Niugini Diary - 2012

Success chasing a Common Sandpiper

Friday 20 January 2012 BNE airport en route to Kimbe, West New Britain PNG - People here seem a lot more casual than in Adelaide, maybe it’s the weather, or that there are a lot of “islanders” about. Strangely the Air Nuigini stewardess was trying to get a set of knives and forks through security?? Needless to say she didn’t win AND she was surprised! 7.00pm Beach Haus No.3 Kimbe Bay (Dami beach). I can see this is going to be a place of contemplation, it’s as if I said “stop the world I want to get off”, and they let me off here. The gecko’s and frogs have started, two of the frogs sound like wood saws inside a corrugated iron rainwater tank. There seem to be a lot of rodents running about and rustling in the bushes, still it’s idyllic on the verandah. The sun went down behind a blanket of gorgeous grey-black cloud as the locals came out to fish along the shore. No one seems to be going anywhere here, maybe there’s no where to go. It seems like a great community. Now the sun has gone down the humidity is dropping, thank goodness, it was oppressive an hour or two ago. Across the grass the broad Kimbe Bay stretches out before me, calm and restful, and to the northwest the big lick of “Willaumez” Peninsula with small green mountains (volcanoes) blobbed along the peninsula. Aside from the local wildlife and the occasional roll of a laconic wave on the shore, all is peaceful.

Saturday January 21 2012 - Woke early after an excellent sleep, I had turned in at 1930. I chased Sandpipers along the rocky shore for an hour, then on a second such foray got good pictures . A rather lazy day, never venturing more than 500m from the beach haus. Partly because it is a bit impenetrable far up the coast and because of security concerns, although I haven’t explored to the east yet, only the west and back up the road toward the research station. The oil palms seem quite devoid of birds, although I did get some photographs. I also got a couple of snaps of a little sunbird hanging around the garden by the beach haus. There seemed to be a bigger variety of dragonflies which were quite beautiful. The local children spent the day swimming from the little sandy bit of beach here. The expats seemed to contribute a Jet ski, and three boats, each launch bigger than the previous. The biggest had a flying bridge plus a third one high up on top again, a bit like a poop deck. The local kids enjoyed clamouring right to the top and jumping off into the water. The entertained themselves for hours all afternoon in the water, plus a few expat children. It was a beautiful afternoon by the water courtesy of a light cooling breeze off the ocean. A few clouds about but no rain.

Yellow-bellied Sunbird

In addition to my kitchen gecko, there’s a weird group of tiny ants that gather about, maybe they all gather in response to a txt msg, and hang about doing nothing for ants sake, it’s weird, they’re not getting into anything, just hanging about quietly here and there. The wood saw frogs started up while I was preparing dinner. They (not the frogs) have provided a good lot of food for me in the house but the utensils are a bit limited. In one pot I boiled some whole potatoes, and added a whole carrot later, and finally when it was nearly done some cabbage. The only other cooking utensil is a large saucepan with a thin warped base that tends to “pop” every now and again, sending fat about the place. In this I tried to cook some steak, it sort of worked, I was quite hungry so it all went down well. Earlier in the day I was semi-successful at opening one of the coconuts Rachel gave me with the only sharp knife in the kitchen. The local dogs are at it again, a big group in a lot of biffo. It seems to go off a couple of times a day and all the other dogs gather round to watch!

Monday 23 January 2012 - Well I survived the first day’s field work, or half a day at least. It was stiflingly hot in the field to be out sampling, but luckily each cutting only took about 20 minutes after which we sat under an oil palm, weighed, chopped up and sub sampled the materials. It’s now 6.30pm and I’ve just finished dinner, bacon and eggs and fresh pineapple for desert. The mozzies are just starting to come out so on with the aeroguard while I sit on the verandah and watch the evening sky ever changing. To the north there is a massive storm cell dropping a huge volume of water and to the west the last of the evening sun silhouettes the volcanoes and a smattering of clouds, it’s quite restful and beautiful. I managed to use up one of my two camera batteries today, after only 3 days so I’ll have to go careful for the next 7 as I didn’t bring my charger! No looking at photos on the screen, manual focus and fewer photos and I hope to make it through a guided bird tour on Sunday. Fingers crossed.

Tuesday 24 January 2012 - Early in the morning the sea in Kimbe Bay is dead calm, there’s no breeze, the water is like glass. The local men glide slowly across the bay in little outrigger canoes, effortlessly. High in the trees the eclectus parrots “Kwaak” and the little sunbirds come into the garden to probe the tropical flowers. It’s a lovely time of day before the humidity builds and the sun is high overhead, baking everything below. Early in the morning the sky is mostly clear except for the little white puffs on the horizon, the germs for the massive clouds that fill the sky by mid afternoon. There isn’t really anywhere much to walk; beach is restricted to about 500m due to the geography and vegetation, and way from the coast is just oil palms, and during the day stiflingly hot, too hot for walking. I’ve got to find a way to fill in the time. So I sit on my verandah and watch the calm sea, the local children frolicking and the men and boys casting out hand lines to try and catch squid. A procession of company Landcruisers come and go, and a small boy goes out for a paddle in his dad’s dugout canoe with outrigger.

A good dinner of bacon, baked beans and the 3 veg pot again. Those ants were not so benign, they ended up getting into everything. There was a bag of sugar which I wasn’t going to open, but they just bored right in so the sugar was full of ants, even though it was in the fridge unopened! They pretty much got into whatever they liked, unless it is in the freezer, so this is where my ant infested goods are stored if possible, open or not. I’ve got the breakfast cereal in there, with ants, packets of biscuits, opened tin of baked beans and anything else that they might take a shine to that won’t be destroyed by freezing. What the ants don’t get in the fridge seems to be going off anyway, the tomatoes are rotting faster than I can eat them, even if I cut off the black gooey blobs, meat doesn’t seem to do too well, get a smell up after 24 hours in there, after being transferred from the freezer, the UHT milk and the margarine and the bread are about the only things that seem to survive in the fridge OK. The potatoes are holding up ok if a little softened. The ants get into anything left out in about 20 minutes, even the rubbish bin which I’ve taken to hanging from a cup hook doused with aeroguard, seems to be the only way to keep them at bay. It’s interesting that so many 3^rd world countries are in the tropics, maybe because everything is just so darn hard here to progress, the weather and the varmints are on top of everything before you can say jack robinson, and that includes the roads. Charles and Lindsey are moving out of their house because the termites have pretty much destroyed it. It’s being rebuilt.

Thursday 26 January 2012 (Australia Day) - Another day spent in the office, quite productive again. I set up a spreadsheet and entered in all of Rachel’s field data to date, then worked on my Dairy Australia consultancy. Rachel came back around 4pm and shortly after I got a lift back down to the main road and walked in to the beach and home. I went to make a coffee and as I picked up the kettle, kitchen gecko stuck his head out of the spout, then made a jump for it, splot on to the kitchen bench, dusted himself off and crawled back under his light switch home. When I wandered out onto the verandah I noticed the shorts I had hung out to dry in the morning had gone, not taken by the wind but by a misappropriator. I was a bit peeved because I had just bought them on the day I left home, one of those pairs with the zip off legs. So now I have some $70 legs with nothing to attach them to! I’ve booked into Walindi Plantation Resort for Friday and Saturday nights, and shortly after it will be time to go home and so in the end the time has gone by quite quickly.

My kitchen companion

Saturday 28 January 2012 Walindi Resort - Woken by my alarm at 5.00am, time to get ready and go out bird watching with a guide. We had to wait for the rain to clear a bit before we went out. Then we headed a short distance down the road, turned up a little used track and after 500m came to a stop at a few huts up on the side of the hill. I had three guides, Joseph the leader, David an understudy also from Walindi, but didn’t speak much English, and a young lad from the family where we had parked. The weather was grey and drizzly but it wasn’t long before we were amongst the birds, and the gorgeous eclectus parrots which were ubiquitous. They must be one of the most wondrous of all birds and to see so many of them was a treat. There was one particular group of mostly females atop a tree and it was such a magical sight I will never forget. After 1½ hours we came back down then headed into the small grazing area and cattle feedlot where there were, surprisingly, a myriad of wading birds . We also had great views of mannikin and brahminy kite and snipe of some sorts. We arrived back at Walindi around 0930 and caught the end of breakfast. The light had been dismal for photography, but nevertheless it was a memorable experience. I rested in my room until a knock on the door advised me that the lunch menu was up. I then made an arrangement with Joseph to revisit the eclectus parrot site in the hope of better photographic light. We headed off again around 4.00pm. Again the light was poor but nevertheless we enjoyed a magical time with a myriad of birds on the side of the mountain in the rainforest. The other magic moment for the day was on my way back to my room after dinner when I saw fireflies. It is 30 years since I last saw them! They make me think Peter Pan and Tinkerbelle are real. It’s now bedtime and steady rain is falling again. I hope the weather is better in the morning.

Sunday 29 January 2012- Another frightfully early start but at least the light looked more favourable for photography. Just Joseph and myself, back up the track to the little village, picked up the young boy and head off up the hill. We saw two lovely violaceous coucals on the way up, calling together in a duet, and being answered by another pair across the valley, it was quite enchanting, and what a peculiar bird! Then we were up on the ridge but there weren’t many eclectus parrots about, and certainly not the trees full of females that we saw yesterday. A few squawks and handclaps from Joseph and the eclectus parrots came in to see what the fuss was about. Mostly males they circled around and around overhead. With a bit more coaxing a few females joined in. Only really opportunities for flight shots in the ever changing light. Then some eastern black-capped lorys joined in, it was a sight to see. Four hornbill sauntered across the valley in single file. After about an hour we headed back down but I still didn’t get was I was after. A last gasp as a final eclectus parrot flew over was rewarded with a lovely flight shot. We headed back down to the grasslands and oil palm and had good views of black bittern, brahminy kite and buff-bellied mannikin. As we headed up the road back toward Walindi and breakfast, the rain came down. After some persistence I’d been rewarded with quite good photos of eclectus parrots, very satisfying. I was back in the beach haus at Dami by midday. Heavy rain fell for much of the afternoon. I began to get ready to leave tomorrow. I cleaned the soles of my walking boots in the hope of a smooth entry through quarantine tomorrow. They were wet and stinky so I resorted to a short stint in the gas oven in an attempt to dry them out for the journey. All my clothes were dank and beginning to smell after several days of wet and very humid weather. Nothing was going to dry out without a good dose of sun which had been conspicuously absent the last three days.

Female Eclectus Parrot, Male below

Monday 30 January 2012 - Much rain overnight and a solid downpour making driving treacherous on our way to the airport. Neither Muram nor I were confident of getting out of Hoskins today, the weather was absolutely foul and the ground sodden everywhere. The little tin shed airport was total chaos, the roof leaked inside, where it was crowded with wet people porting all manner of produce and belongings, and trying to get on planes. The computer system was down, total anarchy as customers took charge behind the desk and started handing out boarding passes! I finally managed to get one, even Moses my driver was looking more worried than me, I was one of the last to join the anxious passengers on the plane. Nevertheless we got out of Hoskins and into Port Moresby only 20 minutes late, with torrential rain there as well. Unfortunately the Air Nuigini plane we were supposed to fly down to Brisbane on had technical problems, and so it was 2½ late when we took off in the alternative Fokker100 to Brisbane, and I missed my connection to Adelaide and home. Another sleepless night in a hotel waiting for a flight…….