In Port Moresby, I owe thanks to Sir Mekere and Lady Roslyn Morauta, and to Daisy Taylor for their support, hospitality and advice. And to Marion Jacka for her invaluable wisdom and experience. At the University of Papua New Guinea, I thank my fellow writers Steven Winduo, Regis Tove Stella, for many hours of conversation, and of course Russell Soaba. As well as for everything else, I thank him for his careful reading of the manuscript, and for correcting my Tok Pisin.

In her capacity as director of the Environmental Law Centre, Port Moresby, Annie Kajir spoke to me of her experiences as an environmental lawyer, including the story of the woman who showed Annie her land after it had been clear felled – an incident loaned to Bili. She also spoke about forestry and logging in Collingwood Bay, as did Lester Seri of his time at Conservation Melanesia. I thank them both, and also Mary Boni of the PNG Ecoforestry Forum. The case between the Collingwood Bay landowners and defendants, PNG Registrar of Lands Titles, PNG Forestry Authority, Keroro Development Corporation Ltd and Deegold (PNG) Ltd, was heard in the National Court of PNG in May 2002. The court ruled in favour of the landowners. The account of this case given to me by John Wesley Vaso, a Maisin elder from Uiaku village in Collingwood Bay, has been invaluable in coming to understand something of the experience of finding one’s land and heritage threatened. Bili’s fictional case in The Mountain has points in common with this matter. John Wesley Vaso’s account can be seen on www.drusillamodjeska.com, along with The Maisin Declaration, and developments since 2002. I also thank John Vaso Wesley for translating Milton’s fictional song.

At Tufi I thank Simon Tewson, who was manager of the Tufi Dive Resort from 2005–10, and also Sharon Tewson.

In Sydney, first and foremost I thank Michael Monsell Davis for letting me read his diaries from his twenty-five years in Papua New Guinea, many of them at the University of Papua New Guinea, and for numerous conversations over many years. These diaries and his support have been invaluable. I also thank Dr Ruth Fink Latukefu for her interest in this book, and for loaning me research material from the eighteen years she and her late husband, Dr Sione Latukefu, spent at the University of Papua New Guinea. She loaned me copies of UPNG News and Nilaidat, the student newspaper, to add to my own. I owe thanks to the late Ulli Beier, Georgina Beier, Donald Denoon and Ruth Cholai. Peter Trist has been an unfailing source of support and information. I am grateful to him, and to Nora Vagi Brasch and William Takaku for the sharpness of their memories, some of which can be found in Peter Trist and William Takaku, ‘Living Legends, Dying Stages’, Meanjin on PNG, Vol. 62, No. 3, 2003. William Takaku’s death in January 2011 is another grievous loss.

It should be noted that the character of Aaron makes fictional history by his appointment to the university in 1968. In the non-fictional world, the first PNG academic staff were appointed, like the fictional Wana, in the early 1970s. A conference on the history of Melanesia, the Second Waigani Seminar, was held at the University of Papua New Guinea, 30 May to 5 June 1968. But there was no paper on the bird of paradise trade. For Aaron’s research I drew on work done much later by Pamela Swadling, and published in her Plumes From Paradise, Papua New Guinea National Museum in association with Robert Brown and Associates, Queensland, 1996.