over 100sq. km creating the Pinde-
and yes, it was harder with less oxygen near the peak where you needed to really take care. Another PNG peak with one of the rarely visited but remaining survey cairns from 1963 is on Matawan (Mt Simpson) in the eastern Owen Stanley Range of Milne Bay. This cairn was established by the Australian Division of National Mappings, with PNG resident surveyor David Cook and his carriers walking in from coastal Rabaraba village. Such mountains as this are the domain of hunters or by the occasional survey of geologists, or by biologists to find what biodiversity they can uncover there before it disappears from our changing climate. Before the Matawan cairn was built, an Anglican priest who was also a botanist, Norman Cruttwell, was the first ‘dimdim’ (white person) to climb this peak in 1954. Rarities are often found on mountains and he found a showy white rhododendron that was subsequently named after him. When such a new species is found, a pressed part of the plant usually with flowers is collected as a voucher that is then deposited in various herbaria: in our own valuable collection in Lae, Kew in the UK, and Leiden in the Netherlands (as Indonesia was formerly the Dutch
At the cairn at the top of Mt Gillen, (Alhekulyele), at 944m overlooking Alice Springs, Australia, 1970
Aunde Lakes at 3550m. This is near the usual start point for the final climb of Mt Wilhelm where, in the middle of the night, preferably with a near full moon, you head off for the final climb. Before this I’d actually managed a couple of hours sleep on the floor under a few sheets of newspaper as a blanket in an old ANU hut after the walk in from Keglsugl. After coming from the coast, it is advised
3700m elevation, with the peak and surrounds covered by a glacier of ice that extended for
to spend at least a day to acclimatise to the thinner air, but I didn’t worry about that
The writer David Mitchell poses at the cairn at the peak of Mt Hack (Yarrngarri Arraindanha Vambata), 1086m, in Australia’s Flinders Ranges in 1983
East Indies). The voucher of this rhododendron shown is in the Edinburgh Herbarium. This flower also featured in a PNG stamp series from 1998. Another survey on this mountain by the herpetologist Fred Kraus in 2004
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