Operation:: B i n t u l u
"The mouth of the River is the color of the earth. To the north, the soils of Sarawak disappear into the South China Sea and fleets of empty Japanese freighters hang on the horizon, awaiting the tides and a chance to fill their holds with raw logs ripped from the forests of Borneo. The river settlements are settings of opportunity and despair- muddy logging camps and clusters of shanties, their leprous facades patched with sheets of metal, plastic and scavenged boards. Children by the river's edge dump barrels of garbage which drifts back to shore in the wake of each passing log barge. For miles the river is choked with debris and silt and along its banks lie thousands of logs stacked thirty deep, some awaiting shipment, some slowly rotting in the tropical heat."
Downstream Operations
Logging Raft - Journeying downstream to shipping operations.
Downstream operations - River Batang Kemena
Harbour Transport for upstream processing
Upstream docking stations
"A hundred miles upriver is another world, a varied and magical landscape of forest and soaring mountains, dissected by crystalline rivers and impregnated by the world's most extensive network of caves and underground passages. This is the homeland of the Penan, one of the few remaining nomadic peoples of the rain forest. Related in spirit to the Mbuti pygmies of Zaire and the wandering Maku of the Northwest Amazon, the Penan draw their life from the land, moving as hunters and gatherers through the immense and remote forested uplands that give rise to the myriad affluents of the Baram and Limbang Rivers of northern Borneo."