The Cassowary Incident
The Cassowary Incident Papua New Guiney Western Highlands mid 1992+
In the early 1990s I worked on the Kutubu oil production project. Mostly on the pipeline and unloading platform. The pipeline went from the highlands at about 900m to a small platform 30 km out in the Gulf of Papua where there were facilities to load oil tankers.
PNG was a bit of a wild place where there are people who when I was there grew up without any contact with the "modern" world. My driver while I was in the highlands described his first encounter with outsiders when he was a teenager. In many parts they have a reputation of being pretty wild. The Nationals in most cases are traders with sophisticated understanding of "capitalism" and a keen understanding of "compensation". They also come from a world where if you feel entitled to something that another fellow has then you knock them over the head and take it. At least that was the feeling amongst the foreigners.
On one trip I was attempting to commission the pipeline receipt station at the Central Production Facilities (CPF). This included metering and pumping facilities. Not much pumping was required as there was a little hill about 100m in the first few km but once over that it was downhill all the way 171 km to Kopi then down the Kikori and Nakari Rivers and out to sea a further 94km to the Kumul platform.
My discipline was instrumentation and control. The way these things invariably work is that the construction people build the plant then vanish and leave getting it going to the likes of me. This involves lots of boring work going through every instrumentation loop and testing all the bits of it. Hours, days, weeks with nose in control cabinets checking out the spaghetti wiring. Then a few nervous moments starting things up with fingers crossed.
I had been living in the Ridge Camp for a few weeks by this time. The camp was about another 400m above the CPF about 1/2 hour in low range 4wd. The camp was wonderfully set up for about 3000 people. About 1/2 of them workers. The rest there to look after you. There was some interest in the mess this particular night as a squad of heavily armed militia had been seen in the camp and it was rumoured that there was trouble brewing amongst the nationals unhappy about the compensation or some other issue.
The next day I was working at our site when I heard a commotion. Our site was a few hundred meters along a track below the CPF. There was a backhoe going flat out coming down the hill with a crowd of national blokes following it. They appeared to be armed with whatever - shovels etc. It crossed my mind that the smart thing to do might be to have climbed into one of the cubicles and hold the door closed behind me. Unfortunately, the cubicles were too small, so I watched them approach. Needless to say, they weren’t interested in me, and they ran past.
After a little while I twigged that they were chasing a Cassowary which had been unlucky enough to wander onto the site. They were after it. They are apparently highly prised being good eating and worth quite a bit as spare parts in the tourist markets.
The bird had the sense to head directly uphill shortly after it passed me. The guy in the backhoe who had the lead sprang out and gave chase. The rest of the mob all charged up the hill. When I say hill, I mean something near vertical and going straight up for 100s of meters. Although all these guys looked supremely fit soon it was only a few in serious pursuit. They didn't have a chance and much more slowly the mob made its way back to work.
I went back to work until it rained a couple of inches at 3:00 which it did most all afternoons. The water would vanish as it was so steep and limestone country full of holes. We were high enough that it was not usually very hot even though not far off the Equator but always wet misty and a bit spooky with the jungle looming on all sides.
