Firewood was abundant, and the wood was so dry that a couple of times the fire almost took on a life of its own.

I did find myself pondering from time to time that it was almost the perfect location for a nomadic people to eke out a subsistance living - plenty of water, flora and fauna for people skilled and knowledgeable enough to survive. And plenty of vandtage spots to quickly identify visiting friends or foe.

One day we did try and leave however not farther on from the waterfall the banks became very swampy and the lure to return to paradise was too strong, so we returned to the little bit of paradise for another night.

Eventually, despite my best Rex Hunt impressions, the fish stopped biting and the food was getting a little thin, so we packed up camp and headed off early one morning in the general direction of the car. As usual, the walk back was far easier and shorter than the other way, especially as our packs were now almost empty. With the forced march pace we adopted, we were within a stone's through of the car by the end of the day.

Suprisingly when we arrived back at the car it was still there, so we through our backpacks in the back and fanged it out of there.

The Kimberley Walking Epic (Part 4) Back to the Pentecost

On the way back to Kununurra I experienced my first punctunre on the Gibb River Road, not bad after 6 trips up and back. However when you get a puncture on the Gibb you really know about it, a sharp rock pretty much tore the tyre to shreds, leaving rubber here, there and everywhere. Other than that the return trip was relatively uneventful, even the corrugations seemed bearable. I even had time to stop and snap a few photos !!

At the Pentecost crossing (For those who don't know, in the north we don't have bridges, but instead crossings, where if the water is low enough - that is the tide is out and the Wet far enough in the past, you get to drive your 4WD across the rocky riverbed. The Pentecost is a huge river, and the crossing is quite close to where it makes its way in to the ocean. It is the last crossing on the Gibb before the relative safety of the Great Northern Highway and Kununurra) we came across an English guy on his motorbike, and a Japanese guy on a fully loaded push bike. (What kind of fool would ride along the Gibb River Road ?) Despite repeated warnings about the number of crocodiles and an offer to carry him across in the back of the ute he pressed on. The Englishman tempted fate by asking, I wonder if Japanese taste like chicken ? He did make it across unscathed, after walking the bike all the way across.

Finally, I can't finish this story without a small thanks to a certain car hire company that somehow ended up charging me less than I could believe for the car hire, including no charge for the tyre or the removal of the thick layer of dust which covered both the outside and inside of the car. Nice work fellas.