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“I could have boarded a plane in Melbourne and disembarked in Manila in 12 hours. But if I had done that – flown from ‘A’ to ‘B’ – everything beneath would have gone unseen. Why travel from ‘A’ to ‘B’ in the air when you have the entire alphabet to choose from on the ground?”

Meandering to Manila

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Meandering to Manila was my discovery tour. I travelled on truck-like buses, dodgy planes, dilapidated trains, rust-bucket cargo ships, even canoes through Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, Singapore and Borneo. It took me 18 months to reach the Philippines. Along the way, I suffered malaria, dysentery, and kidney stones.

 

This was the mid-1970s. I was a young radio and newspaper journalist, so I packed a portable typewriter, a small cassette recorder, and spare cassettes, typewriter ribbons, and batteries in my backpack. As I travelled, I wrote letters home about the things I saw and did, and the people I met along the way. 

I was the first white man ever seen by children of ex-headhunters in remote Borneo

“In seconds, (the children) had fled in all directions into the undergrowth. Most were naked, some wore native skirts of braided leaves and grass. (Now) the boldest of the children gingerly comes forward, touches my white arm and, for a few seconds, tentatively strokes the unfamiliar hair on my lower arm. It’s a signal for the others. Immediately, I am being stroked and viewed up-close… I am the object of discovery.”
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