The Rainforest: Burgeoning Life, Sudden Death

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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People often ask me about the dangers of the rainforest. They expect me to mention tigers, or something really exciting like that. (I’ve never seen one.) I am more likely to mention malaria-carrying mosquitoes, or the spirochete leptospirosis. (Although I must admit hearing a female elephant trumpet her displeasure nearby is definitely a different experience to hearing one in the zoo. And I wasn’t at all surprised to see grown men scatter – fast – at the sound.)

This has got to be a Malaysian Ent, right?

A great many Malaysians, though, will mutter about djinns or forest spirits as the thing they fear. In truth, death in the forest is likely to be much more prosaic. And on this trip, I certainly had a narrow escape from serious injury, which might possibly even have been fatal. As it was, I escaped unscathed.

The road to Borneo Rainforest Lodge
And the cause? Something very boring. 
A falling branch. 
We were walking in single file. I had lagged behind the person in front (my assistant, Eileen) because I was chatting with the gentleman behind me, a tourist from UK. (Thanks, Merv. I owe you one.) It had rained heavily the night before, and a water-soaked branch – about as thick as my forearm and several metres long – came crashing down from a huge height. It landed several metres behind Eileen, a mere arm’s length in front of me and shattered under the force of its fall.
A split second later and I would have been toast, or at least someone with a very, very bad headache. The heaviest, thickest part of the branch was squarely in the middle of the narrow trail. When I picked it up later, I was amazed at just how heavy it was.
A determined tree doesn’t let a rock bother its quest for life.
 And the irony? We were walking down the Coffincliff trail at the time.
Such is life.

Working conditions: they can vary

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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On the very same project I am now working on, we were once offered free rooms in the staff quarters of a tourist site*. The only rooms available (for my two male colleagues and me) were ones no one wanted.

And no wonder no one wanted them. Shared bathroom facilities with no hot water (and we were at 5,000m asl –— oops, that should have read 5,000ft, as has been pointed out to me: 1,560m). The shower head was missing. Bathroom was basic cement in tones of grey, with no working light. No bed sheets, no curtains, no towels, no nothing…

Someone had bashed a hole in the bedroom wall. Someone – perhaps the same person – had written in lettering half a metre high above my bed: FUCK OFF. I shared the sentiment. (Mind you, the view out of the window was stunning.)

And then there’s Borneo Rainforest Lodge, where I have just spent a couple of glorious days:

View from the verandah dining area
My balcony jacuzzi…
One of the chalets
River view from my balcony
Another view from my balcony
The main lodge building overlooking the river

The Borneo gibbons woke me every morning, followed by the Rhinoceros Hornbills flying in to the trees opposite my room, on the other side of the river.

Sipping my early morning coffee, I drink it all in… Yep, it’s all worth it.

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*Not, I hasten to add, the same site as the one pictured above!

One of my favourite places

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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The canopy walkway at Borneo Rainforest Lodge.
Dawn in the mist. The morning sounds of gibbons.
Breakfast while watching a trogon, or a pygmy squirrel.
The ringing call of the Chestnut-necklaced Partidge.
The monotonous tone of the Black and Crimson Pitta.
The diabolical laughter of the Helmetted Hoirnbill.
Looking down on the river
Looking down on the canopy and the walkway from far above in the tree
I am privileged. I have been there. I have heard the sounds of the Bornean rainforest.

The First day on the job…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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You all know that I work hard, right? And I have a boring job where nothing ever happens…
Like on Monday. I flew out from Kuala Lumpur to the eastern coastal town of Lahad Datu, Sabah. There we were met by a 4WD from Borneo Rainforest Lodge, Danum Valley…
 
Which is one of my favourite places ever. And it is in the heart of Borneo.
So we are driving along when a 3 metre long King Cobra crosses the road in front of us. Our driver, Calixtus, stops the car. And while we are looking…
…a Crested Serpent Eagle flies down, legs outstretched to grab it. The snake zips away like it was pursued by death – which indeed it was. The eagle misses. It sits in front of us on the road, disgustedly shaking his head.
We wait until it decides to move so we can drive on.
And some time later, after we’ve collected a few brilliant bird sightings – pair of Rhinoceros Hornbills, a family of 7 Bushy-crested, a Wreathed and a pair of Black Hornbills, a murder of 7 Slender-billed Crows –  we see this: 
 
(So I was excited, ok? You try to take a photo out of a car window in a hurry with a digital pocket camera!) 
The female crossed the road first, and the male orang utan wasn’t going to leave her, so he hurried in pursuit.

 But hurrying is tiring…

After that there was a scatter of Bearded Pigs, a full grown Sambar Deer, another lot of panicked pigs, and finally we were there, just as the granddad of all tropical downpours decided to pour down.

We had arrrived. As I say, it’s a hard life…

More about that memoir I talked about yesterday

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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The book is At Home in the World. It is by Joyce Maynard, and the man who sucked her into his realm of total adoration was J.D.Salinger. (I hasten to say no physical abuse was ever involved here, not that its absence lessens his crime.) Do read it if you can get hold of it. It’s fascinating and Maynard is a fine and honest writer.

Here are some extracts from what Maynard herself said about the furore it generated:

“It appeared that to many of my critics the sole significant event of my life had been sleeping with a great man. This was disheartening not just personally, but for what that portrayal of me and my story indicated about those writers’ perceptions of women. One day I hope some feminist scholar will examine the way in which a woman’s recounting of her history is so often ridiculed as self-absorbed and fundamentally unimportant…”

“… I believe it is a measure of the hostility toward women is still deeply woven into the texture of our culture that when female writer gives voice to the struggles that are the stuff of women’s lives, she is so often dismissed as emotional, self indulgent, and trivial. One need not look far for examples of male writers who have written freely and with no small measure of self-absorption about the territory of personal experience, who are praised for their courage and searing honesty…”

“…The pursuit of privacy has been portrayed by many as evidence of purity of character, just as the refusal to bow to the genteel notion of secret-keeping has been depicted as inappropriate and invasive—a profound betrayal of trust. I have come to believe that sometimes what is truly inappropriate and invasive are certain activities on the part of the very individuals who will later invoke their sacred privacy as a cloak for the concealment of their behavior. To suggest that an individual enjoys immunity from scrutiny or accountability for his actions because he holds some position of power (whether as a priest, a professor, a politician, or a man of great wealth or accomplishment) is to clear the way for the exploitation of the very people most vulnerable to influence and manipulation—generally, the young. There lies the true betrayal of trust…
…So long as we question a woman’s right to her own story, we allow the perpetuation of the same dangerous and damaging patterns generations before us experienced.”

So does a writer have the right to write about her own life?

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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I have just read a fascinating memoir. The writer is a novelist and essayist in her own right, but in this book she concentrates on her own life and the way it was (mostly adversely) affected by the machinations of a manipulative very much older man, who twisted her thinking and her perceptions of herself in ways that tainted her life for years and years, even though she only lived with him for a year before he unceremoniously tossed her out.

It wasn’t until her own daughter (from a later marriage) was 18 that she really confronted what had been done to her, “the dark side of the Pygmalion myth” as another woman writer remarked.

There is no doubt that her account keeps as close as a memoir can to the truth – she had the man’s letters, and carbon copies of her replies to remind her of his manipulations, after all. And since her memoir was published, there has been evidence that she wasn’t the only 18 year old that was prey to this man’s colossal arrogance and ego. (He was 53 when they met).

Yet, when she published her memoir, many people villified her for making such things public. The man was known to be intensely reclusive, hating publicity of any kind. She was attacked in the media, brutally, for daring to write the memoir.

So what do you think? Does a writer have a right to tell the story of her own life, even if those she writes about don’t come off very well in the account?

Back to Tasmania

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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To me, one of the most fascinating and wonderful experiences was how much wildlife we saw, and I don’t mean just the birds.
Like this Green Rosella, endemic to Tasmania

Many people, on coming to Australia from elsewhere, are disappointed. They expect to see kangaroos every day and are surprised to find it’s not so easy, even when you actively go looking. At least, not wild ones. Part of the reason for this is that most Australian marsupials are nocturnal.

Green Rosellas in the leaves…
Tasmania is different. You see things in broad daylight. Everywhere.

We tripped over wombats, had to stop for echidnas trundling across the road, stepped around wallabies in parking lots, said good morning to Tasmanian Pademelons outside our door in the snow, and even saw the magnificent Forester Kangaroo, which is now uncommon in Tasmania.

And one that did pose nicely

And of course, there were birds too. We had obliging endemics like the parrots above, in the historical site of Pt Arthur.

Lapwing stalks away from the camera

 Or the Masked Lapwings, who appear to loathe having their photos taken, yet were all over the place.
In fact you had to be careful not to tread on their eggs, or their fluffy young.
 
There were Ubiquitous “robins” – actually flycatchers – on every fencepost it seemed at times: pink ones and brown ones and flame ones and scarlet ones.

Currowongs fixed us with greedy eyes every time we stopped for a picnic. You know, the ones that make you feel guilty about not feeding the highly unsuitable junk food.

Pademelons

Wombat mum and offspring, Cradle Mtn
Black Currawong

Scarlet Robin, Freycinet
Bennett’s Wallaby in the parking lot
Echidna

…Bennett’s with young
Sperm whale remains on the beach in Mt William Nat.Pk

There was even a sperm whale…

I do apologise for the quality of the photos: I have only a tiny digital pocket camera.

This field was actually dotted with eating-machines – six wombats.

Sometimes people are so stupid I can’t believe it.

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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A friend sent me 2 news clippings yesterday. One was about a call to release 80 women from jail in Malawi – their crime? Witchcraft.

(Now let’s get one thing straight. People may play at witchcraft, and believe in witchcraft. But it doesn’t actually work. It’s on the same level as seeing fairies at the bottom of the garden.  If you believe in witchcraft, then I have news for you – you are gullible and apparently incapable of applying critical thinking to what you are told.  My advice? Go read Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-haunted World” and then come back and argue with me if you still believe in mumbo-jumbo.
I am fond of saying that I write fantasy: I don’t believe in it. It’s called entertainment, yanno?)

There have been cases in Malaysia where people have been murdered by “witches” (we call them bomoh here) – but always they have been killed by, well, more conventional methods. Like an axe. More often, people are murdered by others trying to remove the “black magic” that has “bewitched” the innocent. You know, like beating them to death, which happened in a recent case.

Unfortunately you sometimes – no, often – get idiots who should know better believing in this stuff, like this “doctor” who has evidently never seen a skilled magician before. He is right about one thing though, the power of the mind to aid healing. But I believe this latter is explicable by science, not mumbo jumbo. (And why does he marvel at broken bones mending without traction? Nobody touched my broken collar bone. It has mended. Monkeys routinely break bones in their life in the wild, and many of them heal without the aid of a doctor and live to a ripe old age.)

Anyway, why am I getting all het up over this?

Because of the second article my friend sent me. In this it is suggested, by a couple of gullible people who can’t apply critical thinking to what they are told, that Malaysia should draft laws to ensure that those who practise black magic and cause harm or death be prosecuted like offenders under criminal law. (My comment: even though magic doesn’t actually work, yanno…) Unfortunately, the people who made the suggestion are not without influence.

What might the end result be? Innocent people going to jail for crimes that never happened. Like, apparently, in Malawi.

I am hoping Malaysia has more sense. 

But sometimes I despair – that ghastly book “The Secret” by an Australian con artist successful writer was a best seller here.