Skulduggery

Mark Shand's 1987 travel with two companions to a relatively remote part of Irian Jaya in Indonesia (Irian Jaya is the western half, Papua New Guinea is the eastern side of the same island).

It is a very laid back style of writing, and to a certain degree that is consistent with Shand's attitude and so the whole trip. There is no doubt it is legitimately an interesting and challenging trip with some real danger in dealing with the natives. The travel further up river to meet the headhunters than the local missionaries have travelled before.

There are a few odd things however, and more than anything it shows how attitudes have changed since the '80s. The three things that suck out for me, was how much they focussed on wanting to trade to buy relics from the natives. Especially they wanted to buy skulls. This seemed pretty insensitive to be buying a grandfathers skull from a young man who wanted a parang (machete).

Similarly the three men spend a fair amount of time enticing the young native girls out of their huts to photograph them, paying particular attention to the fact they were topless. They really seemed to take any opportunity to photograph the girls in a state on undress, whether they were washing in the river or marching for their school.

The third thing was the three mens blatant smuggling of the artefacts (especially the skulls) out of the country when this was explicitly against the local laws.

More than the three examples above, it was perhaps the way there seemed to be no reluctance in writing about it. In fairness perhaps Shand saw this ultimately as honesty - if it was the way it happened, and they were the decisions they made, why change it for the book? I suppose there is a legitimacy around that.

Notwithstanding the above issues - which to be fair were presented in a funny enough way, and with some self deprecating humour, the book was well written and interesting. It plays a bit on Shand's relationship with the Monarchy (Shand is Camilla's brother), with the guide regularly using the line that Shand is very close to the Queen of Britain, so [whoever they are trying to get to cooperate] had better toe the line.

A short book which I would probably describe as a Redmond O'Hanlon lite.

3.5 stars, rounded up.