Our campaigners and activists on board our flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, also sent through blogs, as they sailed around the region on 'Forest Crime Patrol'.

Posted by Klaas, GFRS volunteer

I was in-between jobs when I went to the GFRS. It was the perfect time for me to opt in to another Greenpeace project. Papua New Guinea doesn't only sound like Paradise – it is! If any place on Earth can show you the meaning of life, it is Lake Murray.

Vast forests, meandering rivers, birds flocking over the swamps, the sounds of frogs and cricket ... the whole picture. If you try to imagine a perfect place, this is what you would visualise. Beautiful. Mesmerising.

Now, sitting at the computer in my new job, I’m going to take a few minutes to write an epilogue to my weblog, a goodbye to my friends in the Paradise Forests and a thank you to Greenpeace and the other NGOs at the GFRS.

I also felt the loneliness that you speak of Sep, because my heart is still there with you. It was an honour and privilege to be there in the Lake. I never told you that.

I truly feel this experience has been life changing for me and I hope it is for the Lake Murray people as well - a change for the better.

I would sit and observe the clans in their daily life; no shoes, ripped clothes yet so rich inside and out. There was me with my flashy cameras, clothes and laptops and yet I have nothing in comparison.

To all my friends at Lake Murray,

Last december I got an email, asking if anyone wanted to go to Papua New Guinea to help with fight against illegal logging. I didn't even need to think... it was exactly my 'cup of tea' so I replied immediately. It took some time before I knew I could go to the GFRS, because I wasn't the only volunteer to put their hand up.

After a while I got a call from Theo, who asked me some questions, like: "Are you a vegetarian?" and "Will you cope in basic circumstances?" I answered "no", and "Oh, yes; no problem at all!" This type of contact continued for a while and in the end I was chosen as one of the four Dutch activists to go. It made me very happy - what an exceptional opportunity.

I am back by the coast in a place called Woolgoolga, Northern NSW. The sun rises over the ocean, so blue and full of fizzy, dancing sparkles, and sets over the little lake, called Sunset Lake, scorching it red and gold. There are flashes of rainbow colours as a symphony of parrots and lorikeets and rosellas celebrate the beginning of twilight.

I have lived this picture so many times, in this same spot. But right now it hurts to look at anything remotely beautiful, as if the warmth of the sun threatens to melt my heavy sadness and I will have to face the stinging reality that I am no longer in Lake Murray.

Strange, for the first couple of days in the Paradise Forests, all sounds I heard and sights I saw, I unconsciously tried to liken to home. And now, in my Sunset Lakes home, every sound I hear I find myself likening them to ...home. My home in PNG.

Dear Sep,

Thank you very much for welcoming us in Lake Murray. It was indeed a priceless oppurtunity of a lifetime. The struggle of your people inspires me immensely, so much so that any attempt to retell your story would result in tears creeping out the corners of my eyes.

I was indeed sad to leave your community. I lament the fact that we had to leave Lake Murray... I'd do anything to stay, I'd even buy your joke that I've been extradited from my country and that I am welcomed to live in exile in Lake Murray. If only.

Everything will soon be over - the GFRS (Camp Kewe) will close down today. Things at the camp have been packed away, and other things have been dropped off at Kubut village. The camp is almost empty and I also feel empty and lonely.

All the happiness is over and I could not hold back any more of the loneliness. I thought that it would not have much effect on my feelings but I was wrong. I can feel the pain of emptiness and loneliness now.

For those who have visited Camp Kewe, you will be remembered by me and my community. For the last five days we have been suffering from the pain of emptiness and loneliness of you all.

Today I could not hold back my tears any more. Anyway that is the feeling at Camp Kewe now. It is just emptiness and loneliness for me and my community.

-- Sep Galeva

So the GFRS is closing up tomorrow, and we have the great privilege of being the last foreign volunteers to spend time here. Yesterday we skipped across the lake, from one community to the next, starting what is known as a ‘tok-save’, a message that gets passed by word of mouth between villages.

(The noticeable absence of both letterboxes and telegraph poles in this neck of the woods renders any of Sydney's standard modes of community communication pretty ineffective. PLUS it saves paper. How wonderful!).

We want the communities to know that just because there won’t be any (or many, anyway) weird white-folk dropping by anymore, that doesn’t mean that the project is over. Far from it. This is actually the stage that will determine the spread, the sustainability, and the success of the eco-forestry project.

Leeches and BOPS – or Birds of Paradise as most people call them – go together like strawberries and cream. The leeches are there to test your commitment to see one of nature's great treats – Birds of Paradise dancing and calling early in the morning from their courtship trees where the males prove to the females how irrestible they are.

The previous day we had the leeches without the Birds of Paradise but early this morning we had developed a cunning plan. We were going to surprise the leeches and get into the forest so early that they would not be expecting us. Anyhow, that was the theory.

The wind shifted to a South Easterly today, signalling the start of the dry season in Lake Murray. Yesterday the water level dropped one meter in front of the Global Forest Rescue Station (GFRS). This means we are going to have to carry the Banana boat over logs and drag it through the shallows on our way to the airstrip this weekend.

We’re packing down the GFRS. The change in the wind and the twinge of sadness in everyone seem to fit.

The people of Lake Murray have said goodbye to most of the international guests. Everyone went out to visit the Kuni people, who fought off industrial logging. Together, we saw the first load of eco-timber milled and shipped out from Lake Murray.

We got up early this morning, to try and sneak a look at a Bird of Paradise. Interesting facts about the BOPs (as they have come to be known by our resident 'twitcher', Tim):

• They feature on the PNG flag


• They are endangered, but can be hunted as long as you use traditional weapons (bow and arrows and such)


• They are yet another in the long list of bird species where the male prances around, showing off its long, extravagant (and in this case flame-inspired) tail feathers; while the female trundles along, looking dowdy in brown

Greatly anticipating an adventure worthy of a GFRS weblog, we started off down the track.

Not surprisingly, the BOPs were hard to find. Leeches, on the other hand, were hideously abundant.

There's water lapping at my toes. Here on the end of our bamboo jetty trying desperatlely to take in my last full day in Paradise from sunrise to sunset. The vibe here at Campe Kewe is extremely chill after the excitement of the past few days.

Just a quick rundown: Leave at dawn two days ago to head to the walkabout sawmill with filmcrew in tow to document and assist in the first shipment of ecotimber in Lake Muray. In the proccess I find myself visiting a village in the dark and getting swarmed by hundreds of little hands all pressing gifts of sugarcane and occari nuts into my overwhelmed palms.

I got soaked under a sky filled with every star in the heavens while on an overloaded canoe. I made a banner (how Greenpeace, right) and tapped the resin of a rosewood tree to paint it with. I later carved a necklace for my boyfriend from a branch off the first tree felled for export. It was an emotional sight, to watch this giant tower of the forest come crashing down. Sad, but beautiful, because it's the start of great things for this community ...

After a total of 10 weeks spent in Port Moresby (meeting and greeting all the volunteers and arranging their transport and accommodation to and from the GFRS) it’s my turn to join the team at Lake Murray.

Since I’ve been in PNG, I’ve been keen to learn how to make a billum – a wool or string bag. These are a “must have” item for practically everyone in PNG, and the souvenir of choice for visitors. There are many different styles and sizes to choose from: from the massive ones you can chuck the whole family’s beach gear in, to the little ones you put the bare necessities in when you go out. There are everyday billums, a billum to lug the shopping home in, and of course the billum to carry your baby with. Almost all billums come in loud, garish colours and patterns.

A bearded man sits in the grass on the bank, filling out forms. It’s the check-in at Lake Murray Airport - Boboa terminal. Not many formalities indeed, and everyone is ready for boarding.

The last goodbye is the hardest one. I look onto those dark eyes, those bearded faces, marked by the sun, by the water, and I wonder if we will ever meet again. It seems impossible to leave after sharing everything (meals, sweat, mosquitos). Now us volunteers are going back to our ‘normal’ lives – comfortable, wealthy, reassuring, empty. I know that each promise to come back may turn out to be broken.

"Forest is my life ... my blood! Land without forest is like human beings without blood. Lukautim Bus." That's the message Bonti, one of the foresters, wrote on the banner we all decorated for the timber barge in preparation for the first landmark shipment of eco-timber.

Everyone’s excited about the shipment. As the timber is carried from the sawmill site to the water by the men, women, and children of the village, there’s a buzz in the air.

Today we’ll all bear witness to the realisation of years of hard work by Sep and other community leaders, and of months of learning, planning, practice, and commitment on behalf of all the clan members. We’ll mark the beginning of a new life for the people of Lake Murray, one that’s full of independence and hope.