pre open - announcement coming, page-27

Ok here's a little bit of history to explain what I was doing in various far flung corners of the Indonesian archipelago during the late 80's and early 90's.
I left Australia in mid 1986 with a small backpack in search of a bit of adventure.By November of that year I had made up my mind that travel and a "Marco Polo" type life in search of treasure was going to be the life for me.
I became one of an intrepid band of fellows who scoured the archipelago for transportable treasures which we then onsold primarily to European museums and traders in Hong Kong,Tokyo and what was then know as Calcutta.Our hunts took us all over Indonesia and up into scattered islands of the Phillipines and as far north as Mai Sot on the Thai-Burmese border.They were exciting times which I remember with great fondness.Cholera,Typhoid,Dengue fever and dysentery soon became part of our lives,as did anti-malarial's and our soon to be best friend activated charcoal.
In Indonesia I journeyed east to Irian where I traded kerosene and good knives for "white hearts"(antique Venetian glass beads),in Sumba we bought kain ikat and antique ivory,in Flores it was more ikat and sperm whale teeth( there is a village on the tip of Flores where people still hunt sperm whales with harpoons and outrigger boats)
In Java we bought antique kain tulis batik,10th Century gold antiquities,in the Karimunjawa islands we bought Song and Ming dynasty porcelain from old Chinese shipwrecks and found by fishermen in their nets(the braver locals free dived for these).In Sumatra the treasure was gold embroidered kain songet and kain limar,old porcelain and Gaharu an exotic wood incense which we were able to sell in Tokyo and Calcutta for thousands of dollars a kilo.
Funnily enough often the only other "whitey's" we encountered were intrepid junior geologists dispatched by their companies in search of more conventional wealth in minerals and oil and gas.Their usual comment was "Who the bloody hell are you ? What are you doing here?Who do you work for?" Some of those junior geologists like me fell in love with this country and remain here until now,albeit older as am I and with local wives and families.Some of us have remained in touch and occasionally catch up to reminisce about those days.
These were days prior to internet and no mobile phones,when a swiss army knife,mossy net,mini mag light and activated charcoal were our constant companions.
I hope this post helps to put in context how and why I and other long termers like me, have acquired good networks of fellow expats and locals alike.