Almost exactly three years since leaving the UK, I was about to fulfil a dream of flying one of the world’s best bush planes in the most extreme and challenging environments this planet can offer. Papua was where all the best flying happened and the most crazy stories were told. The last three years had been a warm up, and I was just getting started.

Extract from Flying from Shangri-La by Matt Dearden

I commissioned a professional editor a few months ago and have gone through all the edits, corrections and suggestions they made to the manuscript. I’ve also gone through all the thousands of photos and videos I took during my seven years in Indonesia and have the book in the pre-type set stage. This is the final stage before it’s sent for printing. Of course if I only released it as an eBook/on Kindle, I could skip this step. However, seeing as I’ve had a lot of requests for a proper hardback, I’m happy to continue working to ensure it’ll be professionally published for you all. I’ve also commissioned a book cover designer who I met over twelve years ago whilst in Indonesia and whose artwork of a Pilatus Porter I have hanging in my house. It feels right to have a more personal artist designing the cover and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

Currently, I have a small team of proofreaders giving the book a final read through to catch any grammatical, spelling or typos that got missed during the edit. Once this has been completed and a type setter commissioned, I should have a release date. I’m anticipating it to be in time for this summer, so hopefully not too long to wait now!

Meanwhile, here’s a few early comments I’ve had from those who’ve read the book:

Loving the book, it’s so good! You’ve got a really good voice and keep it light hearted, funny and very readable.

Hazel, Spain

It’s excellent! You are definitely an author as it’s so well written and a fascinating story not just about challenging aviation but also about life. The number of times you made me laugh or bring a tear to my eyes.

Gareth, UK

It’s wonderfully honest, which is a rarity – your openness about the mistakes/learning experiences you’ve made/had in the aircraft is refreshing, and I think allows the reader to have confidence in your sincerity. 

Charlie, UAE

If you’ve not already signed up to my blog for updates on the book, please consider doing so on the pop-up that appears on this page or on the subscribe page here.

Normal life these days is flying a Pilatus PC-12 executive turboprop from a London based airport which is exactly what I wanted to be doing when I left Indonesia in 2016. My love for Pilatus aircraft is no secret and the PC-12 is a testament to their status as the manufacturer of the world’s best single engine aircraft. I do miss flying the Porter, of course, as nothing can compare to that aircraft or the places I used to fly them but the PC-12 is about as interesting flying as you can get in Europe whilst still being able to cover distances. I still get to fly amongst mountains (although the Alps are a bit less green and a bit more white that the ones in Papua) and thus far have landed on many alpine airstrips includes Gstaad in the Swiss Alps and St. Johann in the Austrian Alps. Both not a patch on what Papua had to offer but I think my passengers these days appreciate being able to step out of the aircraft onto a sealed surface rather than a muddy patch of grass.

I still fly the Catalina flying boat although since the Loch Ness adventure, I am no longer a shareholder. Instead, I am now a qualified TRI (Type Rating Instructor) and help teach new shareholders how to master flying these magnificent machine. I do however own a share of a Piper Supercub. Some of you might recall me harping on about how lovely Cubs are from my Flyer Magazine writing days and so I had to back that all up with owning one. It doesn’t disappoint and, when it’s not broken, allows me to keep my tailwheel flying hand in.

Coming back to the book, I’m hoping to source an agent and publisher in the coming months but if that doesn’t pan out, I will be going down the self publishing route. It turns out writing a book is the easy part but getting it out there to you all is proving somewhat more work than I imagined. Fear not however, as I will persist with it as the stories within were very cathartic for me to write and I know you’ll enjoy reading them.

To keep up to date with how it’s progressing, please subscribe to the blog on the pop-up that appears on this page or using the link at the top. The more subscribers I can generate, the more likely I’ll be able to convince an agent my book’s worth publishing so please share with your friends and families. I’ll also try and post some other updates on what I’m getting up to these days including Catalina flying and Supercub shenanigans (if it ever gets fixed again!).

September 2016 will be my last month flying in Indonesia.

I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

After nearly seven years out in Indonesia I have achieved far more than I ever intended to. I came out here with the intention of staying for a couple of years to build up some hours before heading back home to Europe to go and fly for one of the airlines. However something happened when I got to Indonesia; I fell in love. I fell in love with the people, the flying, the Pilatus Porter, Papua and the madness of living in one of the world’s last frontiers. It has been an absolute blast but if I’m honest I have been yearning for a bit of normality and, more importantly, a new challenge for a while now.

But don’t worry, I have not gone off to an airline but something much more interesting and in keeping with my flying experience. I did flirt with the idea but I have lost count now of the number of seasoned airline folk I have met who have all tried to put me off the idea for one reason or another! The main thing for me however is I will be able to come back home to the UK now. This will allow me to establish that more normal life I have been yearning for whilst still doing some interesting and challenging flying. I will also be able to get back into the UK GA scene and of course do more warbird flying with the Catalina. And as an added bonus, it will be nice to have passengers who wear a few more items of clothing!

The Future

I will be combining this blog with my personal website https://mattdearden.co.uk to continue to keep a diary of my adventures so don’t worry, I’m not going to abandon it. I’ll also continue to write my column for Flyer Magazine for the foreseeable future and I might even get roped into giving a seminar or two on my adventures, so keep an eye out for that(!) In the mean time however, I will stay active on Twitter and Facebook and bring you my last few weeks of flying in the world’s last frontier here in Papua, Indonesia.

Ever since reading the book I had always wanted to go and find the wreckage. There are many reasons for this. Firstly I have always wondered if after seventy years any of it still existed, secondly I wanted to see exactly where the aircraft ended up crashing and finally I wanted to get an idea of what the survivors must have gone though following the crash. The mission to find the wreckage began last week, as most of my adventures begin, with a casual conversation on the apron with a fellow bush pilot. I have been putting off going to find the crash site because I had always heard it was buried deep in the jungle and was impossible to reach in a single day. However now I had some willing company, the mission was on!

I had some GPS coordinates from another pilot and a quick Google search confirmed the ones I had were accurate to within 300m according to a website mentioning the crash site. Curiously the one’s from Zuckoff’s book were quite a distance away (around 7km) but I put this down to wartime records and the coarseness of the coordinates in the book which lacked any decimal points. The mission was on, and a 5am departure was planned by pick-up truck from our house in Wamena to drive as close as we could to the coordinates.

Once our small party of five of us had driven as far as we could, we parked up and walked up to the first house we found to ask if anyone there knew about the aircraft that crashed in 1945. Hopefully this would confirm our coordinates were correct. The first chap we spoke to had absolutely no idea. Bugger! As there were no other houses around we were left with two options, get back in the truck and find another house to ask someone else or start heading off into the jungle towards the coordinates which were only 3km from our position just off the road. Luckily we went with the first option.

The next chap we spoke to knew of four different crashes but crucially did know of a large aircraft from a very long time ago that crashed in this area. Unfortunately he was pointing to a location in quite the opposite direction to our coordinates! However he said that his parents had seen the wrecked DC3 and he claimed to know exactly where it was. So after some negotiations over payment he agreed to take us to the wreck and off we drove, away from where we thought we had to go…

Along the way we bumped into another chap on the road and thankfully he was able to confirm what the other chap was saying and went one further by insisting we come into his village to meet a lady who was apparently alive at the time of the crash in 1945. This was too good an opportunity to pass up and a fascinating encounter ensued as we listened to this lady. She described how terrified their village was when the white people emerged from jungle and how they all ran away. She was only a girl at the time so didn’t actually meet the survivors herself but she was told there were two men and one women. Bingo! This was definitely the Gremlin Special survivors, exactly as told in the book!

After listening to her fascinating recollection (in a local dialect that was then translated into Indonesian by one of the other, younger villagers which I was able to mostly understand) we got back in the truck and headed up the road a few more kilometres to the start point our guide took us to. From there was was a tricky, slippery and at times quite treacherous hike along a thick, jungle covered ridge-line path constructed mostly of fallen trees covered in wet moss. After around half an hour we then dropped off this path and down the northern slope into even thicker jungle to where our guide thought the wreckage would be. After well over an hour of searching around it wasn’t looking good. Many thoughts crossed our mind from “is this guy just messing with us?” to “perhaps those coordinates we have are correct and we are now 5km from that location, lets go back and look there”.

Our guide then decided we should head back up to the ridge-line path and go a little further along it as he was certain the wreckage was around here somewhere. And so we followed for another ten minutes and eventually stumbled upon the above pictured floor panelling. What follows below are some further photos of what remains of the C-47 Dakota, The Gremlin Special. As you can see, there is still a lot of it left.

The whole experience was both incredibly exciting but also very humbling and it is nice to see that so much of it still remains. I can only speculate that almost no-one has been here over the last seventy years making this a very privileged exhibition. Very little has been taken which is unusual as normally when an aircraft crashes in Papua the locals tend to remove anything of use to be upcycled as roofs, fences etc. Interestingly our guide did say that this aircraft was the first metal any of them had seen and so some of the aircraft was used to make machetes and other tools which is also mentioned in the book.

My passion for aviation and this story in particular was hard to contain at times and I had to keep reminding myself this was also a grave site (although all the bodies have been removed now). Here I was walking amongst an incredible bit of history and being able to picture exactly what those survivors encountered. The jungle was much thicker that I had imagined and the slope considerably steeper that I thought too. It really is a miracle there were any survivors considering the terrain. If you have read the book I hope these photos help show you a little bit of what it was like in that jungle and if you’ve not read it yet, I cannot recommend it highly enough!

Flying Statistics for 2015:

Total hours flown: 453 hours
Number of flights: 935 flights
Total distance flown: 41,137nm
Total take-offs/landings: 938
Total water alightings: 16
Number of unique airstrips visited: 93
Number of new airstrips to me: 50

As you can see from the above Google Earth image of all my flights for 2015, the two places I flew from the most were Timika and Wamena. Sadly we didn’t operate a Porter from my old base of Nabire at all this year however the challenges of flying from Wamena made up for the loss of Nabire. As for what next year will bring, who knows!

Top photos/moments of 2015

January

The year started with me moving from my old base of Nabire up to the highlands of Wamena at 5000ft where I spent a few weeks flying into so many new airstrips I can barely remember them all! A definite highlight was the nearly 30% up-slope of Bangga airstrip.

February

The flying from Wamena continued into February where I started to consolidate my training and fly into the more challenging airstrips. Salema was a regular flight which was great being only 20 minutes from Wamena and offering a short, steep and challenging airstrip to perfect landing on.

March

Some charters out of Nabire took me back there briefly but it wasn’t the flying that was the highlight. That crown was taken by two trips to see the giant whale sharks native to the waters off the coast of Nabire. An experience I’ll never forget!

April

With a brief return to Timika to cover the pilot shortage there, I was back in Wamena and continuing the flying into the more challenging airstrips there. However, it was this month that I bit the bullet and made my biggest purchase to date, a share in a Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina based in the UK.

May

Having made the purchase of the Catalina share and spent the previous month studying all the ground school requirements, it was time to learn to fly Miss Pick Up from the historic Duxford airfield in Cambridge, UK. What an amazing aircraft and no regrets at all with buying a share in her and all the wonderful people involved with keeping her flying.

June

This was to be my first ever airshow and by a large coincidence it was also near my home town in Somerset. The Weston-Super-Mare airshow was amazing fun and it was great to be able to fly my father from Duxford to my old training airfield, Bristol International Airport. As far as I know, I’m still the first ever pilot to land a Catalina there (let me know if you know otherwise?)

July

I have always known that aircraft are a lifeline for the people of Papua but it wasn’t until we started to suffer the affects of the prolonged El Niño phenomenon and the lack of rain it was causing that I realised just how vital aircraft are. The people of the highland villages of Agadugume and Kwijawagi were suffering the most because all their crops had failed causing a severe food shortage leading to diseases and deaths. I was incredibly humbled by the welcome I received by being the first pilot to start flying the aid into their villages. This job is about so much more than simply flying aircraft.

August

This was probably the lowest point of the year for me as things were not going that well aviation wise in Indonesia. The local currency had devalued massively (and continues to do so), especially against the US dollar which was having an affect on all aviation activities that are naturally tied to the US dollar. It forced me to seriously think about my career and what is best for it. And for now, I’m pleased to say it’s bush flying!

September

One of the many reasons for getting involved with the Catalina was because, aside from being a warbird, she’s also a flying boat and operating an aircraft on water was an itch I have been wanting to scratch for a  long time. So off I went to Biscarrosse lake in Bordeaux, France to learn all about operating a WWII flying boat on the water and to gain my commercial seaplane rating for her. It was one of the most fun week’s of flying I’ve had. The trouble now is I want to do more seaplane flying but I’ve not figured out how to convince my boss the Porter needs floats yet..

October

Having purchased a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone, I started to put it to good use by capturing some amazing photos of the airstrips in Papua from angles never before seen. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more to come over the next year so watch this space!

November

After a bit of a hiatus from the blog over the previous few months, I began to reflect on things in Papua and whether I really wanted to continue out here. 6 years is a long time to be anywhere but I’ve still not found anything better to do, so figured whilst I’m still enjoying the flying I’ll keep at it for now. And with airstrips like Wipon (pictured below), it’s hard to stop this kind of flying!

December

By far the biggest highlight was being the first ever aircraft to land on the brand new airstrip at Liligan. Whilst I have been to many airstrips new to myself, this was the first time I had been the very first aircraft into somewhere and I was taken back by the celebrations of the local people who were singing and chanting whilst dancing in circles around the aircraft. Such an amazing privilege!

Looking back it has been a pretty amazing year really and despite the lows, there have been some amazing highs and I can’t think of anything else I would rather be doing right now. So with that, may I wish all my readers a very Happy New Year and I can’t wait to see what 2016 brings!

I am slowly getting the hang of it now and I am loving the new angles it is allowing me to get photos from. I am also shooting a fair bit of video too, so expect some of that to feature in my upcoming short film. In the mean time, here’s some photos and a few words to go with some them. Enjoy!

The Phantom 3 climbs at an amazing rate and is able to shoot directly downwards giving some rather unique views of the world below. I reckon this view shows just how simple the Porter’s design is with its tapering nose and tail along with straight, slab wings. Simple but effective.

Now this view gives you an impression of quite how steep some of the airstrips are here in Papua. Whilst the camera has made it look steeper than in reality, the view from the cockpit as you roll over the edge for take-off is pretty similar and certainly gets the old heart pumping!

Mapnduma has never looked that challenging before but hopefully this view shows its 400m of flat, slippery airstrip in a new light. When wet and with a bit of a tailwind this can be quite a tricky airstrip to land on and keep the aircraft in the centre before stopping before the end.

Always a dramatic looking airstrip, perched as it is on a 6500ft high ridge, I love this view of Tsinga. I might try a few more angles next time I am up there and try to get Puncak Jaya mountain in the background too.

Finally a view of Kilmit showing the departure path. As you can see, in order to take-off from here you need to make an immediate left turn and follow the river along the valley floor as you climb out of it. Oh and it’s only 300m long. I’m not sure the passengers enjoy it as much as I do however!

I was expecting the local people of Papua to be rather freaked out by a remote controlled flying machine buzzing about their villages but I guess when you show up in a much larger flying machine, a tiny drone isn’t as freaky as you might expect. Mostly the locals seem to really enjoy it and the kids love chasing it around (until it chases them back!).

The colours of the morning sunshine really show up beautifully on the Phantom’s camera. This is straight from it without any tweaking other than to resize for this blog. Awesome!

Of course it is not all about crazy airstrips. There are plenty of other fun things to take photos of here in Papua. This is the bridge that links the village of Jila with their airstrip. The chap standing next to me said the bridge should only be used one at a time; and then joined me on the bridge..

King of the hill – the Porter sits atop the 18% slope of Doufu airstrip in the northern flat lands of Papua. Taking a photo from below or at the same level as the top of a slope really give you an idea of the steepness.

Ok I’ve already posted this last one on social media to much discussion. Yes the top part of the airstrip at Wipon is steep but perhaps this angle exaggerates it a bit. I have yet to measure it but it is probably around 23% or so whilst the whole length averages around 17-18%. That is still pretty steep however and makes for a pretty short take-off roll, even at 8000ft.

The last five months or so since I stopped updating the blog have been rather testing on the work front, so I am going to come clean and let you in on a bit of a secret. I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately about what I do and where I want to go with my aviation career which has required me to ask some pretty big questions of myself. I suppose I have been suffering with a bit of an aviation mid-life crisis, only I am not about to rush out and buy a Porsche (well not just yet anyway, the Catalina kind of ate into that plan!)

It is no secret that things out in Indonesia are not quite a rosy as they once where. The local currency has been devaluing massively over this year, especially against the US dollar which is having an affect on all aviation activities that are naturally tied to the US dollar. I won’t bore you with the details but basically it has forced me to seriously think about my career and what is best for it. Aviation has never and will never be a stable career to have so you do need to have backup plans in-case things turn pear shaped.

The good news, for now at least, is I plan to stay out here in Papua flying the Pilatus Porter. I have looked at various career options, applied to many and even interviewed for one but at the moment I just can’t walk away from a job, which despite numerous and increasing downsides, is still enjoyable and rewarding. If you have been following my Twitter and Facebook feeds, I’m sure you’ll have seen some of my latest photos which I think speak for themselves as to the pleasures bush flying offers over pretty much any other aviation career:

So there’s no need to panic just yet, I plan to keep bush flying for now! I will continue to post plenty of photos on Instagram and the other social networks, continue with my column for Flyer Magazine, work on another video and of course update the blog more regularly. My final thought for the day is: if you are enjoying what you do, why stop doing it? Keep enjoying it until either it stops being enjoyable or something even more enjoyable comes along.

Happy landings!

My first up close and personal encounter with a Catalina came a few years ago whilst diving off the coast of Biak, an island out here in Papua, Indonesia heavily contested during WWII. Ok, I had seen them in museums too but this was the first time I’d ever been allowed to get up close and even go inside; although this one was down on the sea floor at 30m or so! It was actually pretty eerie seeing such a large, historic aircraft left to the fishes but it didn’t put me off the idea.

I actually did the deal for my share whilst out in Indonesia and first got to see what I’d invested in on the first day of my type rating training earlier last month at Duxford.

It took just under a week to complete the training which involved a written exam, ground training and then a couple of flights totalling 1.5 hours. The flying mostly involved getting used to handling such a large aircraft with it’s various idiosyncrasies, the biggest of which is the significant adverse yaw during turns requiring plenty of rudder inputs to keep things in balance. The other major thing was looking after those monstrous Pratt and Whitney Twin-Wasp radial engines. There is no noise on this planet quite like the sound of a pair of 14 cylinder radials on full chat, perched a few feet above your head. You’ll be able to read all about my type rating training in next month’s (the Summer edition) Flyer Magazine and I will of course be posting updates every time I’m back in the UK flying her.

Following on from the Catalina flying I was offered the chance to spend a day flying around southern England in a friend’s Piper L-4 “Grasshopper” – basically a military spec J-3 Cub, also used during WWII. Never one to turn down an opportunity, I met Andy at Henstridge airfield ready for a day of playing. We really lucked out on the weather with one of those perfect English summer’s day – bliss!

The first port of call was to Compton Abbas airfield for a spot of lunch and to meet up with some fellow aviators. I love Compton Abbas – it holds a special place for me, being the first airfield I went to solo during my PPL (private pilot licence) training. It’s always a busy spot on a nice day and there were plenty of aircraft coming and going whilst we enjoyed lunch outside on the edge of the airstrip.

Lunch over it was time for some more flying to a couple of private airstrips (or farm strips as they’re often known) along with a couple of other aircraft and their owners; Johnny’s lovely Vagabond and David’s immaculate Jodel. I was sitting in the front of the Cub, with a very trusting Andy behind me who was letting me fly the legs from Compton Abbas to the farm strips. Now, I’ve not done any light aircraft flying for well over three years and small piston aircraft are quite different to the large turbine Porter I usually fly. But the Cub is simply wonderful to punt about the sky – so responsive and light on the controls, an absolute delight!

Landing was mostly a question of having the approach path and speed correct, both of which Andy helpfully talked me through. The trouble with being known as a bush pilot is everyone thinks you’re some kind of expert, which I suppose I am if you’re talking about landing a Porter into a remote Papuan airstrip. However, a Cub into a narrow grass farm strip is quite different. Thankfully I nailed the landing on what was not an especially wide airstrip, even by my standards!

A quick cup of tea and a chat, we were airborne again en-route to Jonny’s farm strip near Hungerford. After a brief circle of the town, Andy and I found it eventually and I setup for the landing. Feeling confident after my first success I embarked on a curved final approach and it all seemed to be going so well, until the touchdown. The less said about that landing the better! Some more chatting on the ground followed which we could have continued all day but sadly we all had places to go, so I took up David’s offer of a lift back to Henstridge in his Jodel in order to get there before their 5pm closing time. Another wonderful aircraft and another reminder of why I need to get into this sort of flying more often. Anyone got a share in a Cub for sale?

Sadly not long after my last update from Nabire, the flying dried up and I sat about for a couple of weeks on standby until I could be relieved by another pilot. This at least allowed me to hop over to our Timika base where things are ticking along nicely with two aircraft flying at least four flights into the mountains a day. It was bliss!

I’d almost forgotten what it was like to do a full day’s work with those 5:30am departures as the sun rises up over the mountains. It was last November that I was in Timika enjoying those sun rises, over five months ago! As well as all the usual Government subsidised flying (Perintis routes) we go to from Timika, there’s now a new route to Duma which is a mere 18 minutes flying from Timika. I’ve been there many times from Nabire as we often had charters to fly cargo from the mountain town of Enarotali into the village of Duma.

Duma is one of those fun little airstrips (around 320m long) located in a dead-end valley at around 4400ft elevation with a nice little 10% up-slope. No problem for a Porter although pigs and weather tend to be the main hazards to watch out for. Being in a dramatic valley with towering peaks to the north, the wind does get whipped up the valley bringing with it cloud and rain as the air is pushed up against the mountains. Thus Duma is always scheduled for early morning; although not too early as it’s often foggy first thing.

For the last week or so I’ve been lucky to be back up in Wamena. Whilst there has not been that much flying from here, there’s been just enough to get me out of bed each morning and keep me busy. It’s considerably more rainy compared to last month which has made it a little more tricky negotiating the clouds and mountains to get to where I’m going. It’s also meant the airstrips have been a little more slippery making for some slightly more exciting landings.

Whilst I was away from Wamena, a second BAE ATP managed to land and skid off the runway following a rather unstable approach in crappy weather. There’s a full report on The Aviation Herald here which makes for interesting reading. It certainly makes those commercial flights we have to take to get into and out of Wamena from Sentani that little bit more nerve wracking. As a pilot there’s nothing worse than being a passenger going to somewhere you fly into regularly.

No sooner had I arrived in Wamena a couple of weeks ago, I get a call from our operations department to say I need to ferry the aircraft back to Nabire again as we finally have some flying to be done from there. As per usual for life out here, it was a last minute thing and I “must to get to Nabire right now and fly a charter this afternoon!”. Luckily the weather has been fantastic lately up in the mountains, so it was no big deal to repack my suitcase and set a course west to Nabire.

The charter in question was to Pogapa airstrip, home to John Cutts who sadly wasn’t there when I dropped in but it was nice to fly down The Freeway again and be amongst familiar territory. As it was rather late in the day, the I was a little concerned the winds at Pogapa might be rather testing but the high overcast layer was keeping a cap on the adiabatic effects and a steady 10kts tailwind was all there was making for a pretty straightforward approach and landing.

Flying in Nabire is about as close to coming home as my life gets these days. It’s just so familiar to me now and I really wish we could find more flying contracts to keep me busy. I did a couple of charters last week to a couple of the usual airstrips (Enarotali, Duma and Dadou) but most of the flying lately has been to a small mining airstrip called Baya Biru.

Baya Biru is around 330m with about a 7% up-slope and located in a steep sided valley about 50nm to the east of Nabire. Having not been there for almost exactly a year, I was curious as to the airstrip’s condition as I’d only ever heard helicopter traffic going in there lately. Aside from some rather long grass, the airstrip was actually in excellent condition and no problems at all for the Porter. After the first trip I asked the locals there to cut the grass before I returned the next day which they did and so began a week of flying there a couple of times a day. I’m just glad we’re actually doing some flying from Nabire again as it’s been months and months since we last did any!

Oh and for those people wondering about the above picture; it was taken with a Garmin VIRB Elite action camera which allows for some pretty awesome telemetry on flying videos. Stay tuned #avgeeks for some new footage with all this extra information on it!

The real treat of the past couple of weeks however has been swimming with some of Nabire’s biggest residents, whale sharks. Now I’ve actually swum with whale sharks before in Cebu in the Philippines but that was a very touristy affair and almost like swimming with domesticated animals. The ones here in Nabire are wild and it’s hit and miss you’ll actually find them but luckily we did.

One of our company drivers is friends with some of the local Nabire fishermen, so last Sunday we had arranged for them to take a small group of us from one of the beaches out to the north west where the whale sharks are known to inhabit. It was a bumpy two hour boat ride to the first of many floating fishing platforms which the locals live on for months at a time.

Chatting to the fishermen it seemed we had missed them as they’d already swum away, so we moved onto the next fishing platform. After around three or four platforms, we eventually found a nice 5m whale shark and with a little trepidation, jumped into the water.

We needn’t have feared anything for despite their namesake, whale sharks are not interested in us humans as dinner. They prefer small fish which the local fishermen willingly supplied for a small fee to keep the giant fish around whilst we frolicked with them. A second even bigger whale shark appeared soon after our arrival as the icing on the cake to an amazing experience and one I certainly won’t forget in a hurry.