I lived, worked, slept in a swamp at one time. I mean it was a swamp, near a river with no hard ground around. Some places if you stood still for too long you sank, slowly, perceptively until your boot tops flooded, then water came in through the lace holes, then through the top of the boots until you stopped sinking about a line just below the knees. This was my ‘flotation point’. Still, this was not good, you can’t move readily from this point. You can’t step out of the hole you made. My extraction method was to lay on the top, dry, vegetation and pull both legs free from there. It was maddening.
The ‘flotation point’ below was rotted vegetation. You sank through the swamp near the surface until your feet contacted a peaty substance about 18 inches under. The work around, for me, was large bamboo, butterflied, opened out with three cuts along the length which made a mat two foot wide. This was criss-crossed and laid on the surface. You could manufacture a mat 20 or thirty feet or more breadth and width quite quickly. Heaven, or the swamp equivalent.
There was Kunai grass everywhere, wall to wall, 10 feet tall, or more, which required slashing to drop it and as we had to progress through the swamp we cut it in lines, 10 feet wide and with a widening area every 66 yards. We could cut 300 yards of lines and associated widened areas by 1400 hours. Then it was a few minutes walk back out to the river, and sanity. Moving back to the river had a safety aspect also. Fire was ever present and hot weather and Kunai grass, the early mans kerosene of legend, meant you had to provide escapes if needed.
It was a bed of kunai stalks you stood on and walked on with relative ease until you stopped and submerged you went.
I was then working on the south western limb of the old Lakekamu gold province in Papua, north east of Karema on the coast, within the boundaries of the Tauri, Terapo and Lakekamu rivers. I was barge ‘fed’ with an occasional helicopter movement, twice a day radio schedules, me and 12 locals, all very good and overly religious, which is still very good but.
Rumour is that Kunai was introduced by the Japanese during the war. Kunai has a way of colonizing the country, suffocating what is there with gas it makes on its rootball or exudes a liquor that makes it the ‘boss’ of an area. It certainly happened at that location. This was Kunai grass central. The rivers nearby were slow moving, wide but shallow. Kudzu would be an equivalent weed colonizer.
The previous gold workings here had devolved to dredges, big steam powered bucket lines that took a half ton load through a washing process and the fine gold pieces came from that. If dry the gold could be considered ‘dust’. Mostly those dredges are gone, although a fair bit of one remains, mostly sunk in a pond it made with a channel from where it is now to the river.
Some alluvial workings continued, people working well away from our patch and on the other side of the river boundary and in the next province.
My job was to allow access to an area of interest, the ‘crook’ caused by three bends in a river, then drilling in that area and sampling what was underneath. Why drill at that place was not discussed when I asked because here, for instance, seemed to be the same as over there, a mile and a bit away.
Gold, ground out of the upslope rocks by glaciers, was transported to this area then settled and gathered in river beds when the water flow slowed towards the coast. That’s one explanation of how/why gold is there – is there another? There is a lot of mud, plains of it between the coast and the slopes. There are a lot of fossil creeks here, and there may have been a lot of gold in them there hills.
In addition to three water courses averaged over each horizontal mile there were paleo channels, creeks now covered in the subsurface and discernible in the 300 feet of weathering. That’s a lot of creeks. That’s a lot of gold potential said somebody, a gold seeking tragic probably.
It was hot. There were mosquitoes, and crocodiles. It seems the big ‘Salties’ had been harvested or scared off more likely. There are settlements towards the coast, and boat traffic regularly from there, and past us to single settlements up the rivers. The boatmen told us of any crocodiles nearby, ‘flat dogs’ they joked. But there were crocodiles. I had a rifle as a deterrent, like in a me or them situation, crocodilewise. I didn’t, no. I didn’t need to. I blew up the river for fish though, vandal.
The lines were cut, and it rained, so we drilled when it wasn’t raining. Labour should not get wet as they are readily susceptible to disease. The drills were portable 4 horsepower augurs which you could wrangle down to 30 feet then run a casing and sample the hole bottom if worthy. Mostly it was worth it. The hole constituents was mostly peat, compacted vegetation, occasional gravel as an indicator of a paleo channel, and mud which stopped us and we sampled everything we could.
The samples were tagged and bagged and flown out every afternoon and overnight to Port Moresby and next day to Brisbane. The company was serious about this. In the end they formed a partnership with a PNG consortium and a PNG Government quango and they took over the drilling and sampling after I had left to work elsewhere. Good pay, double on the second and subsequent weeks.
I worked with them , that quango, at Malulua, and on solid ground thankfully with mostly Kukukukus, average height 4 foot 6. I’m taller than them. Same deal, seeking paleo creeks in the subsurface, and sampling the ground.
Next, after a week off in Madang, I joined an American seismic crew in the Southern Highlands province near Lake Kutubu. This was a seismic survey of limestone country at the foot of Mount Bosavi, a volcano used to be. They used Texas Instruments DFS4 recorder and amplifiers which they considered an industry standard. Military grade electronics, tough as teak, reliable but needing power, electricity to work. We didn’t have that electricity for a couple of days until some corrosive fluid was flown to us at an airport 9 miles walk off and away. I did that walk several times, on a contoured track built by the Navy!. It was longer because of the contour but testing due to the climbing down and up through several horsts encountered. It’s not a stroll either.
I worked a team of 33, me, 3 boss men, and the rest as porters (karryim). We took food for 4 days, bedding, cooking, tarps. Drinking water wasn’t an issue, same with bathing, each carried their own property, food and bedding. It was more bulk size than bulk weight. Each carried 19 kilograms total.
I walked in the middle of the line so that I could moderate the rate of walking. Sometimes the lead men came to a fork in the trail, left, right, straight ahead, or a stroppy animal, mostly big birds with razors for feet and a pointed head. Management decisions to the fore. We had machetes to ward off the birds, truly.
Traverses were 2 hours, then 20 minutes off, an hour and a half, 30 minutes off and food and this repeated until afternoon rain, or rather its predicated arrival meant you stopped and set up camp. It took 10 minutes ordinarily. It rained, we slept, and if it was then after 1500 we stayed put. Generally if I stopped for rain we stayed put. There is always tomorrow, and sunshine.
We got to the airport mid morning second day but no plane and two groups waiting to go out, and three groups, us and others waiting for incoming. In addition there were numerous non attached locals, waiting, watching.
This means while your stuff is awaiting movement back to your area of operation then watch it vigilantly.
Planes arrived late morning, people left, property was removed as well, a lot of it mineral sample bags for examination elsewhere and after an hour it was quiet. It was now just us and the hangers on/around.
The plane and a helicopter first came in for us and our goods were accepted and unloaded.
An early group (3 men) from our base camp had walked in from early morning to advise us that a further 15 porters were coming to help move what we had received.
I decided to try for a 2 hour hoist back along the track with a stop at 1530, weather permitting. It did allow this and we went an extra hour while we could. The batteries and some other much needed commodities (powdered milk and Milo) went on, to reach base camp at 8.00pm. Meanwhile we camped back in the bush, no rain, until early next morning when we decamped and got in about mid day. It was noticeably faster with more staff, naturally, and lighter loads helped as well. In addition there is an old living area out there where discarded items could be left. These would be burnt eventually by rangers or more likely, taken and reused by others on the track.
That trip I encountered 30 or 40 others on the track, most returning from Mendi, 3 days off, after a ‘sing sing.’
Local area people are not recruited as labour, for several reasons. One reason is it can introduce local tensions and dislikes of instilled labour. They don’t know why they arguing, only that they do, seem to, need to. Who needs that in a place of 100 or more men, most with axes or other bladed weapons, newly sharpened to beard shaving capability on the grindstone.
Walking through the country is a given. That’s what you do if you live there. There are many small collections of huts belonging to connected groups every so often. Its not uninhabited. The Lake Kutubu Area, is now functioning oil and gas field.
I went and worked in PNG with an idea that I would become a patrol officer – a policeman for a designated area, a government representative was the inferred purpose but it seems you became everything – first aid, post office, bank, Police, journalist, anthropologist. I needed to speak, write in and deal with local language, Motu principally and Pidgin was a given. I did that.
My training at the Pacific School of Studies was delayed and the moment passed, pretty much. In the interim I worked for an importer in Moresby.
I intended to trek to Kokoda. The place does have a mystic connection to our conscientiousness. I was acclimatized and certainly had the leg fitness after months of traipsing about in the bush. Didn’t happen for several reasons. Previously I had flown in a helicopter to and over the place but could only land several miles out and with no gear it was no way and getting late for flying back. Flying to Kokoda does not qualify you and I am not assuming skite rites either.
There’s still time, I’m only 80.
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Retired, typing
It was the School of Pacific Studies, in Brisbane, Boggo Road area. A big weatherboard house, near St Laurence school (best blazer ever). The delay is so many recruits of their own ethnicity, fair enough.