Remarkably, by the end of the 1920s, the highlands of New Guinea still lay completely unknown to the outside world - and the outside world to the natives who lived there. Planes could by then have flown over the jagged valleys and misty plateaus and discovered the evidence of many florishing tribes, but the wisdom of the day declared the highlands uninhabited.
It took a pair of Australian gold miners, Michael Leahy and Michael Dwyer, to blunder by accident upon these isolated people. In the summer of 1930, having gotten lost on a reconnaissance of new goldfields, the pair and their bearers ended up traversing the island, following the Purari River. Astonished and intrigued by their contact with the highlanders, Leahy and Dwyer and a handful of cronies returned year after year, photographing and even filming the natives in the act of trying to comprehend this alien invasion.
Episode 13 of Tim Bowden's TAIM BILONG MASTA also describes the "First Contact"
Fifty years later, two Australian filmmakers, Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, visited the highlands to seek out the elders who still remembered the world-changing incursion. Having rediscovered Leahy's lost film footage, Connolly and Anderson were able to film natives watching themselves on film shot a half centure before. Their stunning documentary, "First Contact", was nominate for an Academy Award.
And it's now on YouTube. Watch it before it's taken off again. I just did. What a wonderful way to spend a totally rained-out day at "Riverbend"!
