Our Indonesian guide, with a parang (machete) in hand, dropped vertically in front of me, just brushing my face, while out of my peripheral vision I saw someone cartwheeling down through the trees. Then, within about two seconds, six people had vanished. I was alone… Read more
I was crouched in a long boat somewhere up a rainforest-swathed river in Kalimatan, Borneo, when I saw it – a ‘living’ example of a fossil leaf pack I had once seen in New Zealand. Several years before, I had been exploring down a little… Read more
I was sitting in a ger in Mongolia when I put up my hand to go to Indonesia. My ulterior motive was to get a chance to get into the Indonesian rainforests. Back in 1988 I had read Eric Hansen’s book “Stranger in the forest:… Read more
The ‘high-wall’ of a mine has been the undoing of many a geologist (if an opencast mine is targeting something flat and dipping, like a coal-seam, the high-wall is the side of the pit above the deepest bed you are uncovering). Sometimes the undoing is accidental – the… Read more
West Timor – Mine of Women, and the Palm-Wine Bomb I never thought to see a mine run by women. By why not? And why? Timor is an island north of Australia, and owes its existence to the geological collision between Australia and Indonesian archipelago… Read more
Roni is a Batak. This is a christian tribe that lives in the Lake Toba area of the otherwise Muslim Sumatra. The Bataks are famous for their relaxed, easy-going, easy to get along with anyone nature. Roni is just the kind of guy a geologist wants… Read more