New book - Cannibals, Crocodiles and Cassowaries

Ross from Kerikeri District

Cannibals, Crocodiles and Cassowaries.
A New Zealand Forest Ranger in the Jungles of Papua New Guinea

This book, Cannibals, Crocodiles and Cassowaries, is about Ross’s time in pre-independence Papua New Guinea and captures a particular time in history when real adventure was still possible, and a young man’s attitude made those adventures happen. His retelling is as fresh as if it happened yesterday and there is never a dull moment.

Ross has a writing style that is relaxed and intimate, and he invites you to come along for the ride. He is passionate about people and places and the people he has encountered, and he spins a great yarn.

The book includes some 60 coloured photographs from Ross’s vast collection, which richly illustrate his writing.

Synopsis:
Cannibals, Crocodiles and Cassowaries
A New Zealand Forest Ranger in the Jungles of Papua New Guinea

It is 1967 in Papua New Guinea.

Despite never having left New Zealand before, Ross takes to living and working in the jungle like he was born there, right down to learning Pidgin and eating bush meat from some particularly suspicious sources.

From hair-raising experiments with stump-blasting to being caught in the arrow-fire of a tribal battle, Ross’s life is never dull. He has a tug-of-war with a reef shark over his dinner catch, witnesses (and photographs) a young men’s initiation ritual that few non-natives have ever seen, visits cannibals and head-hunters in their isolated villages, gets caught in storms at sea in an open boat, climbs to ancient rock-paintings and burial caves, experiences the mysterious power of native superstition, races against time to get death adder victims to hospital, witnesses more post-mortems than he cares to remember, gets arrested in PNG’s Eastern Highlands for photographing a chain gang at work (and talks his way free with photos intact), goes crocodile hunting with a barking dog for bait, seeks out the isolated tribe that suffers from the “laughing death” (kuru), encounters fascinating customs among isolated tribes, and collects the artefacts that formed the backbone of the National Museum of New Zealand’s PNG collection at that time.

When he encounters jungle bridges that have lost their decks, he drives his Holden across the stringers! When asked by the NZ National Museum’s Curator of Pacific Ethnology to procure or photograph a rare fertility figure that no-one in PNG is even prepared to talk about, Ross makes a secretive deal with a witchdoctor that results in him smuggling one out of a remote village wrapped in his spare shirt.

Price: $29.95