Kijana Read online

  Then something happened which triggered a chain of events. One of the men reached out to pass the rifle to the man on deck. As he did so, the ammunition magazine dropped from the gun and fell between the small gap between Kijana and the launch. The ‘plop’ of a metal object dropping into water grabbed everyone’s attention, even the angry man. He posed a question in Indonesian and half a dozen bodies moved to peer over the side of the launch to see where the magazine had disappeared.

  The tone of the encounter changed dramatically. It went from starforce troopers to Keystone Cops in an instant. The fool on Kijana sheepishly inspected the rifle where the magazine should have been, while his mates peered vainly into 12 metres of water.

  Their threatening image suddenly dissipated. They were no longer straight-faced soldiers intent on getting the job done, but little boys desperately wanting to get their toy back.

  One of the younger men lifted his head and gestured towards his face. He wanted to know if we had a diving mask. Beau went to the anchor well and pulled out a mask, handing it to the intruder on deck. The young man took off his clothes and replaced his balaclava with the mask. With the strap pushing out one of his ears he looked like a dog with a floppy ear, not the frightening invader of a few minutes ago.

  He climbed over the side and put his head in the water, but the mask was leaking and he quickly pulled it out again. I motioned to the now not-so-angry man that his colleague had to remove all the hair from his face so the mask could properly seal. He barked some orders and the job was done. We watched for several minutes while the man duck-dived under water, each time returning to the surface empty-handed. I started to feel sorry for them.

  ‘Maybe we should get the dive gear,’ I suggested. Beau agreed, even volunteering to do the dive himself. Josh helped him put on the diving gear and the launch was moved away so that he could step in. He released the air in his jacket and dropped below the surface, leaving a stream of bubbles erupting on the surface. I nodded to the angry man and he gave a slow nod back. We waited and said nothing.

  Thirty seconds later Beau emerged with the clip in his hands. The men helped him out of the water and Beau passed the magazine over. They immediately began wiping it dry with their T-shirts.

  The angry man gave a smile but kept up his stern voice and said we could stay one more night. We weren’t allowed to go ashore and we must leave early in the morning and head straight for a town I’d never heard of. He would meet us there and we were to buy a permit for the equivalent of A$15. I figured the price had dropped considerably in the previous few minutes, so I agreed to his offer.

  I thanked the man and untied their line, watching as they left with their tails firmly between their legs.

  And so ended our quest for the komodo dragon. I can’t say I was displeased to leave Rinca and the dragons behind, even if I felt we had failed.

  We were unable to find the town we had been ordered to on the chart, so we continued onto the town of Labuhanbajo on the island of Flores. We sailed the entire day, right around Rinca, before arriving at the small bustling settlement on the western tip of Flores. A tiny island off the coast provided sufficient protection for the fishing fleet that called the town home. It was almost dark by time we manoeuvred Kijana through the maze of small fishing boats, dropping anchor within rowing distance of the shore.

  The following morning I was woken by the sound of Muslim prayers playing over a loudspeaker from a nearby mosque. The fishing boats were leaving port and we noticed that another yacht had arrived during the night.

  We had breakfast, then went ashore. Beau and Maria headed to the market to restock our fresh food stores for the four-day sail to Makasar, while Josh and I walked around looking at several fishing boats that had obviously been built by local craftsmen, nestled in the mud at low tide.

  On the way back to Kijana, Josh and I called by the new yacht to say hello. The entire length of the boat, where the safety lines ran along the edge of the deck, was lined with solar panels.

  We gave a yell and were immediately welcomed aboard by a man wearing a sarong. Dave, a fellow Aussie aged in his thirties, was in the middle of cooking breakfast – a big coral trout simmering away in a frying pan. Dave lit the stove and put on the kettle after offering us a cup of tea.

  ‘Quite a set-up,’ I said, tapping one of the solar panels. ‘How come so many?’

  ‘I need them to move,’ he replied. He took us down below and uncovered his engine. ‘She doesn’t use one ounce of diesel. When there’s no wind, it’s usually sunny, so I run the electric motor. She’s the greenest boat you’ll find.’

  I asked how often he had to motor. ‘Since I got out of Australia, it’s been 80 per cent of the time. The thing is, I only get around five hours of motoring for every full day of sun on the panels, so it’s been kinda slow.’

  I was intrigued as to why he would go to such lengths, so after our cup of tea I asked if we could interview him on camera.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. He planned to go to the market but would be back in the afternoon. We thanked him for the tea and headed back to Kijana to wait for Beau and Maria with the food.

  While we waited I wrote down some questions to ask Dave. Surely it would have been cheaper for him to have a diesel engine, especially with the price of fuel in Indonesia. It was only about 30 cents a litre, compared to one dollar back home. We had solar panels on Kijana, but they were only used for lights and charging the computers and camera gear. I was intrigued by this strange man and his unusual set-up.

  Later that afternoon Josh and I headed over to interview Dave. He had another fish on the frying pan, this time a species I didn’t know.

  ‘Do you mind if I eat during this?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure, go ahead,’ we said. Josh set up the camera and we were rolling.

  It turned out that, yes, it would have been cheaper for him to put in a diesel engine, but Dave considered himself a greenie. The boat was central to that philosophy, so the money he spent on solar panels was worth it, as far as he was concerned.

  Ironically, his background was in the oil industry, where he had worked as an engineer on rigs drilling for oil. He pointed out that this gave him a good understanding of both sides of the story. He felt compelled to take up the environmental cause because of his disgust at the way some world leaders disregarded the environment. His anger, in particular, was directed at the United States. As he put it, the Kyoto greenhouse gas protocol had been set up by the United States then, at the eleventh hour, the same nation, which spews out the most greenhouse gases, decided not to agree to cut back on emissions. Australia was another country not willing to ‘do its share,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t have to be all that clever to see that the problem is going to snowball,’ he said to the camera. ‘Anyone who argues that human impact cannot be proven for the ecological changes taking place has got their head in the sand. A panel of the world leading scientists have released papers confirming they have proof.’ He was getting pretty fired up, but quickly calmed down to explain how he was doing his bit.

  ‘Current alternative power sources like solar and wind generation still need more research and development until they’re sufficient enough to sustain the world’s energy needs. Research only happens when there is consumer demand, so I figure it’s worth spending my cash on something that’s not yet as good as diesel but encourages the alternative energy industry to get better.’

  ‘Or we could stop using as much energy,’ I suggested, deviating slightly from my role as interviewer.

  ‘Yeah, but who’s gonna do that?’ he asked. ‘Not your average person who considers themselves struggling as it is.’

  I found myself joining his outrage. If I knew which politicians had such blatant disregard for the earth, I would never vote for them. I made a mental note to register to vote, something I’d never worried about before. We finished the interview and thanked Dave for his time. More importantly, I thanked him for his passionate views. They were more valuabl
e to me than anything we caught on film.

  We decided to leave the following morning. We were restocked and keen to get away from Labuhanbajo before our police friends spotted us and nabbed us for not buying a permit. I was pleased to find a healthy breeze when we woke the next morning. Dave had already departed and half the fishing fleet had also left port.

  We weighed anchor and sailed out of the bay, heading for the island of Sulawesi, about 250 miles due north. We were heading there because the office had organised for us to spend time with the aid organisation Plan International in the major city of Makasar. The aim was to see Plan’s projects in Indonesia and demonstrate how the aid money was being put to good use.

  By the time we left Labuhanbajo Beau and Maria had become openly affectionate. In port they’d used the excuse that their cabins were too hot, forcing them to take their mattresses up on deck. A likely story.

  The trip to Makasar was expected to take four days, but that was assuming we were able to sail. Alas, the wind died a few hours into the trip, until the sails were doing more damage by shuddering the rigging as we crawled along at 21/2 knots.

  I had no choice but to fire up the engine while the others tied up the sails. For the next two days the wind continued to lift then drop. The engine was constantly going on and off, and every time I turned the key I thought of the greenhouse gases I was adding to the atmosphere. However, I knew there had to be a balance. Where did I draw the line between acting responsibly for the good of the world and acting for the success of Kijana? When there was no wind, we were wasting time that could be used for filming. Without film, there would be no Kijana. So we had to go faster than the wind sometimes allowed us, and that meant burning fuel. It was a vicious cycle, for we needed to sell the documentaries to get the money to buy more diesel to film more documentaries. My encounter with Dave had really messed with my mind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TALKING TO THE DEAD

  THE PLAN TEAM HAD BEEN AWAITING OUR arrival and had kindly organised a space in the local docks where we could moor Kijana. After inspecting the site, we politely declined. The concrete wharves would grind Kijana’s timber hulls away and I didn’t trust the driving skills of the huge metal tankers that would be coming and going beside us. Instead we anchored Kijana off the main beach, close to the local transport jetty where we could leave our dinghy when ashore.

  It had taken us three days to get to Makasar, with about 60 per cent of the trip completed under motor. However, I had more than atmospheric pollution on my mind. We had only four hours of tape remaining, which was dangerously low, so the office had arranged for a box of 20 tapes to be sent to the Plan building for us to collect when we arrived. Also, our three-month Indonesian visas were close to expiring, so we immediately set to work getting a visa extension. Several days later, after accusations that we were carrying false papers, Josh had our passports freshly stamped. This extended our stay in the country for an extra two months.

  Like any arrival at a major centre, the first few days were spent restocking the boat’s supplies. Makasar had everything a big city of one million people usually offers – two cinemas, a Pizza Hut and a shopping mall. We’d almost forgotten what air conditioning felt like, until we discovered the mall. Maria again helped Beau with the food shopping, while Josh and I caught a rickshaw with our jerry cans to refill the boat with diesel. Each jerry can held 20 litres and we had five of them. Two trips later and she was refuelled.

  The next job was water. As in most of Indonesia, we couldn’t be sure whether the water was safe to drink or not. We took our chances and filled our water cans, carrying them back to the boat and emptying them into the main water tanks. With each can we poured in we also added a few millilitres of chlorine, hoping it would kill any bacteria.

  The next day was spent cleaning the inside of the boat.

  It wasn’t until the third day at Makasar that we felt Kijana was up to scratch and the four of us could catch a rickshaw to the Plan office to begin our tour and use their showers for a decent freshwater cleanse.

  Once we felt clean enough to be around other humans, we sat down and met the team at Plan, who explained to us their projects and asked which ones we’d like to see. Our enthusiasm for filming as much as we could was tempered by the fact that our tapes had so far failed to arrive.

  Over the next week we travelled through the sprawling metropolis of Makasar, and beyond, to see Plan’s work. With money donated by sponsors in wealthier countries, Plan is able to help local communities survive and live a higher standard of life. One of the first places we visited was the local rubbish dump where unemployed people followed around the dump trucks, sifting through the fresh rubbish in search of anything made from plastic. With a basket slung over one shoulder, they would stab at crushed bottles and the like with a sharpened metal rod, swinging their bounty into their basket. Plan organised for the collected plastic to be sent off for recycling, with the money earned going straight back to the collectors, who ranged from old women to young boys and girls. Without this program, these people would have struggled to survive.

  Another Plan project was to build water wells in drought-stricken areas to ensure the drinking water was clean from disease-spreading bacteria, while yet another project involved buying ducks for families, who were then taught how to breed and incubate the fertilised eggs. This would not only provide food for struggling families, but also provide some income so they could afford to send their children to school.

  Everything Plan did was aimed at serving the community and the money seemed well spent. Their office, for instance, was simple and showed no sign of unwarranted spending. Most of all, we got the sense the workers had a passion for helping the community.

  After a week in Makasar our tapes had still not arrived and there was a growing concern that they’d been stolen or lost in the Indonesian mail system. We’d seen everything Plan was doing and I was keen to start the next leg of the trip to Borneo in an attempt to find and film the Punans. But we couldn’t leave until the new tapes arrived and none of the local electronics stores stocked the type we required.

  The Plan team were invaluable in making phone calls to track down the missing parcel. They were eventually able to find it. Unfortunately it was sitting in Indonesian Customs, with an import tax bill of A$1500 slapped on it. Considering that the value of the tapes was A$1800 it was daylight robbery, especially in our parlous financial situation. We simply couldn’t afford to blow that amount of money. In a double blow, we discovered that something was wrong with one of our cameras. A pixelating line had appeared through every shot of our most recent filming. After a few tests, Josh and I realised we had a problem that needed serious attention.

  My email to the office broke both pieces of bad news. They agreed with my view that we simply had to get the camera fixed, no matter what the cost. There was a Sony repair centre on the island of Java, which meant one of us would have to fly the camera over to get the repairs done. However, the import tax on the tapes was another issue. The office was as outraged as I was at the charge, vowing to do everything to make the authorities see reason. We agreed that we’d need a week to sort out the mess. If we hadn’t untangled the tapes from officialdom by then, we’d probably have no choice but to pay what was clearly a corrupt charge.

  Josh left that afternoon with the camera. We hoped it could be fixed in a day, which meant he’d be back in a few days. Now that we knew we would be in Makasar for at least another week, Beau, Maria and I began planning an expedition into the mountains of Sulawesi, which we would embark on as soon as Josh returned. The highland area, known as Tana Toraja, was well known for its funeral ceremonies and strange burial customs. Relatives would reputedly preserve a deceased family member in their home for a few months before they were buried. If we could get that on film, we knew we would have some knockout footage.

  It felt good to finally have something to do, for we were growing tired of drifting around Makasar waiting for the tapes.

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nbsp; It was particularly frustrating for Maria. She’d been with us for more than the two months we had initially agreed upon, but she’d fitted in superbly. She was great company, especially for Beau, who I felt, at times, was the loner on board. Not that he wasn’t one of the boys, but it was just that Josh and I got on so well and because we both had the challenge of filming, we found ourselves drawn together as a two-man team. Since Maria had come aboard, she and Beau had found much in common and their affection for each other was now obvious to all.

  However, all good things must come to an end. It came in the form of an email to Maria from her brother. He was flying out from Denmark to meet her in Australia. She had just three weeks left with us. Of course, she wanted to make the most of the remaining time, but we were stuck until Josh returned.

  Makasar was a pretty dirty place and much rougher than Kupang. It was definitely not a regular stopover for tourist yachts. In fact, we hadn’t seen any other westerners in the two weeks we’d been there.

  The lack of exposure to outsiders meant that the locals knew very little of Australia, or any other developed country, for that matter. Their only knowledge came from what they saw at the movies – for those who could afford to go to the movies, that is.

  The sight of a white person was definitely a rarity, especially a pretty, young Danish girl dressed in clean clothes. On nearly every street corner someone would say ‘hello mister’ to Maria. The rest of us were not immune. ‘Hello mister,’ they’d yell – beggars, passing cars, stallkeepers, anyone. Male and female, it made no difference. We were all ‘mister’. After a while it started to play on our nerves, so we chose to spend most of our time in the privacy of Kijana’s decks.

  To relieve the boredom while we waited for Josh, Beau devised a way of making a type of homebrew. He took a 20-litre jerry can of water, added 5 kilos of sugar, 1 kilo of diced fruit and a few packets of yeast. After two weeks the jerry can’s contents would ferment in the heat of the tropical sun and transform into ‘jungle juice’, a fizzy, slightly off-tasting fruit wine. At least, that was the plan. Like so many home brews temptation proved too great and Beau and Maria tapped it after only a few days. By late afternoon the pair of them could be found sitting on the bow, jungle juice in hand. Beau would have his guitar in hand, playing out-of-tune Red Hot Chilli Peppers songs while Maria laughed and sang along with him.