by Tim Flannery
The Kwaio set me thinking about how it could be that the women could be so relaxed about being naked. I never got to know Kwaio culture sufficiently well to answer that question, but it might have something to do with Kwaio sexual morality, which is exceptionally strict. Even at the time of my visit, a man who seduced any female was likely to wake up with a spear through his ribs. Perhaps the protection this affords young women contributes to their unconscious attitude towards nudity, as, doubtless, would the idea that nudity is the socially sanctioned condition for them.
Soon we came to an abrupt plateau lying six hundred near-vertical metres above the glorious harbour of Sinalagu. The crisp atmosphere seemed to magnify my sight so that even the tiniest details of the hamlet we had left hours ago could be made out below. Naufe’e, which sits on the plateau, remains unique in my experience of Melanesian villages. Everything was built of bush materials, the only concession to modernity being a pipe and shower-rose set up in a clearing where the children would wash each day.
At one end of the hamlet stood a men’s house, with two tree-fern poles at its rear, each one with a niche carved into it to hold a human skull. Regrettably I was never allowed into the house or allowed to photograph it. The best bush was also taboo, for those glades were dedicated to ancestral shrines and had to be left alone. In the middle in an open area were the dwellings, and below the houses were the women’s menstruation huts and latrines. It’s a layout that was typical of villages in many parts of Melanesia in pre-Christian times, yet I had rarely seen it, for even in areas that missionaries had failed to reach, Christian ideas had permeated, resulting in the destruction of traditional culture.
Naufe’e had its chief in the form of Folofo’u, who was in his eighties or nineties when I met him. He had been a young man when Bell was killed and had somehow survived the massacres. I am sure it was his influence that had kept Naufe’e isolated and one of the most traditional places in the Pacific. But change was coming. The very fact that Folofo’u’s son had invited us testified to that.
That evening I went hunting with Simon. He towered over me, shotgun in hand, as we scrambled along muddy paths, seeking flying foxes and possums. It was a great night to hunt. The sky was clear and it had not rained for several days, which meant that the blossoms of the Malay apple trees were full of nectar. We bagged several possums and three flying foxes, then returned to Naufe’e in the small hours to sleep.
By the time I awoke the sun was high in the sky. A young woman was sluicing her body under the communal shower, the sun catching her curves so that she looked like a classical nymph. After a quick breakfast of hard biscuits and tinned fish I set to work weighing, skinning, measuring, sampling, recording and preserving the flying foxes and possums Simon and I had bagged the night before. It was important I do this quickly, for Simon wanted their meat for food, and in the tropical climate it would soon spoil.
Skinning and sampling is hard work, and as usual in a Melanesian village I attracted a crowd of onlookers—in this case young women and girls. Wanting to see precisely what I was doing, they pushed forward in a crush, and before long I felt a firm breast resting on my shoulder and the warmth of a groin pressing into my side. This made it difficult to concentrate, and after I’d nearly pushed the scalpel blade through the palm of my hand I begged Mike to distract the crowd. He got out his instamatic camera and began clicking off prints. As he handed them about my audience was delighted, and naturally gravitated to him.
I was determined to hunt again that night, but in the evening the rain set in. Despite a long slog through the sodden bush we saw no more flying foxes, for the rain had washed the nectar from the blossoms and the bats had gone elsewhere for food. I also discovered that, despite its isolation, the forest surrounding Naufe’e was mostly disturbed. There were few if any trees venerable enough to serve as a roosting site for a monkey-faced bat. Indeed the local people had no knowledge at all of such creatures. If these bats had ever been present on Malaita, they are now presumably long extinct.
The best way to find out about the region’s fauna, I realised, was to sit down with Folofo’u. He had an encyclopedic memory, and listening to him was like travelling back in time. In his youth Malaita had more primary forest than it does today, but most of it was cut down while he was young. He recalled that when he was a child, his father had caught a large, forest-dwelling rat with a tail like a rasp. It could only have been a member of the curious rodent genus Solomys, a group of giant rats unique to the Solomon Islands. There is a species on every major island except Guadalcanal (which has its own Uromys rats) and Malaita. The absence of giant rats from Malaita had long been a mystery. But Folofo’u had solved it for me. There had been a giant rat of Malaita, but it had become extinct, perhaps through deforestation or the introduction of cats, within living memory.
CHAPTER 12
The Face Never Seen
By 1990 I felt that I had enough experience to attempt the high peaks of Guadalcanal. There had been no softening of attitudes among the landowners at Gold Ridge, which left me just one option: ascending Mount Makarakomburu via the weather coast. The trouble was that the political situation on the weather coast was deteriorating as local warlords gained power. The most fearsome was Harold Keke, who would go on to become the self-styled head of the Guadalcanal Liberation Front. In 2002 he murdered Father Augustin Geve, a Catholic priest and a member of the Solomon Islands parliament. The following year one of Keke’s henchmen, Ronnie Kava, would be accused of murdering seven Anglican clergymen.
Although these events were still some years in the future, it was clear that life was already cheap on the weather coast, and that the longer I delayed the expedition the more dangerous it was likely to become. By May 1990 I could put it off no longer. Mike McCoy was occupied with other work, so I teamed up with Tanya Leary, who was then working for the Solomon Islands Ministry of Conservation. She has gone on to make a fine career for herself in wildlife conservation in Melanesia.
Tanya and I reckoned that the best way to reach the weather coast was to follow the road west of Honiara as far as it went, then to try to travel by sea to reach the area. And so it was that we found ourselves at the end of the road, quite literally, in Lambi village near Guadalcanal’s eastern tip. The weather was foul—blowing a storm and raining incessantly. But, not to be put off, we hired a tiny canoe to take us from village to village in search of a sturdier vessel with a captain willing to make the journey. As we travelled through rough seas and pelting rain the canoe almost filled with water threatening to drown us. By dusk it was clear that, for this season at least, nobody would risk his life by making the trip.
Frustrated and sodden, we saw no alternative but to return to Honiara. There was just one last possibility. A helicopter used by the gold mining company at Gold Ridge was temporarily based at Henderson Field. If we could charter it, we might be able to get dropped off in Valearanisi village, from whence we could climb the mountain. At an estimated cost of $1100 it was an expensive option, but it was the only one remaining, so after making the arrangements Tanya and I boarded the chopper. On our way in we flew over the summit of Mount Makarakomburu (which was entirely wreathed in cloud) and on to the rugged and wet weather coast of Guadalcanal. As we descended between steep, vegetation-covered ridges and banks of cloud, I could see our destination ahead—a small collection of huts perched on the flank of the mountain, beside which ran one of the most amazing scenes of destruction I have ever laid eyes on.
Valearanisi is located at a few hundred metres elevation on the eastern side of Makarakomburu. Beside it ran a vegetation-free scar—at least a kilometre wide and the length of the mountainside—which was filled with boulders, many larger than a house. It was once the gentle, soil-covered valley of the Kohove River where village gardens flourished, but Cyclone Namu, which had struck the region four years earlier in May 1986, had gutted it, leaving a hundred people dead and thousands homeless. Judging from the massive erosion scar, its impact on the forest ecol
ogy of the weather coast of Guadalcanal must have been catastrophic.
The people of Valearanisi were expecting us, as we had managed to get a message through that we were coming. The locals, as Peter had indicated, were friendly and hospitable. But they had learned well from the mining companies, and were expecting a $500 fee just to permit us to step onto their land. The cost of the helicopter, we discovered, had doubled to in excess of $2000. With our limited budget, the villagers’ demand for a cash payment threatened to derail the expedition.
That, however, was only the beginning. I was soon served with a comprehensive employment agreement that would have bankrupted us. Anyone who worked with us, it stated, must receive, in addition to daily pay, special night-time loadings, time and a half on Saturday, Sunday off and a living-away-from-home allowance if they left the village. Where a century before Woodford had battled headhunters, I found trade unionists of such sophistication that they could teach the Australian Council of Trade Unions a thing or two. Underpinning it all was the threat of Keke’s thugs. Having gone so far, however, there was no question of turning back. We had to pay the fees, with anything in excess of the grant coming out of my own pocket.
The morning following our arrival broke brilliant and clear, with the summit of Mount Makarakomburu seeming so close I felt I could almost touch it. But such proximity is illusory. In the formidable country of the weather coast, travelling just a few kilometres can take all day. Burdened with hundreds of kilograms of equipment, including liquid nitrogen cylinders, nets and traps, it took us two days of exhausting toil to reach just 1200 metres elevation. With the weather deteriorating and the mountain summit looming more than 1000 metres above us, a decision had to be made. In such circumstances one either walks or works—it is impossible to do both as there is simply not enough time to set up and collect nets and traps as well as make camp. We had passed a flattish area at around 900 metres and with the terrain swiftly becoming more rugged with greater elevation, we decided to make it our base camp. From it we would make day trips to higher regions—and perhaps even reach the summit.
Just a few hundred metres beyond the village the vegetation was magnificent, undisturbed mountain forest, the character of which changed continually as we climbed. At around 1200 metres an elegant palm, festooned with red fruit, became a dominant plant. This graceful tree stood out above the canopy, forming a distinct band on the mountain and marking an ecological change that looked promising in terms of fauna.
We quickly set up mist-nets around the 900-metre camp, and almost immediately started to catch interesting creatures. One afternoon there was a large, blackish honeyeater with striking yellow side-plumes. It was one of the Solomon Islands’ most special birds—a honeyeater that bears the marvellous scientific name of Guadalcanaria inexpectata. A genus and species that is entirely restricted to the high mountains of Guadalcanal, it must be descended from ancestors that made their way to the islands millions of years ago. Known from just a handful of museum specimens collected in the 1920s, it had not been seen by biologists for many years. Our record confirmed its survival and so was an important contribution to conservation.
The next day I set out early with two boys from the village, hoping to climb high up the mountain to set mist-nets. We planned to wait and check them that night. As we climbed to around 1700 metres elevation, the vegetation underwent an abrupt change. The dense mossy tangle gave way to more open undergrowth, and a trunkless palm became dominant in the understorey. The tall, red-fruited palm had dropped out way below, so here was evidence of another marked ecological change—and with it the chance of a change in fauna. The trekking was so tough, and the weather so appalling, however, that we had to abandon our plans of staying out all night. It was with great regret that I made the decision to turn back and work at lower elevation.
On the way up, at around 1230 metres, we had found a saddle between two peaks—an ideal place to set a mist-net as such places are often used by bats and birds as a fly-way from one valley to another. We stopped there on the way down, set up a mist-net and laid our rat-traps, then rested by the net, waiting for dusk. A little while after the sun fell below the horizon I heard a large bat land on a branch by the net. It was about ten metres away so I couldn’t see much detail, but it seemed different from any species I’d seen before, with long fur and a rounded head. It only stopped for a moment before flying off, evading the net and leaving me intrigued.
That evening as we hunted on our way down the mountain to base camp, I was disappointed that we had seen so little. Then, at around 10 pm, I saw a bright pair of eyes in the forest ahead. I raised the shotgun and fired, and I was amazed to find that they belonged to a huge, mean-looking black cat. This was a dismaying discovery, for cats are one of the greatest destroyers of island life. If feral cats had penetrated the mountain forests of Guadalcanal in any numbers, there was little hope for the survival of emperor, king or little pig. The local people later confirmed that the great rats were already very rare or extinct in the region. The old man called Hue Hue that Peter had told us about was, needless to say, conspicuous by his absence.
The following morning villagers arrived carrying the mist-net and traps we had set on the mountain the day before. At first I was delighted, as the traps all seemed to hold rats—big black ones that I did not immediately recognise. Yet another blow to our efforts was the discovery that they were merely huge, melanistic (blackish) examples of the introduced Pacific rat. The whole terrestrial fauna of the place, it seemed, had been taken over by the duo of introduced cat and introduced rat, both of which had become large and black-furred, perhaps as a result of the dense vegetation and cold climate. This was as depressing as it was unexpected.
After swallowing this bitter pill I began opening the canvas bags that held the bats caught in the mist-net. There were a surprising number of them, indicating that the saddle saw a lot of bat traffic. The smaller bags held familiar species, but as I opened the largest bag, which I left to last, I saw a new face peeking out at me. It was the eyes that first struck me. They were a deep ochre-red—a shade that I had never seen in an animal’s eyes before.
Gingerly lifting the bat from its bag, I found that it was a creature around half the size of a common Australian fruit bat. It was in many ways utterly unique. It had a cutely rounded head with a stubby snout and short ears hidden in long black fur. The body, in contrast, was covered in luxuriant fur of a golden-khaki colour. It was the wings, however, that stood out: while ordinary-looking and black on top, their underside was strikingly marbled in black and white, and unlike any bat’s wings ever recorded. I showed it to the villagers who were with us. They included some experienced hunters, but none of them had ever seen a creature like it and they had no name for it. Upon reflection this was hardly surprising, as the people of Valearanisi rarely visited the upper slopes of Mount Makarakomburu, which to them is the haunt of spirits, and they did not hunt there at night. Having examined the great mammal collections of Europe and North America, I knew as well that nobody had ever collected anything like it previously.
New species of mammals are still being described today, but most are small and obscure—mice and small insectivorous bats tend to predominate. And when a larger species is described, it’s often based upon a museum specimen that has somehow been overlooked by earlier researchers. It’s rare for a new species of largish mammal to be discovered in the wild. Even then the discoverer will usually find that the local people have long known of its existence, and that the only glory he can claim is to announce its existence to the world via a scientific publication. But as I held that bat it slowly dawned on me that I’d stumbled into one of the rarest of circumstances. That morning I’d had the privilege of peering into the face of a mammal hitherto unknown to everyone. In all my years of fieldwork it was the only occasion I would make such a completely novel discovery.
While the precise identity of the bat puzzled me, it was immediately clear as to which group it belonged. It was a miniatu
re and highly ornamental monkey-face. While the lowlands were home to its larger and funereally black relative, conditions high on the mountain had selected for different traits, giving rise to this pygmy form. When I returned to Australia I set about writing a description of the new creature and giving it a name. I settled upon Pteralopex pulchra, meaning the beautiful winged Arctic fox. To this day nothing more is known of the species than the few notes I made on that morning while high on Makarakomburu over twenty years ago.
As the days wore on the villagers seemed to get greedier and more offensive, asking obscene prices for food and assistance. As a result, our relationship with them soured and I took to sleeping next to my shotgun and machete. Not that they’d be much use to me if things unravelled completely. And on top of it all I had to face the fact that I’d never see the summit of Mount Makarakomburu. Time was too short and the situation too volatile to contemplate an ascent. As the confrontations with the locals worsened I found myself frequently on the brink of losing my temper. This is a rare thing for me, and I realised that we needed to leave the mountain as soon as possible if we were to avoid a great unpleasantness.
Over the years I have frequently thought about the behaviour of the people of Valearanisi village. One factor that affected them was that the place had never been brought under full government control, so the old ways persisted. And there’s no doubt that the goldmine and the tales of enormous wealth being extracted from it affected the villagers’ view of Europeans. Although they lived on the far side of the mountain, they expected a share of the wealth, yet they received nothing. Not surprisingly, many saw the mining as theft of their inheritance.
