Rediscover Wallacea: walking in the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace
In eastern Indonesia, nature enthusiast Martin Williams retraces the footsteps of 19th-century British explorer Alfred Russel Wallace on a journey that led him to formulate his own theory of evolution independently of Darwin
Approaching Ternate from the air, the view is dominated by a green-sloped volcano rising from tropical blue sea. Look closer and you see small houses near the shoreline.
Ternate is an outpost of Indonesia, lying two time zones to the east of Jakarta, yet in local lore it's at the centre of the universe, having existed before the rest of the world came into being. When people in Hong Kong were engaged in little but farming and fishing, Ternate was a trade hub, visited by Chinese and Arab merchants drawn chiefly by the cloves grown here. It became the dominant power in the northern Moluccas, or Maluku, and from the 16th century was fought over by Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish forces for control of the Spice Islands.
To wildlife enthusiasts, Ternate has a special appeal - because, in 1858, British explorer-naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace added the island's name to an essay detailing his theory of evolution, which he formulated independently of Charles Darwin, who tends to get all of the plaudits. Wallace kept a house here for three years, using it as a base for journeys within the Moluccas and farther east, as he discovered a wealth of birds, butterflies and other animals, many of them new to science, and realised that this was a remarkable area of the world, where the plants and wildlife of Asia and Australasia merged. Today, the region is known as Wallacea.
Inspired by his book The Malay Archipelago, and enticed by the Spice Islands and the chance of adventure, I'm not exactly following in Wallace's footsteps - he roamed some 22,500km on more than 60 separate journeys! - but heading into the heart of Wallacea, with my wife and 10-year-old son, to seek out some of its unique species, including the naturalist's "greatest prize", the standardwing bird of paradise.
Our encounter with Wallacea wildlife begins on Sulawesi, which lies between the Moluccas and Borneo. As the world's 11th largest island - it is about 150 times larger than the territory of Hong Kong - Sulawesi has enough of natural and cultural interest to justify weeks of exploration but, sticking to a tight schedule, we head to the tip of the island's tendril-like, northeastern spur.
The lowland rainforest is protected within the Tangkoko National Park. Our guide, Irawan Halir, a local man who, with his thickset frame and shoulder-length hair, looks more like a rocker than a nature lover, leads us along paths and faint trails on gently sloping hills.