Lost in the Efate bush

During my few years in Vanuatu, I had managed to travel to several of the is lands, and to some remote villages on those islands. But most of my time was spent in the capital, Port Vila, on the island of Efate, and on that island I had scarcely left the encircling main road. So when, just before I was due to leave the country, Mike and Martin suggested I join them in crossing the western corner of Efate, along the Bernier track, I suppressed all doubts about how I might hold up the team on the uphill stretches, and agreed.

We planned an overnight trip; we wanted plenty of time, to make an easy thing of it. In the event, it took us four days, and we had nothing like an easy trip we spent most of our time lost in the inland bush.

The Bernier track rises from the coastal road near the village of Tanaliu, and begins as a well-used path from the damp coastal greenery through high grass land where cattle graze to Mt Erskine, where a solar-pow ered telephone transmitter is established. From there it works back through virgin forest, and emerges near Vila’s Bauerfield airport.

We set out along it on a Saturday morning, and stopped at Mt Erskine for lunch. Immediately after, the track degenerated, some times seeming just a cattle track, and sometimes just potentially passable by four wheel drive. The country was beautiful, and stunning ly varied. We passed

through the scrubby rem

nants of former plantations, citrus groves run wild, and found there a mare and foal, also running wild. Then up into the forest, along a thick ly wooded ridge looking out, as we believed, towards Mt McDonald. The view was spectacular; the green swathed bush swooped

Former RIM correspondent in Vanuatu Julie-Ann Ellis tells the story of an “overnight trip” in the bush of Efate which turned into a four-day trek, during most of which she and her two companions were lost.

down to a river valley far below, and across from us other ridges marched in line with ours. The wildlife in creased in numbers and confidence; we saw feral pig, flying fox and many birds, when we camped, on Satur day night, it was further up on the same ridge, in an idyllic clearing, close to the track.

Sunday morning’s walk took us along the ridge, turning gradually towards Vila. We were following the splotches of blue paint which marked the track, but around the middle of the day these simply seemed to stop. We cast about for a while and then supposed, wrongly, that the painter had abandoned the work there, or had run out of paint. We went on, following

a track we picked up whose, and going where, is unknown. It led us to a dead end, overlooking a waterfall and with no hope of going further. We realised, at last, that we were lost.

We beat back up the small ridge we had followed so far to the larger linking one, and then along that, and down the next arm to the right, as on the left lay the whole interior of the island. We met another check, not of a river, but of a slope too steep to descend.

We had pased two small rivulets as we walked, and here, alas, the voice of folly, my voice, suggested that as all rivers run to the sea, we follow the next one down to the coastal road. This wasted much time and ener gy, left us hampered with

wet clothes and packs, and drowned the camera. (The body was recovered, but the spirit has fled). We were, in fact, much higher than we realised, and the rivers were young and vigorous, cutting through rock gorges and plummeting in rapids and waterfalls well beyond the capabilities of three walkers.

We worked our way down some of these, edging along rock walls above the water and slithering down the smaller falls, but in the end we were forced to admit defeat, and reclimb the banks, much wetter and more tired than when we had started.

Back, then, to climbing ridges up, then down and up the next. The light began to fade and we reluctantly realised that we had to spend another night in the bush. Our food supplies were good enough for several days on short rations but we were troubled by a lack of drinking water. (Ironically, we were later

Stalwart companions Mike (left) and Martin ... “I can’t imagine anybody steadier or more helpful to be lost with.”