Take me away Communing with the orangutans of Borneo Beerwah resident Jane MacGibbon recently responded to our community callout for inspiring travel related stories we could share with our readers while international travel is still on our future dreams list. Jane has generously shared some insights into a fascinating research trip she undertook in 1986 to study wild Indonesian orangutans at the Camp Leakey Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in Kalimantan, Borneo. Following her childhood dream of becoming a zoologist, Jane had always been fascinated by great apes and was pleased to take up the opportunity for her and her young son Tim to join Professor Birute Galdikas, a long-term researcher of wild Indonesian orangutans, and her team at Camp Leaky. They flew from Auckland, New Zealand to Jakarta and then onto the island of Borneo, landing on a grass strip near Pangkalanbun, a tiny settlement in southern Kalimantan. From there, they had a short drive to the town of Kumai, where they caught a longboat, steered by a couple of lads who looked about 13 years old. Jane said the river at Kumai was huge at almost half a kilometre wide. However, after about 20 minutes they turned into one of its tributaries, the Sekonyer River, a
much narrower channel surrounded by denser rainforest. “Very quickly we began to see wildlife moving amongst the trees and occasionally along the river edges. We’d see birds, insects, spider monkeys and weird looking proboscis monkeys. “Our level of excitement and the adrenalin rush of moving into the unknown increased as the width of the channel decreased. “One of the boys shouted and pointed excitedly at a large object in the trees– it was our very first wild orangutan sighting,” Jane said. Their destination at Camp Leakey in the Tanjung Puting National Park, the largest and most diverse protected coastal tropical heath and peat swamp forest in Borneo, took another three hours to reach by river. Jane said the area was a veritable hothouse of eco-diversity, originally declared as a game reserve in 1935 and in 1982 a national park. “We disembarked from our longboat onto a wooden boardwalk, which disappeared into the bush. There were no humans in sight, but sitting on the bridge was a large orangutan cradling a tiny baby. I was gobsmacked and we stood just staring at this amazing pair as the longboat disappeared back down the river,” Jane said. This encounter was the beginning of three months research in the rainforest.
Camp Leakey, the track leading into the forest where the orangutans were tracked Glasshouse Country & Maleny News
Tim and Jane on an island in the Thousand Islands where they did some diving and snorkelling
Jane said she got used to battling mosquitos, occasional tummy upsets and continual sweating from the excessive humidity, and the daily late afternoon deluges. She also remembered going without showers (washing consisted of soaping up beside the river then jumping in to rinse off) and eating predominantly fruit, fish and lots of rice! Jane said it was hard to know how to describe her time at Camp
Leakey, as it was quite surreal, tough at times but overall an incredibly wonderful experience.
Borneo orangutan 9
