Start of the visit to PT Freeport Indonesia's Grasberg / Ertsberg District operations, Papua, Indonesia  -   Left: Paul Warren of Freeport (in the doorway) provides part of a comprehensive overview of the regional tectonic, structural and geologic setting of Papua.   Right: Inspection of drill core through the deposits with Paul Warren and Clyde Leys (first and second from left).   Both the briefing and core display were presented at Freeport's Timika base office before the group was taken up into the mountains to overnight at altitude in the mine town at Tembagapura.

The journey to Timika had begun with a flight departure from Denpasar on Bali at just after midnight on Wednesday 5 May, bound for Ujung Pandang - now Makassa, on the southern tip of Sulawesi, arriving at 1:30 am. After a stopover, they re-boarded the same flight which took-off again at 3:10 am, and after flying over the spine of New Guinea, with peaks of near 5000 m, landed at Timika on the southern coastal flats of Papua, still in Indonesia. They had landed at 6:45 am and transferred to the Sheraton for an indoctrination, before continuing on to the Exploration office for breakfast and to begin the briefings and core inspection.

After lunch and further drill core, they boarded a special bus (see Module 2 group photo) and departed Timika at 2:15 pm to take the road north to the mine dormitory town of Tembagapura. The drive took them 66 km NNE and 1900 m higher. It first crossed the coastal plain for ~15 km, before starting to climb steeply up the slope which followed a series of ridges in the foothills of the range, arriving at 5:00 pm.

Photographs by Mike Porter