Skulduggery - Hardcover

Mark Shand

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224025015 ISBN 13: 9780224025010

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1987

Synopsis

When Don McCullin and Mark Shand decided to get away from it all, they ended up on the other side of the world - in Indonesia. Together with Harry Fane, Shand's business partner, they settled on the Asmat region of Irian Jaya, the western half of New Guinea. Marked 'Relief Data Incomplete' on the map, and the home of the reputedly ferocious nomadic tribe, the orang hutan, it promised 'headhunters, crocodiles and booty'. They collected a cunning Batak guide, Deo, fat as a Buddha, and a motley local crew. Then, armed only with a first-aid kit, and T-shirts, beads and tobacco for trading, they plunged into the dark heart of a cannibal country. Shand gives a vivid and refreshingly candid account of their fitful progress in a vibrating canoe (nicknamed the Dildo), stopping at villages along the Brassa and Kolff rivers and the Casuarina coast. It is a story of drama and farce, of compassion and earthy high spirits, of fractious muddles and derring-do. In a race against time and a shrinking budget, McCullin takes a series of photographic studies, while Shand and Fane compete to bag the best bargains in spearheads, feather G-strings, orchids and carvings, and Shand adds to his own collection of snaps 'Private Parts of Primitive People'. Tempers fray as they endure steamy heat, legions of mosquitoes, icy showers, stinking mud, and long, cramped hours in the canoe. McCullin maintains his sanity with the luxuries of clean underwear and prepacked meals, while his more pragmatic companions abandon washing altogether and live off stomach-churning local stews. They find themselves in a succession of scrapes: they argue with a crocodile, are terrorized by a giant spider, and Shand narrowly escapes a noisome fate in a latrine. A snubbed officer of bananas brings them within a hair's breadth of being perforated with spears, and some nifty shuffling of biscuit tins (containing skulls) saves them from incarceration in a jungle jailhouse. They meet lager-swilling missionaries, negotiate with a whole village of headhunters, the heads of their nearest and dearest tucked neatly under their arms, and tangle with the evil Augustine. At last, they track down the orang hutan, possibly the first white men t do so. Staring into a hundred pairs of gleaming eyes in the silence of a gloomy hut, they are transported back in time to another world. The trio live to tell the tale. This book, with Shand's enthralling text and McCullin's magnificent photographs, is a riveting chronicle of their exploits.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark Shand has worked as a jackaroo in Australia, and at Sotheby's, has competed the London-Sydney motor-race and been shipwrecked in the South Pacific. At present he divides his time between the London art world and his home in Bali. Don McCullin has taken his renowned photographs, for which he has won numerous awards, all over the world.

Synopsis:

An account of a journey through deepest Indonesia in which the explorer comes face to face with cannibals, crocodiles and tracks down the Orang Utan. From the author of TRAVELS ON MY ELEPHANT, first published in 1987.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0224025015
• ISBN 13: 9780224025010
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 145