The Lost Forest
Page 48
Chapter 47
BORNEO GOLD CORPORATION
Jim Forbes was excited about his investment in Borneo Gold Corporation, set up to put the mineral deposits into production, rich deposits discovered in Kalimantan by Gary Solomon’s exploration team. Forbes was well informed about the mineral wealth of Borneo, his family had derived their wealth from coal mining and he had considered investing in the development of large coal deposits in Kalimantan.
Ennis had introduced Forbes to Aris, who persuaded Forbes to join the mining venture as a sleeping partner together with Gary Solomon, and Soetopoe Jananto’s group Australian Minerals. Borneo Gold Corporation’s concession was located in West Kalimantan at the end of ancient volcanic arc, crosscutting faults that contained, according to the reports of Solomon’s experts, a rich, commercially exploitable mineral deposit.
Forbes had asked Ennis to check-out the mining concession, a day’s journey from the Discovery Site, and on his return to Europe they had fixed a meeting at the Düsseldorf Antique Fair to talk over the venture. They were booked into the Steigenberger Parkhotel facing the Hofgarten Park but for dinner Forbes suggested that they eat in the Alt Stadt.
At the Gebruder Paffen, the entrance was almost an alley, awash in beer and crowded with drinkers who had not found a table inside. Men and women leaned against the wall of the alley smoked and drank as best they could in an endless two way stream of waiters burdened with orders and customers coming and going. After a long wait they found a table in the packed, smoke filled, bierkeller, where a transpiring waiter carrying his tray laden with bier glasses placed two local beers in front of them, the small narrow glasses contained something less than half a pint. The bier was brewed by the owners supplying only their two own bierkellers and a couple of others. The atmosphere was undeniably good but they almost had to shout over the noise, drinkers talking and waiters shouting. They ordered bratwurst and sauerkraut, which they washed down with a constant supply of beer; as they emptied their glasses two more promptly arrived.
The German economic machine seemed to have stalled down, they been cushioned by the long boom that had followed reunification, lasting for more than a decade, it seemed that the solution was to drown their problems in beer, in very noisy company. The Germans seemed to have a yearning to gather together to drink and shout, perhaps it was something to do with their ancient way of life in a country of forests that were dark and cold, dense and menacing, engendering a collective spirit that lay deep in the German psyche.
Ennis could not refuse Forbe’s request to check out Borneo Gold Corporation, as he had made a large contribution to the excavation of the wreck. It turned out to be easier than expected as Aris had joined Solomon to approach Soetopoe Jananto of Australian Minerals. Solomon as a successful mining engineer turned businessman had been attracted to the idea of exploration in Borneo, its geological formations indicated the possibility of mineral riches.
Gold had been Solomon’s life long obsession; he could roll off a thousand anecdotes from history concerning gold, never ceasing to remind those who listened to him that all the gold mined since the beginning of time represented a cube with twenty metre sides. He boasted he had produced more gold the Croesus of Lydia and that Kalimantan would be his Pactole.
He had set up Borneo Gold to explore West Kalimantan carrying out preliminary surveys and core drilling. The results proved his instinct to be right; they discovered a gold rich copper porphyry of world-class and several highly prospective gold areas with strong geological indications of diamonds.
The investments were enormous and also the financial risks, the sharing of which had been the key to Solomon’s past success, though with the precaution of choosing partners who did not burden him with their worries, and the team he had put together with Aris, Soetopoe Jananto and Jim Forbes would fulfil that role.
Aris had explained to Ennis that in Indonesia the rights to explore and develop a mining property were called a Contract of Work, a CoW. Borneo Gold had been backed by Habibie, then Indonesia’s vice-President and a friend of Solomon’s.
The satellite mapping and photography of the zone had been carried out by Indosatmap. Exploring for minerals in the equatorial rain forest of Indonesia with satellite photography provided details so precise that a person could be seen and trees and bush identified. The same maps Aris had used to locate the cave and set up the expedition for the dig had provided geological data on the rock formations and limestone caves.
Using the mining company’s helicopter they overflew the concession. An exprensive expedition as fuel cost six hundred dollars a drum by the time it reached the camp from the coast, carried in by light aircraft to a grass landing strip in a valley that lay nearby the mining camp, the drums were then carried by helicopter to the camp.
Seen from the air the jungle was like flying over an unending dark green carpet cut occasionally by the ochre coloured ribbon of a river or a dark outline of distant hills. On the ground it was another story; travelling by speed boat along the endless rivers, buffeted in a Landcruisers over unsurfaced logging roads, or walking for hours, wet, sweating and bleeding from leaches which seemed to be capable of penetrating into every nook and cranny of the body.
There was only one main road the ended more than one hundred kilometres from the campsite. The main features on the map were the rivers and their tributaries. Some of the larger riverside villages were also shown.
The other roads were logging tracks that changed from one year to the next disappearing from the map. Only the locals who had lived and hunted in the forests for countless generations knew the lie of the land detail.
The camp was reached on the logging company’s road, some forty kilometres away, a drive of two to four hours in a four-wheel drive vehicle, depending on road conditions, during wet weather the road was excessively dangerous, though only dry day and the road was practicable but a day of rain transformed it into an impossible quagmire.
The nearest village was sixty kilometres away reached on foot over trails through rugged primary forests, a journey of three days, where the villagers survived as hunter gatherers with their food supplemented by ‘slash and burn’ agriculture. Travel was only possible by river, in dugouts, or by helicopter.
Aris pointed out one of the promising areas located on the southern margin of a caldera, a large extinct volcanic crater, fifteen kilometres in diameter, where the copper gold porphyry prospects contained economic copper-molybdenum-gold deposits.
The CoW was almost virgin jungle lying next to logged over forest concessions totalling one hundred and fifty thousand hectares or one hundred and fifty square kilometres. Solomon’s man explained that the area was made up of mainly Eocene sediments that had been intruded by Oligocene intrusions and sandstone sediments covered with dense forests on a rugged, range of hills between three hundred and one thousand meters above sea level.