More great yarns & adventures from the author of "An Accidental Bushman" and "The River is my Highway".

This book is set in pre-independence Papua New Guinea (1967-73) when real adventure was still possible.

From hair-raising experiments with stump-blasting to being caught in the arrow-fire of a tribal battle, Ross’s life is never dull. He has a tug-of-war with a reef shark over his dinner catch, witnesses a young men’s initiation ritual that few non-natives have ever seen, visits cannibals and head-hunters in their isolated villages, gets caught in storms at sea in an open boat, climbs to ancient rock-paintings and burial caves, experiences the mysterious power of native superstition, races against time to get death adder victims to hospital, witnesses more post-mortems than he cares to remember, gets arrested in PNG’s Eastern Highlands for photographing a chain gang at work, goes crocodile hunting with a barking dog for bait, seeks out the isolated tribe that suffers from the “laughing death” (kuru), encounters fascinating customs among isolated tribes, & collects the artefacts that formed the backbone of the National Museum of New Zealand’s PNG collection at that time.

When he encounters jungle bridges that have lost their decks, he drives his Landrover across the stringers! When asked by the NZ National Museum’s Curator of Pacific Ethnology to procure or photograph a rare fertility figure that no-one in PNG is even prepared to talk about, Ross makes a secretive deal with a witchdoctor that results in him smuggling one out of a remote village wrapped in his spare shirt.

The book includes some 60 photographs from Ross's vast collection which richly illustrate his writing.

To see book reviews and reader's comments go to the author's website: http://www.rosslockyer.co.nz