‘Where the Fakawee?’ A geologist’s tale by John Nethery

Printed by permission of the author of 'More Rocks in Our Heads', Andrew Drummond. Chillagoe-based geologist John Nethery John Nethery was born in 1946 and raised in country New South Wales, before attending UNSW in Sydney to graduate in Science (Geology) and with a Diploma in Education in 1969. He joined AIG Corporation, rising to General Manager – Minerals of AOG Minerals Ltd, exploring throughout Australia, Oceania and west Africa for gold, base metals, uranium and diamonds. Since 1997, as a consultant, he has explored, mainly for gold, throughout Australia and elsewhere in Oceania, South- East Asia, the Mediterranean region and briefly in western USA. In 1993, after 16 years living in Sydney, he moved to Chillagoe, North Queensland, and is still exploring for gold and base metals at this time. It was 1976. West Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Gold had been freed for trading as a commodity on the international market, so the price had risen. AOG Minerals was quietly building a portfolio of potential gold and uranium targets with three geologists: Don Berkman in the lead; Barry Boyd, getting on a bit as well; and me, the young pup at thirty years of age. We were thinking bulk tonnage-low grade porphyry systems. Ah! I must digress! That reminds me of the true story my friend and colleague Adrian Day told about sidling up to the bar in the Irvinebank pub in the mid-1970s. A wizened old prospector nodded and said “Geologist eh? Suppose you’d be chasing one of them large tonnage low grade deposits?” “Well yes actually”, was the educated response with a hopeful look. “Well I’ve gort just the one for you I am sure. It’s just out the road a bit. It’s awfully big aaaaaand it’s awfully low grade. Just up your alley.” Chuckles all around. Don Berkman still had the PNG ‘tiger by the tail’, having mounted a serious effort in the early 1970s that was stymied by the 1973 Oil Crisis. He was intrigued by the many reports of locals producing alluvial gold from the inland West Sepik Province. It was time for a foray to try to locate sources. Contractor Kingsley Burlinson and I set out to cover an area of about 1000 square kilometres between Amanab and Green River and across to the Irian Jaya border over a ten-week tropical holiday. I jest about the holiday, as those with experience of the place know PNG, in general, is no holiday; and West Sepik inland topography was still a pretty wild place, and perhaps, as the story goes, only a generation on from cannibalism. It was a good place to smile and be polite. Don had organised things pretty well through the local Patrol Officer, or Kiap, a young, enthusiastic, friendly oddball, Ray Lanaghan, originally a rural lad from Biloela in central Queensland. He was one of those different characters you meet in places like that. He had previously spent a season in Antarctica, so had volunteered for a change of climate. A big, strapping, curly red-head with an out of control beard, he was kiap, magistrate, bank manager and pretty much ran the Amanab primary school, where all the kids from far and wide would stay during the week days. He obviously was obsessed with the comic-strip character The Phantom because he had painted a life-size likeness of his hero pointing a pistol at you on every internal door of his house. We had flown into Amanab from Vanimo on the coast with all our gear and tinned bully beef, fish and rice; and twist tobacco to barter for vegetables. A sheet of marine plywood was the star attraction from which I proceeded to build a small sluice box, a lá Ion Idriess. Ray had broadcast our presence far and wide, so we were to be met at each tribal boundary by a local team of carriers, like a large-scale relay race of passing the baton. Kingsley and I planned to separate, each with an individual group of about half a dozen men, including a young high-school educated man who had a modicum of English, Pidgin and a local dialect or two: enough to hold four-way conversations. The plan was to do approximate 10-day looping traverses using Amanab as base camp. On the second day in Amanab, a youngish gentleman stumbled into the village with a spear through his back with the barbed head protruding out of his stomach. On enquiring we were given a gentle reminder, not that it was needed, that extramarital sex was off the agenda. He had made the special effort to get to the Kiap so as to be locked up to save his own skin. He was urgently flown out for medical attention. That’s the last I heard of him. The tribal boundaries were commonly fast-flowing creeks and the changeover of carrier crews from one tribe to the next did not always work smoothly. There was the issue of No-man’s-land, or should I say ‘No-man’s- water’, to consider. On several occasions I found myself stumbling to and fro through waist-deep water with packs on my head or shoulders, much to the quiet amusement of the assembled audiences on either side. In hindsight, I thought it analogous to a crowded Manchester versus Liverpool football match with me the star player in the middle. Their gold recovery methods were intriguing, as the principle of gravity did not seem to have caught on. A soft centred log split in half and hollowed out was the main implement used and that would be placed in a creek section which had a reasonable flow and some potential for a damming diversion. The gold-dirt would be shoveled in the upstream end and as the larger pieces of gold became visible with the water erosion they would be snatched and put in the mouth for safety. The same method was used with deep rimmed dishes. It was all visual. They didn’t seem to bother about fine gold recovery. The dirt was just loaded, and then water flow used to unearth the gold chunks. I think they paid about the equivalent of six dollars per annum for council fees so low recovery was not an issue. It was a source of great merriment, and I assume Newtonian awakening, when they saw how my flat-bottomed marine-ply sluice box worked with the coarse and fine gold sinking to the bottom and being caught behind the removable riffles. I trust I improved their production methods by leaving them my high-tech device at the end of the trip. Our prospecting methods were not dissimilar. Check every creek for mineralised rock floaters. Pan a dish to check for visible gold, then follow-up, if successful, with the sluice box. Collect a fine fraction silt sample to take back to a laboratory to analyse for indicator elements such as arsenic, copper, lead and zinc. If the panning and rock float examination were successful, then try to trace the trail back to a source area. Navigation was still quite difficult back then before the advent of satellite imagery and GPS. Border sensitivity was another issue given the recent takeover of West Papua by Indonesia. I had a good 1:100,000 scale topographic map with a big RESTRICTED emblazoned in red across the top (for those unfamiliar, the scale was 1 centimetre 1 kilometre) and a set of black and white aerial photographs that were also restricted. I still have them in my treasure trove. There was one embarrassing incident during a loop westward from Kamberatoro village. I had been playing Follow The Leader for several hours under the closed jungle canopy and we arrived at a major creek junction that determined our location. “Whoa fellas! We are in Indonesian territory.” The response was adamant: “This is our tribal land. Indonesia? Something nothing!” I considered it wise to back-track a couple of kilometres. I greatly admired their skill at catching fish. When we came to a quieter pool in a creek, they would down tools and poise along the bank. As an unsuspecting fish swam past, they would dive in with skillful adjustment for refraction in the water and never miss catching the prey with one hand. Fascinating. The other fascinating hunting skill was their sense of hearing a beast nearby (or was it sense of smell?). The whole group would down tools and disappear into the bush, yodeling and yelling. I would just sit under a tree and contemplate the universe or recent tectonics of the Torricelli Mountains, sometimes for an hour or more. They rarely missed their prey and they always came back eventually. I was amused that the head man of any group would often be carrying a shotgun, but without ammunition. I learnt later that ammunition had been banned to protect, to some extent, the dwindling wildlife. Accommodation was a combination of tent-fly camping and staying in villages. I was greatly impressed at how rapidly the men could construct a pole-bed with my canvas sleeve base. Sheer luxury! One night, while fly-camping about five kilometres from a village, half a dozen young women emerged out of the jungle in the pouring rain bearing food for their men. After a while it became apparent that the women were prepared to stay for the night and were going to sit out in the pouring rain all night. I hastily urged the men to bring them in from the weather. So, there we were thirteen people under a five by five metre tent fly. Cosy. They were very particular to keep the women on the far side away from the white man. One thing that did surprise me, considering their tribal insularity, was their friendliness towards me. I suppose I was a novelty to them, as their only other interaction with Europeans would be the very occasional visit from the Kiap and their own visits to Amanab or Green River. I was always made to feel welcome, given the use of a guest hut and invited to join them to share food. On the issue of food, I never had a worry. If it was meat it was always fresh, and the vegetables were picked daily. They certainly appreciated my rice and tinned fish. They caught me out once with bird’s-eye chilies. At one village the head man urged me to come to see his hut. He was obviously proud of his collection of arrows. I was informed about the use for each. This for bird. This for fish. This for quoll. There was one particularly nasty piece of work, with an intricate head fashioned from carved hardwood but with horrible rows of barbed vine fastened with some sort of congealed tree sap. When I gestured towards it, a big smile lit up his face. His head tilted back, and eyebrows lifted. Nothing was spoken. Didn’t need to be. I got the message. I met that same old man on a later visit to his tribal area. He was coming along a path in the opposite direction. There he was in all his splendour wearing nothing but a penis gourd and carrying a bow and arrows. A bone ornament through his nose. Several wives were floating along behind dressed in the standard lap-lap each with a babe suckling a breast. A bunch of kids tearing about like bees in a bottle, each with their little bow and arrows. We stopped for a four-way conversation. “I was on my way to see you. I need to go back and have a more detailed look around that ridge up the back. Where are you folk going?” The answer epitomizes the huge cultural jumps taking place in PNG. “We are heading into Amanab for a Parents and Citizens meeting at the school”. Our search, like many, was unsuccessful in defining any large potential sources. The gold seemed to be mainly sourced from small high-grade quartz veins. There is still no significant mine in that area. Not very far away, the huge Frieda River deposits are still in the mine planning stage – more than five decades after discovery, and while I was still at university. And me? I am still involved, 44 years on, in looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the West Sepik, although not in the same area. (Photo: Border Road West Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea.)

‘Where the Fakawee?’ A geologist’s tale by John Nethery

Industry Queensland

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