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
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