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In 1945 the remote northern Maluku island of Morotai - now rarely visited by outsiders - had become a major staging point in the Pacific Campaign as the Allies mopped up the Japanese forces. Thousands of Allied servicemen passed through the base on the island's southern extremity.
In time, we baby boomers would pore over Dad's Box Brownie snaps - smuggled home in defiance of military regulations - and yellowing press clippings, absorbing the polysyllabic place names of the new nation they had known as the Dutch East Indies: Balikpapan and Bandjarmasin, Halmahera and Morotai. The first two, colonial outposts on Borneo, have grown into sprawling, ragged oil boom towns. Halmahera and Morotai remain as far flung extremities of the archipelago - slumbering forgotten by the outside world, fifty years on.
The Moluccas - once famed as the fabulous Spice Islands of the Indies - lie scattered across the waters between Australia, New Guinea and the Philippines. Guidebooks hint but briefly at a verdant tropical landscape and a colourful history - crumbling European forts, rugged volcanic islands, clear waters and jungles pulse with exotic fish, corals, birds, plants and animals.
Here was reason enough to plan a detour from the better-known attractions of Bali, but in truth I nurtured the irrational urge to reach Morotai.
The historic spice trading island of Ternate was once the seat of a powerful Islamic sultanate, but now the peeling palace of the former sultan looks decidedly faded. The town clings precariously to the flanks of Mount Gamalama, an active volcano rising straight up from the sea floor.
What's this...? Here's a blackboard outside a Ternate shipping agency offering an overnight ferry sailing to Tobelo on the other side of Halmahera, with, even better, a few hours in port at Daruba on equally remote Morotai. Boarding at six this evening. Terima kasih, thanks very much, just the ticket.
It was the lure of spices that drew Columbus across the Atlantic, although Magellan was the first European to reach Maluku, the land of many kings. Subsequent Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and British fleets fought to the death to win the lucrative trade in nutmeg and cloves. Today, the islands are dotted with ruined fortresses and the peoples' faces and traditions betray the mixing of these invaders with the earlier Malay and Melanesian stock.
So determined were the Dutch to control the spice trade in the mid-17th century that they traded the tiny, remote Banda Islands from Britain, handing over the equally tiny and remote island of Manhattan. What a deal!
Profuse animal and birdlife reveals shared origins with the Australasian species of the island of New Guinea - birds of paradise, the brilliantly coloured domestic and lories, and even dwarf tree kangaroos. Here the pioneer naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, identified the transition between the flora and fauna of Asia and of Australasia, in the process describing the islands thoroughly than anyone has done since.
Morotai's hazy grey mountainous backbone stretched for many miles in the early morning light as the ferry chugged toward the small port of Daruba. A kampong, a jumble of humble wooden homes on stilts, spread around the bay, dotted with rusting wrecked landing craft on which children gambol.
Daruba materialised into just two streets and a jetty, beneath an incongruous church tower. Houses still incorporated wartime scrap materials and from these materials people also made trinklets for sale to their few visitors. One family kept half a Japanese Zero fighter rusting in their backyard.
People were genuinely friendly and hospitable without the "Hello Mister" banter that can become a little tiresome elsewhere.
As Daruba receded behind us once more, fellow passengers pointed out the densely forested promontory where the Allied base once stood. Suma-suma, a low sandy island, was proudly pointed out as one-time headquarters of General MacArthur. There were many more stories about Morotai related as we sailed on towards Halmahera: about giant man-eating sea-crocodiles, up to five yards long, said to have been caught offshore or about the negrito tribal people, orang asli suku bangsa, who live deep in the hills. Most poignant was the one about Sergeant Nakamura of the Imperial Japanese Army, who was ambushed in 1974, still clutching his gun and three unspent cartridges... in an aside to reporters visiting East Timor, Defence Minister General Murdani confirmed a similar episode.
Nestling under emerald ranges, shrouded in cloud, Tobelo put forward its best front for our approach through a cluster of small forested coral islands. Halmahera's capital comprised no more than three or four streets and a kampong along the beach.
A few miles up the coast at Luari lay an exquisite little palm-fringed cove, perfectly circular and revealed to me by a friendly local policeman who spoke surprising good English and invited me into his neat bamboo-thatch home.
Hotels in these parts offer full board, and I was never disappointed in the meals served, although I ate a lot of seafood - baked, grilled or curried. At Tobelo the comfortable, medium-standard Hotel Pantai Indah charged about nine US dollars. The name means "beautiful beach", and although the place was built out on stilts over a grubby, muddy estuary, next morning's tropical sunrise witnessed from the landing just about earned the name.
From Tobelo the dirt track south to Kao wound through newly-planted coconut plantations. The village sat on a deep inlet forming a superb harbour dotted with wrecked ships. The Imperial Japanese Navy had established a base at Kao, locals said. It was easy to see why. Old-timers reminisced about helping hide Allied stragglers as though it had all happened just a few years back.
Kao's wide sleepy lanes were rarely disturbed by the sound of an engine. Dug-out canoes were drawn up on the beach where children played on rusting wartime gun-carriers. A simple guest house served up a large platter full of succulent fresh shrimps for lunch.
Rather than wait for the boat south I opted for the weekly flight back to Ternate. Before sunrise next morning we bounced down a set of wheel ruts to reach the grassy airstrip, and watched the sun come up. Once my booking had been entered in the local Merpati Airlines agent's note book, tickets seemed to be superfluous and one or two people stood in the aisle of the tiny, frail aircraft as we became airborne.
On again south to the bustling provincial capital of Ambon, where 694 members of Gull Force who died in Japanese captivity now lie buried amidst the peaceful, brooding lawns and gravestones of the Allied War Cemetery maintained by the Australian Government. And that is another story...
More stories.© 1990 All words and images appearing on this website are copyright Philip Game (unless otherwise credited) and may not be reproduced in any form, whole or part, without the author's prior consent in writing.