Kijana Read online

  ‘Hey Josh,’ I yelled at him, ‘Check this out!’

  He covered his face expecting one to fly straight at him.

  ‘Nah, I’m not aiming for you any more.’

  I swung with all my might, hoping to impress. It landed by my foot.

  ‘Wow, I didn’t even see that one land,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘I was getting every one of them just before. See how many you can hit.’

  I tossed him one of my selected stones. He took a stick and swung but missed.

  ‘It’s all about timing, hey!’ he said.

  I focused and missed again. I thought back to what I’d been doing before and remembered I hadn’t been thinking about hitting the stone, but rather, I was thinking about the result – the stone flying through the air. So I thought about hitting the branches on the other side and swung. A crack rang out that even turned Beau’s head.

  ‘Cool,’ I thought. Gayili was right. ‘Only think of what you are looking for,’ she’d told us four months before in Arnhem Land. ‘What you think about will happen.’

  As this line bounced around my head I swung again. Bingo! A few seconds later I heard a nice neat plop on the far side of the river.

  It hadn’t made much sense at the time, but Gayili’s words were now ringing true. Every splash proved her point.

  I tried to explain my revelation to Josh – don’t focus on the process, imagine the result and your body will do the rest.

  ‘I think I get what you mean,’ he said. Sure enough, on his second swing he connected. It hurtled above us, at what appeared to be the speed of sound and landed in the forest behind. Our success rate rose to about 80 per cent. The next challenge was placement. We tried to hit a boulder at the water’s edge on the other side. It didn’t take too long for both of us to succeed. It was an amazing feeling.

  I felt this major discovery was a sign for what lay ahead in Metun. As I stood there with Josh, I had never felt closer to him. And I’d never felt so alive and buzzing with anticipation. I’d read about life-defining moments, and at that moment, I believed was experiencing one.

  Beau dragged me back to earth when he called us back, as the repairs were finished. Minutes later we were on our way again, weaving in and out of obstacles for a couple more hours. I didn’t want this trip to end, for it was as close to paradise as we’d experienced so far on Kijana. I was almost disappointed when, seven hours after we left Suleh, I noticed a change in the dense forest and on our left a clearing the size of a football field opened up – we’d arrived at Metun.

  As we walked up the riverbank, a heavy sense of dread came over me. It didn’t look anything like I imagined it would. Metun turned out to be a derelict logging settlement, with a dozen or so small corrugated tin huts where the employees were housed. Rusted machinery lay hidden in the regrowth surrounding the edges of the clearing.

  We found Grandfather Kila weaving rattan on the verandah of one of the shacks. He looked up at us from under his Adidas baseball cap. His old face looked fragile but friendly, with large freckles on his cheeks and the odd rogue whisker sprouting from his chin. He looked like a Punan, with distinctive Punan features and stretched ears, as did another older man and their two wives, who were also weaving rattan. But they weren’t the Punans we’d pictured and, to the camera, they looked like any other clothed Indonesians.

  Scattered around the clearing I noticed half a dozen other younger men, who I assumed were linked to the local logging company. They meandered about, as if waiting for something to happen.

  After exchanging smiles with Grandfather Kila and his companions, I attempted to ask if there were any other Punans living in the area.

  Elijah and Ramblas may have been good canoe drivers but were terrible at English. One of the younger men was summoned to translate for us.

  ‘Yes there are other Punans,’ the young man said, relaying Kila’s response.

  ‘Where are they?’ I asked.

  Kila raised his hand in answer to the young man, then motioned towards a road in the corner of the clearing that I hadn’t noticed until then.

  ‘How far is it?’ I asked. The translator didn’t even bother asking Kila.

  ‘It’s too far,’ he said. ‘You will need a ride with a logging truck.’

  ‘When does the next truck arrive?’ I asked, looking around at what I assumed was old machinery no longer in use.

  ‘Not for a long time,’ he said. ‘There was a landslide and the road is blocked.’

  I wondered how long this logging camp had been cut off. It looked like years.

  This was the end of the road – literally and figuratively. A landslide was a landslide – there was no way of getting past the actions of Mother Nature.

  Perhaps I was being unreasonable expecting a tribe of naked men and women holding blow darts to descend from the surrounding mountains. I began to realise this would most likely be as good as we could expect to find, in Suleh anyway. We had stumbled across a different world to that discovered by the Blair brothers all those years ago. Our visa ran out soon and we were getting further away from Samarinda and Kijana. Also, we had to meet Peter at the Suleh airstrip in five days’ time. Who knows how long we would be gone if we headed up that road.

  Through the translator, Grandfather Kila asked a very good question: ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Asli Punans,’ I said directly to him. He nodded his head in recognition, sensing my obvious disappointment.

  We asked Elijah if we could return with him to Suleh that afternoon. He pointed to the dark clouds approaching, heralding the afternoon downpour and motioned that we would have to stay the night.

  A young man showed us an empty shack where we could sleep. A generator was started just before the heavy rain began to fall. It powered a television in the shack next to us from where we could hear the younger men watching Indonesian porn. I sat on our bedding thinking about Shian’s cooking and wanting to be back in the village. I then thought about her reaction when we told her we were going to Metun. Perhaps she knew all along that we would be disappointed by what we found.

  Through our doorway I could see Grandfather Kila sitting on the verandah weaving rattan, oblivious to the rain. When the rain stopped he stood up and walked over to our hut. In his hand was a blowgun and tied to his polyester shorts was a bamboo case in which were some poisonous darts. He motioned with his hand for us to follow him into the forest. We followed him over a hill to where a sheltered platform looked out over the river and forest canopy. Unable to communicate, we were puzzled as to why we were there.

  Grandfather Kila sat looking out at the trees as if meditating. After about 15 minutes we heard a great crash on the opposite side of the river. After straining our eyes we caught a glimpse of a family of monkeys several hundred metres away. They appeared to be much too far away for Grandfather Kila’s blowgun to claim a victim. Nevertheless, he loaded a dart into the small opening of the pipe. He waited for a monkey to emerge from the branches, took aim and, with a woompf, shot the dart from the gun. It disappeared out of sight somewhere over the river. Fortunately for the monkey, it fell well short.

  Grandfather Kila turned to us and nodded, us as if to say, ‘That’s how we used to do it.’ He appeared to be trying to make up for our disappointment by giving us at least a glimpse of what we had come to see. I wished I knew enough Indonesian to thank him.

  The next morning we woke to find one of the old women chopping up a monkey. For a split second I wondered if Grandfather Kila wasn’t as frail as he looked. But Josh set me straight – he’d seen Elijah return with the animal on his back and shotgun in hand.

  We packed up our bedding and waited for Elijah to begin the return trip to Suleh. Grandfather Kila emerged from his shack wearing a construction worker’s hat. His stretched ears looked even stranger hanging under the hard plastic. They wobbled as he shook our hands.

  I wondered what he thought of us three, coming so far to meet him. He was a funny man but, to him, we were pr
obably even stranger. We were probably the first white men he had met who wanted him to be something from the past, rather than trying to change him into something of today’s world.

  The return river trip was like drifting out of a beautiful dream and waking up in the real world with all its problems. I didn’t want to leave. I’d fallen for the notion of living the life of a river trader, with no business pressures, threats of terrorism or reefs to crunch into.

  During a stop on our return river trip, I wandered into the bush to survey the landscape. We had stopped by a small creek that flowed into the main river. I followed it up to where there was a small waterhole and stood there imagining washing dishes with Maya. I picked out two large trees on either side of the creek that could support a suspension bridge, and noted that where the creek joined the river was a small inlet, just the right size to keep a canoe and long-tail motor safe when the rains came and the river flooded. I knew it was a pipedream, but I needed something. I could no longer carry my dream of finding the original Punans.

  Back at Suleh, Shian greeted us with a big smile and served a steaming meal of deer and rice. She made no mention of our shortened trip.

  We had four days before we were due to fly out. These were spent tracking down the only person in the village – an old woman – who could do traditional tattoos, so Beau and I could have a permanent reminder of our time in Borneo.

  She patiently mixed coal with water to make the dye while a growing number of children peered from every vantage point they could find to witness a dying art. I asked her to draw a traditional design on my forearm, while Beau asked for his to be placed closer to his elbow. We had no idea what the designs represented.

  For several hours she hunched over us, tapping away with her homemade stick, repeatedly dipping the needles in the dye. The younger children began to imitate the actions of the old woman, making pretend tattoos on each other’s arms. It was a heartening sign.

  Just as Suleh had made an indelible mark on Josh, Beau and I, we hoped our visit had taught them something. Maybe, just maybe, one of those kids would begin to take an interest in this lost art. Maybe someone would now realise the Punans were becoming a truly lost race. Maybe some of the teenagers would opt to stay in Suleh to continue the local traditions, rather than be forever lost to the bright lights of the coastal cities. Maybe.

  The next day the sound of civilisation flew circles over the village. It was time to go.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE BEACH

  OUR RETURN TO THE RELATIVE CIVILISATION of Samarinda was marked by relief as I saw Kijana anchored in the same spot on the river where we had left her, as Peter circled the aircraft in preparation for landing.

  But my relief turned to horror when I discovered that, with just one day left on our already extended visas, Samarinda didn’t have a Customs office. It meant we couldn’t get our passports stamped to leave the country. That, in itself, didn’t pose a major problem. The real drama would come when we tried to enter another country without the appropriate papers. It would surely guarantee that no other country would accept us. The closest Indonesian Customs office was in Balikpapan, where the local police were probably still waiting for us to visit them.

  Although we knew our visas would have expired by the time we arrived, we had no choice but to return. So we stocked up on fresh fruit and vegies and arrived at the Customs office in Balikpapan two days later.

  We nervously explained our case to the officer, who miraculously understood our situation and gave us official clearance. We wasted no time in getting back to Kijana before the police realised there was another foreign yacht anchored off the city. We then left Indonesia after four months cruising its waters.

  Our route took us from Balikpapan down the east coast of Borneo until we could turn west into the Java Sea. We would continue around the bottom of the island towards Singapore, then up the Strait of Malacca through the hundreds of islands along the coast of Thailand, finally arriving at the holiday mecca of Phuket, and the beautiful Maya Bay.

  The first four days of sailing passed without a hitch. The wind was constantly on the beam, pushing us along at a good rate of six knots. But as we rounded the southern tip of Borneo, just off Banjarmasin, we hit a patch of light wind. We sailed as much as we could until it died completely, forcing us to reluctantly turn on the motor just to keep us moving forward.

  During that leg, Beau’s imminent departure played heavily on my mind. I still didn’t want him to leave, but I knew our failed attempt at finding the Punans hadn’t exactly instilled in him any new reason to stay with Kijana. I had to admit that since he had made his decision, he seemed more relaxed and at ease with himself. I casually sussed him out and, yes, he still planned to leave once we got to the Buddhist temples of Northern India. To get himself into the groove, he planned to undertake a meditation course off the coast of Thailand, which he could travel to when we arrived at Phuket.

  An email arrived from the office raising the issue of finding further crew. The usual suggestions were made – someone outgoing, non-Australian and preferably female. New crew were so distant from our needs at the time. The three of us had shared so much that we’d become a tight unit. I was worried a stranger would struggle to penetrate it and remain an outsider for the duration of their time aboard. Also, having to teach a new crew member how to sail and the possibility of having someone who didn’t pull their weight was a thought that made my insides squirm. Maria’s good work had failed to heal the scars of my earlier experience and I didn’t trust myself to be gentle with anyone who didn’t fit into life at sea.

  The email also made comment that the footage we’d sent so far was not up to scratch. This annoyed me because the office didn’t seem to understand that we couldn’t just create adventures that would provide good footage.

  I spent a day thinking about how to answer the email. It had made no mention of Maya joining the trip, something that offended me. I was quiet all day to the point where Josh approached me in the evening as I stood at the bow, wanting to know what was wrong, so I told him.

  The idea of new crew was also playing on his mind. Our bond had become so strong that the thought of stepping back a notch for us to make way for new crew was really bothering him. But he knew how much it meant to me to have Maya join us, so he threw his full weight behind me.

  ‘We’ve gotta get her on board, don’t we!’ he declared. Those few words meant so much coming from him. Knowing I had Josh’s support made such a difference, and I knew it would also carry weight with the office.

  ‘Tomorrow we should send them an email from both of us,’ he said. I nodded and did my best not to show how much it meant to me.

  The next day we emailed the office asking for Maya to join us and telling them we’d look for another crew member in Thailand. We figured there’d be plenty of backpackers who would be suitable, we wrote.

  Meanwhile, the north-west monsoon had hit and we were motoring almost 50 per cent of the time. We ploughed into the wind and waves, revving the guts out of the engine to make any headway. Our progress was a meagre 80 miles a day. Checking emails in this weather was a nightmare, requiring one person to point the satellite antenna at the imaginary spot in the sky where the signal strength came from, while another person on the computer dialled up the connection. Each time we went through this process to find the cupboard bare. Finally, an email arrived from the office, merely informing us they were considering our request.

  The rain clouds came and went, but all the while the grey sky remained. It was on these types of days that the crew relied on each other more than ever. We would sit for hours huddled in the cockpit, dodging spray behind the bimini, and talk about anything that came to mind. After so long together, we’d covered most topics, so our conversations tended to be pretty weird. Jokes were repeated and themes explored to the nth degree, to the point where only a word needed to be uttered for the others to understand. We were clutching at straws but these were desperate times – an
y chortle in a storm would do.

  However, despite our ready supply of laughs, the same could not be said for our fuel. We were becoming increasingly concerned that we may run out of diesel. Kijana had the capacity to hold 400 litres of the stuff spread over two tanks, one on each side, but even though we’d left Samarinda under full capacity, the engine had been guzzling it down to get through the weather. I was constantly using the dipstick to check the diesel level, calculating that it would be touch-and-go as to whether we would make it to Thailand with our current supply.

  The next refuelling point was at the start of the Malacca Strait, opposite Singapore on the Indonesian island of Batam, which was a solid week’s sailing away. We needed the wind to change direction so we could raise the sails and give the engine a breather. Also, the buffeting of the wind and waves was taking its toll on our equipment. One of the braces holding the wind generators had buckled under the constant rocking, snapping the spinning blades and spraying shards of carbon fibre across the deck. Luckily, no one had been on deck at the time or they could have suffered a serious injury.

  Then, amid our worries, an email arrived from the office. They’d thought long and hard about our request, and had even spoken to Maya herself. They believed it was too early for her to join the crew, considering the delicate timing of our pitches to the television networks. But they conceded she could fly to Thailand for a short visit.

  It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but there was at least a tiny glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. That same day the wind slowly changed direction to come from the north-east, then continued to die down until there was not even enough breeze to stop the boom from slapping. However, the calmer conditions allowed us to at least drop the engine revs, reducing the fuel consumption considerably.

  As we approached the beginning of the Strait of Malacca the wind was up and down, forcing us to use our last few drops of diesel to limp into a marina on Batam Island for refuelling. Three hours later we departed with full tanks and an even more depleted bank account, and joined the heavy flow of traffic entering the narrow channel between Indonesia and Singapore, which is one of the busiest shipping channels in the world. This required even more diligent watches to stay out of the way of the thundering tankers who cared little for small wooden yachts.