The Millennium Trip – Letter #19

By: Keiron Burchell

G’day everyone,

“So this is Christmas”. Arrived in Australia to canned carols, cheesy radio ads, decorated lamp posts, jazzy shop windows and chirpy attitudes; “G’day mate. How ya goin’?”

“And what have you done?” Travelled from Istanbul to Sydney overland, almost. I had to fly from Papua New Guinea (PNG) to Australia in the end. I can give you a number of reasons for this. Like the PNG government’s insistence that I purchase an out going Air Niu Guinea ticket before endorsing my visa (a process which took two days, and cost a fortune). Or the lack of any concrete information about the Daru to Cape York crossing. Or that seasonal rain has washed out all the roads from Cape York to Cooktown.

All good reasons and true, but all these problems could have been solved given time and patience. Time however, was the one thing I had run out of. Given the three weeks it would have taken to work my way around the PNG coast, the dubious outcome and the equivalent expense, I decided that I would rather be travelling in Australia, where I did not feel like a pariah. When I first approached the PNG embassy in Jakarta, I was shown a printed notice that said that no visas could be granted to any African passport holders. The entire continent: 45 countries, 700 million people. Forewarned, I used my Irish passport when I applied for a visa in Jayapura and lied about my triple nationality, but it still rankles. Like two World Cup semi-finals.

From Ujung Pandang, I took an exhausting five-day long ferry trip to Jayapura, in Irian Jaya, on the border with PNG. The ship was packed to over-flowing with passengers. It was also infested with cockroaches, which scampered heedless over your feet while you slept on the deck. The food was quite inedible and since the toilets had stopped working, we were forced to use the showers instead. So no showers for five days either.

New Guinea, Australia’s left bumper. The bit that broke off and landed in the middle of the road when Australia rear-ended the Pacific plate. Queensland was flattened and Cape York appeared where the headlight used to be. Careless drivers the Australians. You can imagine God the Bobby wagging his head and whistling spuriously. “I ‘ope you got insurance. Gonna cost an arm an’ a leg to fix that.”

I digress. The paint scratch verifying the accident some 35 million years ago lies in the New Guinea fauna. Cassowaries, frilled lizards and marsupials are common to both Australia and New Guinea. I believe there are even a few Homo Erectus Australis inhabiting the southeastern corner of the island. The two land masses also have plant species in common though a sizeable portion of New Guinea’s flora is endemic. Among these is the Pitcher plant, which digests insects to make up for Nitrogen deficient soils.

Of course, New Guinea is most famous for its Birds of Paradise. So called because early explorers thought that these brilliantly feathered birds lived always in the sky (in paradise), never touching ground. Though it is strictly illegal, you still find Irian Jayans trying to sell you dead Birds of Paradise in the streets of Jayapura.

From Jayapura I took a bus to the Papua border and from there hitched a lift with the border Police to Vanimo. The day after I crossed the border, independence protests in the streets of Jayapura shut the border and closed the Indonesian Embassy in Vanimo, indefinitely.

The island of New Guinea (map), as we all know, is controversially split in two by a straight North-South border along the 141º East line of longitude. Straight, that is, apart from a peculiar bump in the middle where it looks like the colonial draughtsman left his thumb dangling over the side of his ruler. The Western half, Irian Jaya, is part of Indonesia. The Eastern half makes up the majority of Papua New Guinea.

Typical of Papuan towns I’m told, Vanimo (pop. 1300) is carved onto a peninsula, and into the surrounding rainforest, like an Allied beachhead. Apart from the dirt track to the border it is cut off from the outside world by the encroaching jungle. The only other way out is by air, or by catching a banana boat to the next small town along the coast.

I flew from Vanimo to Moresby and from there to Cairns in Australia. Then I backtracked up to Cooktown, which is as far North as it is possible to travel by road during the wet season. Two and a quarter sides of the triangle, so to speak. Flying direct from Vanimo to Cooktown would take about an hour.

Australia as always, reminds me of South Africa: big skies, distant horizons and impressive cloud formations. Tanned arms and legs. Sunglasses used for more than a mere fashion statement; as an indispensable badge of status, or a winter tan. Armani, Klein, Oakley, O’Neill. Drive last year’s model and be scorned.

From Cooktown I joined the thousands of backpackers and tourists fleeing the tropics and converging like lemmings on Sydney. Sugar cane plantations gave way to Eucalyptus covered cattle stations, yellow flame trees to native Hibiscus. The weather improved steadily. Like cockroaches when the light is switched on, cumulus clouds scattered to the horizon and were replaced by more chummy cirrus ones. Heat mirages began to pool and evaporate in front of us. Indeed it felt as if the sun itself was trying to make Sydney in time for Christmas.

Hugging the coast, I took a four-wheel drive to Cape Tribulation. From there I hitched to Hervey Bay. My first lift was a dream. It lasted four days, took me 1200 km and stopped at some interesting hick towns along the way. Arriving in Hervey Bay, I booked a two-day guided tour of Fraser Island.

Fraser is an enormous sand bar off the coast of Queensland. It is a World Heritage site and scene of one of the most intensive conservation projects I have seen. In a place like Fraser Island, where every possible effort is being made to preserve the natural environment – the tour guides will even stop your bus to pick up a single discarded beer can – you begin to appreciate just how far we have to go with the global environment. It is a humbling thought.

What do we tell our grandchildren when they ask us about it? “Well yes, actually we did realise that there would be consequences to our actions in the future. Disastrous consequences even, but you have to appreciate just how fruity we used to smell. And how terribly useful plastic was.”

The wildlife on Fraser is varied and includes dingoes, wallabies and the Fraser Island Brumby, an indigenous breed of wild horses, which is fast becoming extinct. The Eastern Shore of the island is a 67-mile stretch of beach, is part of the Australian highway system, and is known for blue bottles and sharks. The plant life is equally fascinating and includes the Satinay tree which grows only on this lengthy island, is neither a hardwood nor a softwood, and which has been heavily logged in the past for its salt water resistance properties.

From Hervey Bay I caught another lift, and shared petrol costs with an English dorm mate and a girl from Lincolnshire. On the way to Sydney we stopped in Byron Bay and spent a day living “lavida loca”. Dancing till the small hours and recovering on the beach finishing “We of the Never-Never”, a quirky look at outback life, circa 1905.

“Another year over, and a new one just begun.” Not yet, but all that remains of this one is for me to get a much needed haircut and shave, wash my clothes and meet a certain long-suffering someone at the airport. Then to pass Christmas with my cute and cuddly one year old godson, and finally to join the masses congregating on Sydney Bridge at midnight on the 31st December.

This will be the last letter for 1999. I hope to add another, concluding letter once I get back to South Africa in late January.

Wishing you all a merry Christmas, or a peaceful Ramadan, and a memorable New Year.