They Didn't Know The White Man Was Real, Then They Thought He Was Covered In Ash

This video has been called "the most beautiful video on the internet". It surely, at the very least, is exactly that. And more.

If the music annoys you, turn it off, it's even more extraordinary in silence :



They are the Toulambi. From the film-maker Jean Pierre Dutilleux's site :

For centuries the hill tribes of the Owen Ranmge in Papua, New Guinea have lived in isolation to avoid war. In a landscape of dense tropical rainforests each tribe stays within a well established territory. This explains why some of them have survived into the new millennium without any contact with the outside world.

They are hunters and gatherers. The entire tribe moves in uncanny silence for fear of alerting the game. They know the migration trails of animals and the best time of year to find fish, the growing cycles of the palms, bamboo, wild fruits and the roots they rely on. Always on the move. The rhythm of their lives is that of the jungle. It gives them no time to create complex art, to develop science or conceive profound metaphysical philosophies.

The Toulambi are among the very last witnesses of our distant past. When the last tribe is contacted and moved from the Stone Age into the modern world, from being free and masters of their own destiny to being poor and at the lowest level of our western society, it is a part of ourselves that will vanish forever.

When I worked at the Australians At War Film Archive, I heard the stories of some young Australians who volunteered for World War 2 and found themselves marching through the mountain jungles of New Guinea, only a few weeks after they were working on a building site or in an office in Sydney or Melbourne, who had similar encounters with tribes who had never seen white men before. Amongst all the horrors and madness of their jungle fighting days in New Guinea, it was meetings like this, sometimes only an exchange of stares from a distance, that remained amongst the most vivid in some veterans memories well into old age, and could still light their faces with wonder thinking back.

Many have fought in wars, but how many have had such an experience? The rarest few.

Here's what David Attenborough had to say after his own meeting with a New Guinea tribe who only knew of white men from the legends of other tribes :

"... nobody knows what are in these valleys; it may be that there's gold here. It may be - like a valley less than a hundred miles away - it is rich with copper. If it is, and if the West - European Man - moves in here with all his technology the fate of these people is likely to be very unhappy.

"All we know in the past of people - like this - who come face-to-face with Western technology leads us to suppose that it's very difficult for them to survive that clash.

"And so the only chance of bringing these people to terms with the world outside is a gradual process over years - over tens of years - in which they get to know what happens in the outside world, gradually they get to believe that people like ourselves are their friends and not their enemies. Gradually they have enough confidence in us to allow us to give them medical help, and educational help."

Attenborough quotes from the documentary A Blank On The Map

Via Reddit

How Long Has This Dead Pilot Been Hanging In A Tree?



The moss covered skeletonn may be an Australian, American or Japanese pilot, one of the many lost in the jungles of Papua New Guinea during World War 2.

If true, then he has been suspended in the tree, still locked into his seat, for more than six decades. Another lost body found from that appalling war.

Sometime in the new year, the body will likely be identified, and surviving relatives will be contacted. Someone who has lived most of a lifetime wondering what happened to this man may soon find out the truth.

Hikers say they discovered the skeleton hanging from the jungle canopy halfway along the 96-kilometre historic World War II path (the Kokoda Track).

Guide David Collins from Melbourne's No-Roads trekking company was there.

"It's swinging like somebody caught in a tree and that's when you can really see the cabling and it's the exact shape of a body, same size, everything, but it's just covered in moss," he said.

"It's exactly what it looks like, just somebody caught in a harness, in a seat harness."

He said the the tree with the skeleton had been marked with plastic to help furture investigators find it again.

The remoteness of the site and the difficulties involving in locating and working with anything in the thick jungle canopy mean that it could be months before any identification of the skeleton is made.

Rare Find



Australian soldier Jack Millet tried to escape from German prisoner of war camps so often, during WW2, he was shifted to the 'Alcatraz of German prison camps', also known as Colditz. He planned to escape from there, too.

Recently, hand drawn maps of the countryside surrounding the prison camp came to light when it went up for auction in Perth. The maps are now part of the Australian War Memorial's extensive collection of Colditz memorabilia.

Amazing story :

The maps were drawn by Western Australian Lieutenant Jack Millet who was captured in Crete in 1941 and sent to the Oflag IV-C high security camp two years later after several escape attempts.

Oflag IV-C - more commonly known as Colditz - was a converted castle in the eastern German town of Colditz near Dresden that was used to hold high risk POW's who had tried to escape from other camps.

AWM curator Nick Fletcher says the Germans considered Colditz escape proof.

Map expert Dianne Rutherford says if Lieutenant Millet had been caught making the maps he would have certainly been put in solitary confinement.

"As the main map maker, he would have been a key person in the escape committees and he was most likely encouraged not to escape because his skills as a map maker would have been so important that they would have preferred for him to remain in the camp to assist others in escaping," she said.

Iconic 'Anzac Legend' Image Deemed Inappropriate For Army Recruiting

$50 Billion Spent On Massive Arms Build-Up



The above image is one of the most famous in Australian war history. It shows two Australian soldiers crossing a river in New Guinea during World War 2. One soldier is clearly wounded, and his mate is helping him.

It exemplifies everything that Australians hold dear about what it means to be Australian. You don't leave your mates behind, you help them. This is the Anzac legend in action.

It is widely regarded as the iconic image of Australians at war.

But not anymore.

Too much reality, perhaps?

The image, from a series of newsreels, was considered to be included in a series of ads that will form part of massive $1 billion advertising splurge aimed at swelling the ranks of Australia's military, but it was deemed "inappropriate" and "overdone".

The Australian government is desperately trying to ramp up recruitment numbers, to meet a target of 57,000 full-time soldiers by 2016. An increase of more than 8000 on present numbers.

At the same time, the Defence Department is the process of spending more than $50 billion on new Naval ships, aircraft and second-hand Abram tanks from the US Army. Tens of billions of dollars from massive outlay of taxpayers dollars will go to defence industries in the United States and Israel.

Per head of population, Australia's annual military budget is now soaring beyond even that of the United States.

More than $20 billion is expected to spent on defence in 2007, to 'defend' 21 million Australians.
A military spend that almost equals the official defence budget of China, a country of more than 1.3 billion people.

The purchase of dozens of 'refurbished' M1A1 Abram tanks from the United States proved particularly controversial, as they are virtually useless for deployment in the heavy tropical jungle terrains of countries in the Australian region, such as East Timor, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Pacific Islands nations.

The tanks were designed, and refitted, for desert warfare. Which would make them handy to have if the Australian government is expecting to see major action in the next decade in Iraq, or Syria, or Iran.

Or the Australian outback.

Being a "close friend" of the United States does not come cheap.

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

The military faces an enormous challenge to reach the target set by the Government of boosting defence numbers by 8000 to 57,000 in 2016.

To meet targets, entry standards are being relaxed to allow in overweight recruits, former recreational drug users and the heavily tattooed.

Up to $700 million will be spent improving wages and conditions.

From next year, $306 million will be spent on a "military gap year" scheme for school leavers to spend 12 months in the Defence Force with incentives to join up after completing their studies.

Foreign military are also being snapped up. In the past two years 125 British ex-soldiers have joined the Australian Army, 103 ex-Royal Navy have joined the RAN and 56 ex-RAF have joined the RAAF.