TOUR AROUND PAPUA

The island of New Guinea is enormous, spanning 2,400 kilometres end to end, and 740 kilometres at the shoulder. Covering 792,540 square kilometres, it is the world's second-largest island, behind Greenland, and just ahead of Borneo.

The island is neatly bisected at longitude 1410E (except for a slight westward blip at the Fly River), with the western half being part of Papua New Guinea, an independent country. This boundary was settled by the Dutch with the British in 1895 and with the Germans in 1910, the latter two maintained a presence in the eastern part of the island. Irian's 421,981 square kilometres constitute 22 percent of Indonesia's total land area.

The shape of New Guinea has been likened to that of the cossowary bird, and the westernmost peninsula, nearly cut off from the "body" by Bintuni Bay, is "called the Bird's head - Kepala Burung" in Indonesian and "Vogelkop" in Dutch.

A 2,000-kilometre long cordillera of craggy mountains running the length of the island is New Guinea's most distinctive topological feature. The crests of the main divide top 3,000 metres in many places and a handful of rocky peaks soar above 4,500 metres. Small permanent snowfields and relict glaciers still grace the highest elevations. Volcanic rock is not common in the mountains, but in one of the few places an igneous intrusion has appeared the outcrop has proved to be incredibly rich in copper, gold and silver. Irian's highest peak is the pride of the Sudirman range : Puncak Jaya. Reaching 4,884 metres, this is the highest point between the Himalayas and the Andes.

East of Puncak Jaya, the southern coastal forest broadens, and the swamplands around the Casuarina Coast are vast, reaching 300 kilometres inland. Several rivers here are navigable almost to the mountains, and the land is so flat that tides affect river height far inland. At the far southeastern corner of Irian Jaya, near Merauke, there is alarge, anomalous stretch of dry, grassy savannah.

The northern slopes of the mountains descend gradually, yielding to foothills and then the vast Memberamo basin. This is Lake Plains region, flat and swampy, full of mipa palms and lowland forest, and little explored. The Mamberomo and its to main tributaries - the Taritatu flowing from the east, and the Tariku from the west - are slow, silty, meandering rivers.