Kijana Page 20

  ‘When the skipper returns, tell him to come to our office,’ one of them warned a very scared Beau before departing. It was early evening as Beau told his story, much too late to go to the police station. I also didn’t relish the idea of being interrogated, so we decided to leave at first light the next day.

  Later that night, as we prepared for an early morning departure, Beau approached me and said he wanted to ‘have a talk’. We weren’t the types to have serious chats together so I became alarmed. We went below deck where he abruptly announced he wanted to leave Kijana. It all came out, everything that had been brewing since he first did his block in Darwin over his smoking – the ‘fakeness’ of the filming, the control of the office, the way Maya had been blocked from coming on board. He was also struggling with his own identity. All those Buddhism books had given him the urge to seek enlightenment, to the point where he felt he couldn’t find it aboard Kijana. He was confused, angry and scared. He was crying and I was in shock. Never did I imagine Beau would leave me.

  I suspected he was feeling the pressure of being alone and afraid while Josh and I were away in Bali. But I told him it was OK. He could do whatever he wanted.

  I knew there was some original opposition from the office to Beau coming on the trip, that he was hitching a ride on my coat-tails. To have him pull the pin now would surely bring some degree of resentment towards both him and me. But all I cared about was that he would be OK and, for the first time in the trip, I didn’t care what the office thought. I admired Beau for sticking to something he believed in and I told him I was glad he’d made a decision.

  However, his departure presented a major problem. Slowly Kijana’s crew was whittling away. We were already down to three from the original five. We needed Beau to sail Kijana and I really needed him to help us find the Punans. So I played my ace.

  ‘Do you think you could stay on until India? I’ve been reading about the Buddhist temples up north. You could leave us there and it would make sense filming-wise.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yeah I s’pose.’

  During all this I’d been looking at him through the lens of the camera. I felt heartless. It was an extremely intense conversation, but the camera had come between us. I forced myself to switch it off, to stop being a filmmaker and become a brother. I wrapped my arms around him for the first hug I could remember ever giving him. He was so much bigger than me. I squeezed and held tight. He put his arm on my shoulder. I held on, each second feeling like forever. I felt terrible for leaving him alone to look after the boat.

  I was the first to let go, sensing his awkwardness at what we’d done. I looked at him and said thanks, then headed off and locked myself in the toilet where I burst into tears.

  The next morning we weighed anchor and raised the sails, heading north, bound for Samarinda. We never looked back to see if the police gave chase.

  A slight breeze blew from the coast where some menacing clouds sat, trapped by the mountains of Borneo, like a chained dog threatening to bite.

  The water was calm and a dry smoky fog drifted by, making it hard to distinguish where the ocean finished and the sky began. Every now and then we’d spot a tugboat towing a barge piled high with dirty coal or felled logs from the forests of Borneo. Empty barges would overtake us on their way to Samarinda to collect a new load of produce.

  In a way, these barges became our guides, for our chart was proving next to useless. The detailed chart we’d used on our approach to Balikpapan ended a few miles north of the town. All we had was a chart that contained little detail. It was also a photocopied version, which increased the risk of not accurately showing the location of any reefs.

  With a crumbling crew and little guidance, I’d be forgiven for thinking everything was against us. Yet, the menacing strip of land to our left gave me all the hope I needed. In there, somewhere, lived the Punans, hiding from the loggers and miners in the deepest, darkest corners of the island. It was that simple thought that powered Kijana forward.

  The wind died as the sun disappeared for the day, forcing us to start the motor in the hope we would arrive at the entrance to the Mahakam Delta some time in the morning.

  I rose at 3 a.m. for my shift, giving me three more hours to think.

  ‘There’s a light over there. It’s been there for about ten minutes. The depth is still unreadable,’ Beau said as he headed off to his bunk. I made a coffee and was sitting on deck when the bright beam of a spot-light suddenly appeared, seemingly pointed in our direction.

  It couldn’t be a lighthouse as there was nothing marked on the chart. Even our poor chart would show a lighthouse. It had to be a vessel of some sort. The search beam stopped but the light Beau had referred to earlier continued to grow brighter. The blinding flash of the spotlight appeared again, passing over Kijana.

  ‘Holy shit, it’s getting closer,’ I said to myself. It was impossible to tell how far away it was or whether we’d been spotted. I suspected we had, for the light grew as it got closer.

  I was becoming worried. The International Maritime Bureau, which keeps track of these sorts of things, consistently pinpoints Indonesia as having more pirate attacks than anywhere else in the world. My heart began thumping as I realised we had several lights on and whatever was out there was heading our way. I was unsure whether I should wake Beau and Josh. Hopefully, I was being overcautious.

  I leapt downstairs and switched off all our lights. Pirates or police – or anyone for that matter – I didn’t want to meet them. However, I knew that extinguishing our lights was a sure sign to any would-be pursuers that the battle was on. I grabbed a packet of matches and headed back to the cockpit, revving the motor to full speed and changing our course 90 degrees so that we were heading towards land. In the darkness I hoped they wouldn’t be able to find us.

  The spotlight appeared again, pointing in our direction. I could see the light but could they see us? Was it a small boat 200 metres away or a big boat one mile away? I still couldn’t tell. If they could see us with their light and had a bigger engine, there would be no escape if they did, indeed, intend to meet us.

  The engine screamed under the strain of pushing the boat along at eight knots. Without lights I couldn’t even make out the cockpit seat I was sitting on, let alone anything ahead of us. Or, even worse, the depth gauge indicating what was below us.

  I ducked down, lighting a match out of sight of the other boat. The cockpit lit up for an instant before the match blew out. I lit another, this time closer to the depth gauge. Whereas before it had been too deep for the sonar to pick up the depth, the digital display now read 20 ... 19 ... 18 metres. It was decreasing with every knot of speed Kijana gained in escaping the mysterious pursuers. I knew land was at least 15 miles away, so the only logical conclusion was something I hoped I’d never have to confront again – a reef!

  I dashed downstairs. ‘Wake up, wake up! Leave the lights off!’ I screamed, then raced upstairs and slammed the engine throttle from full ahead into reverse. The engine didn’t like it at all, the gearbox letting out a clunk of disapproval.

  Images of nearly losing the boat off the Queensland coast five months previously came flooding back to me.

  ‘Leave the lights off,’ I yelled again, before realising Josh and Beau were already at attention on deck.

  ‘Check the depth.’ I ordered, shoving the matches into Beau’s hand. The water around us bubbled from the turbulence of Kijana’s big hull slowly moving forward at about three knots.

  ‘I think they’re following us,’ I said to Josh. ‘Get the gun, the big one.’

  I never thought I’d ever have to issue such an order. Beau’s match lit the way for Josh to make his way down the stairs towards the gun locker. He then lit another to look at the depth display. I leant down to see it reading 1.1 metres. The depth of Kijana’s hull below the water line was 1.8 metres. We should have been sitting on something! Yet, I could still hear water passing the hull over the scream of the reversing engine.

/>   ‘How come we’re still moving?’ Beau asked, taking the thought directly out of my head.

  As Josh stepped into the cockpit with the gun, Kijana came to a gentle standstill. I pulled the throttle back and looked over the side for the telltale sign of breaking waves on a reef. Instead, the ocean was relatively flat as Kijana sat comfortably in the middle of a black abyss of water. It was quieter now the engine was in neutral. In fact, it was quiet enough to hear the metallic clicks as I loaded bullets into the barrel of the gun. The thought of actually feeling safer with a gun in my hands made me sick.

  ‘I didn’t feel us hit anything, did you?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything here,’ Josh replied.

  As we watched the light of the boat, I told the guys what had happened as they slept.

  ‘Maybe it’s a tug spotlighting its barge.’ Beau suggested hopefully. I somehow couldn’t agree.

  ‘What about the depth? You saw it say 1.1 metres before the match went out – or was it 11?’ I asked Beau.

  ‘It was 1.1,’ he said. Things weren’t making sense. Beau lit another match. This time the reading was 50 metres.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ I said, looking at the readout in disbelief. I turned off the engine so the other boat couldn’t hear us, then we sat in the cockpit watching the light. It continued to shine its searchlight intermittently, until the main light grew smaller and further away.

  Eventually we felt comfortable that they’d lost us and had given up. We decided to make a run for it. We started the engine again and ever-so-slowly began motoring, resuming our original northern course. The depth remained constant at about 50 metres, which gave us enough confidence to rev the motor and increase our speed. As we did, the sonar went haywire, jumping from 13 metres to 60, back to 50 and so on. There were still no obvious reefs marked on the chart, so we could only conclude the sonar was receiving an electrical surge when the motor was revved, sending the reading crazy.

  I felt stupid, but at least it explained what had happened. The light, however, remained a threatening mystery. We remained on deck with the gun, and the lights off, until the sky began to lighten and a new day dawned.

  It was afternoon by the time we arrived at the entrance to the massive delta where the Mahakam River spread out as it entered the sea. We motored as we followed the deepest lead to the river proper. It was extremely unpredictable, as we knew our depth sonar was unreliable. A few bumps into the shallows of the river only added to the anticipation of getting to Samarinda.

  After many kilometres of nondescript low-lying bushes lining the riverbank, we suddenly encountered some houses. They grew more frequent until we eventually came across Samarinda nestled in a long curve of the river as the last light of the day escaped us. With a population of more than 500,000 people, Samarinda’s prosperity is based upon timber, oil and mineral exports. It had the feel of a wild place, just as the guidebook described it. It may not have looked like the most inviting place we’d ever come to, but a part of me was glad of that. No pain, no gain, I reminded myself.

  Nearly every house along the river was built over the water, most with jetties leading out a few metres from the bank. We tried to find an empty space at one of these jetties but the river traffic had already arrived home for the night, taking up every space. Some jetties had two or three boats tied to each other.

  There was no other option than to anchor in the middle of the river next to two large tankers. It wasn’t an ideal anchorage, for one tanker had a man aboard welding who was sending a stream of sparks into the water, while the other looked like it had been abandoned.

  We dropped anchor and cut the engine. When our noise ceased, the local noise kicked in. From each riverbank a loudspeaker blasted Muslim prayers out of time with each other. Our location midstream made it seem like we were sitting between two speakers of a stereo that was playing the same song but out of synch.

  We stayed up late that night, making sure neither tankers were dragging anchor and threatening to crush us. As I sat sipping Beau’s jungle juice and watching the steel monsters either side of us, I thought of what lay ahead of us. Since meeting Dave two months previously at Nembrala, my focus had been on locating the mysterious Punans, and finally we were at Samarinda, the launching pad for our search.

  The expedition was vital for the Kijana adventure. The office seemed to think we could just turn these adventures on and off, scheduling one neat adventure each week to fit in with our filming schedule. But it didn’t work that way. At least our expedition into the forests of Borneo should have provided enough footage to impress the office.

  However, I knew what we planned was not going to be easy. The accounts I’d studied were enough to tell me that. The Blair brothers, who I quoted earlier, trekked for months into the jungle, accompanied by 20 local guides, before they found the Punans. They searched thousands of square kilometres of dense jungles for small tribes who did not call anywhere home and rarely left any calling cards when they moved on. When they did finally discover a tribe, they were only the second outsiders to ever set eyes upon them. The account was 30 years old and much could have changed in that time. And the location names were not on any map I could find.

  The interior of the island was so dense with jungle that the only means of getting in were by light aircraft or riverboat. However, both had their limits. Planes need an airstrip to land, yet these are often washed out by heavy rains. The riverboats are at the mercy of rapids, which grow more frequent the further inland the rivers wind. Also, they can only pass after heavy rain, when there is enough water to cover the boulders that dot the riverbeds. An option was to carry the boat around any rapids but this would require a light boat that could be lifted by the three of us. However, storage space was limited on a small boat, and we wanted to avoid buying fuel inland, as it was extremely expensive and scarce in the areas we needed to get to.

  Our best option appeared to be to buy an old derelict riverboat, patch it up and head up the Mahakam River as far as time would allow. Our Indonesian visa had already been extended to the hilt and was due to expire in a little over three weeks.

  We began scouting possible boats, looking for something we could carry around rapids. However, every boat we saw was in good nick. They were freshly painted and sported newish-looking long-tail outboards on the back.

  Eventually we came across a boat that showed promise. It lay half-submerged and was still tied to a jetty. The engine had been removed a long time ago, which suited us, because our plan was to bolt our outboard onto the back. We pulled up in our dinghy and held onto the jetty while we inspected it. As we did, more and more people came to inspect us. Few foreigners visited that part of the world, so we received special attention.

  We asked who the owner of the boat was. They either didn’t know, or didn’t understand us. Eventually, someone appeared to understand what we were asking. Josh stayed to look after the dinghy while I was led along the jetty, through the back door of someone’s house, right past a family eating a meal on the floor and out the front door to a road at the front of the house. The man I was following jumped aboard a motorbike and motioned for me to sit behind him. Having been in Indonesia for more than three months, I was accustomed to hitching rides on motorbikes. What I couldn’t get used to was putting my arms around a bloke’s waist. I’d leave them there for a few seconds so as not to offend, then, on the first bump, I’d opt to try my luck and hold onto the back of my seat. Of more concern, in this case, was the fact that I had no idea where I was heading with this stranger, who couldn’t speak English.

  After riding for about ten minutes we stopped outside a shop. We entered to find a large man dressed in a robe, lounging on his side and snacking on peanuts. It was like a scene from the Roman days. The two men spoke, then the big man looked at me and, in broken English, asked if I would like to sit. He told me he was the owner of the boat and asked why I was interested in it. I gave him a sketchy outline of our plan, being careful not to give a
way too many details. I said I’d like to know how much it would cost to buy or even rent. He declared five million rupiah would secure it. His men would help raise it from its watery grave and patch the holes. That was about A$750, which was way too much, so I suggested one million rupiah on the proviso that I return the boat in three weeks. He agreed, so I arranged to meet his men the following afternoon.

  It felt good to finally have a plan. Beau began gathering supplies, while Josh organised the camera gear and worked out what to take and what to leave. I resorted to the guidebooks again to work out where the hell we were going.

  I knew we had to head towards the centre of Borneo, because that was the general area where other explorers had found the Punans. But the maps of the interior were clearly marked ‘survey incomplete’. It all came down to a bit of a wild guess. I flicked through a well-leafed guidebook one more time. Suddenly I saw something that was to change the course of our adventure.

  At the bottom of a page outlining air routes around Borneo was a name that rang a bell. ‘Long Suleh’, it said. Long meant village, while Suleh meant – I had no idea. But I knew I’d seen the word somewhere before. Samarinda to Long Suleh it said. An airline by the name of MAF flew the route, but it had no times or dates. I racked my brains as to where I’d come across the name.

  I put down the guidebook and reached for another. It was the account by the Blair brothers. I found the section about discovering the Punans. I was getting excited. I read down until I found what I was looking for. That was it! Suleh. It was the village near where they’d found the Punans. I checked the guidebook again for the flight details. Yes, it certainly said Samarinda to Long Suleh. This was despite it not appearing on any of my maps. All of a sudden we had a change of plan. I showed Josh my discovery, then we piled into the dinghy and went to find the airline.