Lionheart Page 4

  The Papua New Guinea trip caused a bit of a ruckus in our family. Mum insisted on coming with us, as PNG had a reputation as a violent place, particularly the capital Port Moresby. Dad was adamant Beau and I must do it on our own if we were to keep it pure in an adventure sense.

  He never spoke about it, but I know Dad felt his parents didn't support him in a lot of things he wanted to do, which was why he had such a strong reaction to Mum's plans. I didn't want Mum to come—I felt it wouldn't be an adventure if an adult came along. But I can see her point now. I'd just turned sixteen and Beau was fourteen. It was a big leap of faith for any parent to let their children travel unescorted for five weeks to a place such as Papua New Guinea. She wasn't worried about the kayaking trip, just the travelling through the main cities to get to our starting point.

  In the end Mum and her partner Andrew came along. We flew to Port Moresby, which was a bit of a culture shock with its ramshackle airport and strange smells. After watching some locals eye our backpacks, we were pretty glad to get our connecting flight to Rabaul, in the province of New Britain, northeast of the Papua New Guinea mainland. This was the starting point of our trip.

  We hoped to greet our kayaks, which had been shipped ahead, and leave as soon as we could, preferably the following day. But, as is often the case in remote places, the kayaks didn't arrive for another one-and-a-half weeks. At least it gave us time to explore Rabaul. It is an amazing place, established in 1910 as the capital of German New Guinea, but is probably best known for its role in World War II. The city was invaded by the Japanese and used as a major submarine base for their Pacific fighting. Relics of the war can still be found, and the locals are known to use gunpowder from old bullets to make fish bombs.

  Our plan was to begin the journey at Rabaul, and paddle to New Ireland, across St George's Channel. We'd island-hop across to Duke of York Island and the surrounding islands that dotted the channel. From there, we'd follow the New Ireland coast north, pulling into villages until we got to our destination, the tropical town of Kavieng on the northern end of New Ireland. I'd chosen New Ireland, which was part of the Bismarck Archipelago, as it was one of the most remote places you could actually travel to in the Papua New Guinea circle of islands.

  When we arrived at Rabaul we were warned not to cross St George's Channel as a typhoon to the north, near Japan, was sucking wind through the straight. That, combined with the strange weather patterns from El Nino, which had a pronounced effect on tropical areas, had caused unusually rough weather with a steep chop in the channel. We were told that many boats had disappeared without trace in the last few months, presumably caught in a current and dragged out into the Pacific Ocean. Imagine what the locals thought when two young teenagers arrived to attempt the crossing in kayaks! Luckily, the day the kayaks arrived, the 24-hour forecast was for exceptionally light to no winds. We had to leave the next morning when the conditions were calmest.

  Before we left Rabaul, we were lucky to have our first encounter with Papua New Guinean islander culture. I'd read about the traditional ceremonies in many of these areas, so when the chance came to witness a ‘Sing Sing’, the Papua New Guinean term for celebration, we jumped at it.

  That evening we took the bush track to the centre of a small village, following the drone of beating drums and chanting, which grew louder the closer we got. Suddenly, a piglet squealed as it darted out in front of us. It seemed so strange, yet entirely appropriate in the circumstances. I felt like an intruder walking with my camera into a situation that to me was completely new, but had been a way of life for these people for thousands of years. A part of me felt a bit like a true adventure documentary maker, recording a final frontier.

  We had joined an initiation ceremony that had actually begun two weeks earlier. A group of young boys had been sent into the bush to learn the secret of black magic while under the power of the betel nut. This nut, when eaten, acts as a powerful drug, resulting in hallucinations and severe head spins. While they were in the bush they would get high on the nut, then learn the dance they were to perform at the ceremony we saw that night. The sound of the chanting and the monotonous beating drums sent them into a trance, enabling them to dance for tremendous amounts of time under heavy costumes. They emerged from a hut and began to dance in front of the villagers who beat drums and clapped to a haunting beat.

  None of the women or children were allowed to know anything about what occurred leading up to the night. They remained in the background and watched under the protection of a stroke of lime on their faces. During the course of the evening a lady came up to me and, with her finger, stroked my cheek with the white substance.

  While the dance was underway, the food, a major part of these traditional ceremonies, was distributed according to strict tribal rules. The bananas, wrapped up over the last week to ripen, and the kau kau, or sweet potato, were divided into family groups. The uncooked pigs were cut up, with the best portions given to selected families. For a family to receive a pig's head was an immense honour, and they had to supply a pig for the next ceremony. The villagers took the rites very seriously, and those who dissented risked punishment by death if the rules weren't followed.

  What really struck me about Papua New Guinea was how generous the people were. The country was suffering a horrendous drought, yet we were always given food, no matter how hard it must have been for the people to provide for strangers. At the ceremony we were treated equally, receiving some bananas and a portion of pork. (Luckily it wasn't the head.) That night, as I watched the ritual around me, I experienced something I'd never felt before, a very strong spiritual feeling that spooked me. I mean, this stuff was real!

  Our trip finally got underway the next morning under the cover of darkness. The first stage, from Rabaul to Duke of York Island, was to be the most dangerous of the trip, where we'd encounter the worst of the currents that had swept the local boats out to sea. We planned to get to the island that day, spend a few days paddling its length before pushing on to New Ireland. But a few miles before the island, we struck trouble. The current became so strong that, despite hard paddling, we made little progress. Luckily we were in radio contact with Mum and Andrew, who had made friends with a local businessman who'd taken them marlin fishing on his boat that day. They were able to tow us to Duke of York Island.

  We spent the night in a grass-thatched hut, cooking damper and sharing it with the locals. Two boys of similar age to Beau and me were assigned to escort us for the night. We offered them some of our damper, but they politely refused, preferring to stick with their fish. Early the next morning, the boys cut down some coconuts for us for breakfast.

  From Duke of York Island, we headed to the north of the island. As we paddled along, a group of people waved to us, signalling for us to come in, which we did. The whole village wanted to shake our hands. The villagers chattered excitedly as they gave us kulau, a baby coconut not yet fully developed with sweet milk inside. It took us ages to finally get away.

  As we passed more villages, villagers would run from their huts and beckon us to visit. But Beau and I had learnt our lesson—we'd wave back and keep paddling. If we stopped at every village, we'd never get anywhere.

  I was keen to find some sunken World War II tanks off Duke of York Island that I'd read about. But when I saw the large shadows underwater, I wasn't too keen to take a look, as it was hard to tell if they were tanks or sharks. Luckily, they turned out to be the tanks.

  I was terrified of sharks, and the feeling that they could be lurking nearby really played on my mind during the entire trip. I jumped into the water to get some footage of the tanks, but didn't stay underwater too long.

  Our last night on Duke of York Island was at Waterhouse Bay at the northern tip of the island. We were lucky enough to be invited by the richest man in the village to have dinner with him. For him, it was a major honour to have visitors dine in his hut. After dinner, half the village appeared to gather outside our tent, chattering excitedly until a gui
tar appeared and the singing started. It was a beautiful warm night, like it usually was in Papua New Guinea, with the stars in full view. More and more lanterns appeared on the water as men took out their canoes to go fishing. We headed off to bed with the knowledge we must be up early in the morning before the seas built up in St George's Channel. It was an amazingly peaceful atmosphere. Moments like that renewed my commitment to get out to see the world.

  Life moved at a different pace in Papua New Guinea. The villagers seemed to just hang around and do nothing. Their only responsibility was a few hours of gardening each day to keep the weeds under control and to maintain the fences to stop the pigs from destroying the gardens. These meagre responsibilities were put on hold if the urge to go fishing or have a snooze became too strong. If something like a new bush knife or pair of shorts were needed, they would simply collect some coconuts, cut out the copra to dry, then sell it to the businessman of the village or make a trade for the item they needed. They wanted only the bare essentials, so there was none of the greed or material desire we were used to. The western world could learn from that kind of mentality.

  The administration of law and order was another thing that separated us, although I don't advocate that we follow their example. The only law in these areas was local law. If someone was caught stealing, he or she was killed, no questions asked. And this was in communities involved with the Uniting Church. It looked to me as though the locals were just attending church to keep the missionaries happy, so they wouldn't lose the support the Church gave them in terms of food. I often asked people how they could adhere to two apparently conflicting beliefs—one of compassion as taught to them by the Church, the other of brutal street justice and black magic. Not once did I get an answer. I don't think they really knew themselves.

  A typical day started as the sun came up. The tent got too hot if we stayed in it any longer, so we had no choice but to start early. We nearly always had food left over that had been given to us. On the odd occasion we didn't, we cooked a bit of damper or noodles for breakfast. The coastal waters were rougher than we imagined, which got us into the habit of leaving early while it was calm and retiring when the sun was at full strength, at about 2 p.m., and the waves threatened to tip us over. We had no plan of where we would end up each night, merely selecting a friendly looking village as our stopover.

  After saying goodbye to our new friends, we'd head for the furthest tip we could see and be on our way for the day. We usually paddled for eight hours daily, all the while filming everything around us, while Beau took some spectacular photographs. We'd see the most amazing wildlife. An entire school of flying fish would emerge from the water at once and hit the side of our kayaks with a loud thud. Huge manta rays would jump into the air in the distance, doing a double back flip, apparently just for the fun of it or perhaps to get a look at us. Because our paddles made hardly any noise, we could sneak up on unsuspecting turtles as they lay semi-submerged, sunning themselves. But when they saw us, they were off in a flash, moving a hell of a lot quicker than you'd expect a turtle to move.

  But the wildlife was not always a pleasant surprise. One day we finally saw what I'd been dreading the entire trip. About ten metres from my kayak lurked the outline of the biggest shark I'd ever seen. Its torso would have been the size of a 200-litre drum. And it was heading our way. I yelled—as quietly as you can yell—to Beau to be quiet, stop paddling and get the paddles clear of the water. We tried desperately not to attract attention to ourselves, which was difficult, given that we were the only people crazy enough to be in this wild and remote part of the world, and we had the brightest fluoro blue and yellow craft and equipment you could imagine. As I was pointing out the lurking shadow to Beau it suddenly disappeared. This was worse, as I was paranoid it would surface next to us and take a huge bite out of our kayaks. We decided to make a dash for shore, about a mile away, which I'm sure we covered in record time. After a rest and enough time to build up the courage to head out again, we hesitantly continued on our way. But our eyes were on red alert.

  We stopped at the village of Kontu for a few days’ rest. There, we experienced something I'll never forget. I'd heard about shark callers and the traditional way they caught sharks, so I was keen to film them in action. The shark callers, mostly old men who still practised the art, would take their canoes out to sea and clap together two coconut halves underwater to mimic the sound of struggling fish to attract the sharks. When a shark approached, they would place a fish as bait on the end of a pole. When the shark lunged at the fish, they would slip a noose, attached to the pole, around the shark until it was trapped. The shark was then clubbed to death.

  The first time we went out they had no luck, which was blamed on our presence. A second attempt saw a nearby boat nearly noose a shark, only to have it bump its nose on the boat and back away from the pole. The incredible thing about the shark callers was the superstitions they had. For instance, they were not allowed to sleep with their wives or nurse a baby for three days before going on a hunt. And to step on pig or bat droppings in the days leading up to the attempt would ruin any chance of success.

  But it was the next day that we were in for a major shock. One of the villagers, who spoke English, revealed that a pod of dolphins had been trapped the previous day and the entire village was going out to spear them for food. The Papua New Guineans were in the middle of a horrific drought and needed the dolphin meat to eat. We were told that the previous day a group of men had gone out in canoes, tapping two rocks together underwater to attract the dolphins. They lured the dolphins into a shallow reef, which, at low tide, formed a natural pen. Once there, the entrance was blocked with dried coconut branches weighted down at the stalk. The fronds floated upwards to create a fence, which the dolphins, relying on sonar to guide them, could not penetrate.

  The next day arrived, and the men waited in their canoes, spears at the ready for the dolphins to surface for air. The children would swim about, signalling to the men where the dolphins were about to come up. Each dolphin would be speared a number of times, until they slowed considerably. They would then be clubbed to death and dragged ashore. This process would continue until all the dolphins were killed. This may shock many people, and be looked upon as brutal and cruel, but we do basically the same thing in the western world, don't we? We kill cows to eat when we can easily live on grains and vegetables. Just because we get our meat prepared in a polystyrene container with plastic wrapped around it and don't see the slaughtering doesn't make us any different from them.

  The people of Papua New Guinea were extremely spiritual. They believed that all things, good and bad, were under the control of the spirits. Malagan magic was the central belief. Everyone, from the village elders down, was terrified of the spirits, which the villagers believed dictated every moment of their lives. I met a young man, Michael, who became a good friend. He told me his mother had been killed by a man in their village about nine months before. Apparently this grumpy old medicine man, whom nobody liked, had a grudge against the family, so he stole a piece of Michael's mother's clothing, took it into the bush and performed black magic on it. He returned it before she knew it had been removed. When she next wore it, she fell violently ill for no apparent reason. She was rushed to Kavieng Hospital more than 100 kilometres away. Three days later she died of breast cancer. I asked Michael if everyone in his village knew what the old man had done. He said it was common knowledge, but everyone was too afraid to do anything because the old man would also kill them.

  Beau's arm began to play up at this stage of the trip. A few years before he'd had a pretty bad skateboard accident, smashing a number of bones, which required a major operation. A number of plates and screws were inserted in his arm. Then, while he was in hospital, he contracted staph in the wound. He has had three operations for the breaks and the wound still weeps from the staph.

  It began to play up about five days before the end of the trip. At the same time we had a chance meeting with Mum and
Andrew. It was decided that Beau would hitch a ride on a passing truck with his kayak to Kavieng, while I prepared myself to finish the trip solo. But Mum really didn't want me to do it on my own. If only we hadn't bumped into them! Luckily, Michael agreed to accompany me on the final leg.

  We travelled up the coast to a small village called Kaut. The next day we had planned to paddle through the Albatross Channel and arrive at our final destination, Kavieng, but the village chief strongly urged us, with Michael translating, not to paddle through the channel. The previous week some rascals had held up a boat and killed all on board to steal their cargo. They hid in the labyrinth of small creeks and mud flats where the police were unable to catch them.

  The chief insisted we use his fibreglass dinghy, which had an outboard motor, to reduce the risk of being held up. Michael convinced me this would be wise. He was very worried. The next day, after I gave the chief some fishing hooks and sinkers for the use of his boat, we lifted the kayaks aboard and jumped in as the outboard revved into life. We arrived in Kavieng after paddling 150 miles over two-and-a-half weeks. It had not been easy, and there were times when I was terrified, but I had found the adventure I had been looking for.

  Mum, Andrew, Beau and I arrived home in late October. One of the first things I did was to organise a professionally produced five-minute teaser tape of the trip, which I wanted to tout to television stations. Unfortunately, things like that took longer than I expected, and other events soon took priority. We did the article for Australian Geographic, while the footage stayed in a shoe box under my bed.

  I returned to school for the last couple of months of Year 10, and renewed acquaintances with my favourite publication, Trade-A-Boat. I was still searching for a boat I could crew on around the world, because I really needed that experience before attempting a solo trip.