In April 2000 a rare window of opportunity arose for me to visit West Papua, the little-known western half of the island of New Guinea, when an Australian travel agency began scheduling charter flights from Darwin in northern Australia to Timika on the southern coast. Timika has been developed by Freeport Indonesia as the port and service centre for exploitation of Grasberg, the the world's richest copper and gold mine. The mining company has developed roads, schools and health care facilities; and the town also boasts a golf course and a Sheraton Hotel, well beyond the usual attributes of a remote provincial centre in Indonesia.

From Timika, a spectacular company road climbs - literally - into the clouds to reach Tembagapura ("copper town"), the operating township directly below the mine. Up here, close to the equator, a glacier can be seen from the mine site when the cloudbanks lift.

The direct air service did not prove sustainable and neither the mining company nor the Indonesian authorities have demonstrated an interest in developing tourism to the region. Undoubtedly the security situation is a factor here.

These images are scanned from 35mm transparencies and are available for licensing. Their quality is rather uneven, but the interest they've aroused in the intervening years confirms the novelty of my short stay in this troubled part of the world.