Trip to Pomalaa

Well, I'm back in Sorowako after spending a few days traveling to and from Pomalaa, another mining operation the company has on the island of Sulawesi ( literally translates as "island of Iron" by the way). For those interested on locating Pomalaa you may have difficulty in that the source I checked, Google Maps, does not have it but it is about 10 km south of the village of Kolaka, itself about 150 km west of Kendari, on the southeast arm of Sulawesi.

Myself and Ade Kadarusman left Sorowako Thursday morning and flew to Makassar where we waited for Ted Eggleston and Georges Verly, both with Amec. They arrived at about 10:30 from Denpasar. As we had about 4 or 5 hours to kill Adi arranged for a car and driver and we took a trip to downtown Makasser. The airport is quite a ways out and they are currently building a new 4 lane highway to the airport thus it took us close to an hour to get there!

The first stop we made was to a place where they have replicas of different villages depicting the types of houses characteristic to some of the major ethnic groups. On Sulawesi 3 of these are the Makassars, the Bugis (the dominate group around Sorowako) and the Torajans. The latter are the source of a very distinctive building structure that, like the Inukshuk of Canada, the rest of Sulawesi has more or less adopted as a symbol for the rest of the world. As you can see in this first photo. They are characterised by up swept peaks at both ends, are on stilts and have ornate carvings and painted symbols.

After there we then went for lunch at a seafood restaurant. What was unusual, at least for me, was the fact they had fresh fish of a number of varieties in coolers at the front. Similarly the cooking facilities were more or less out side, again at the front where they had a large grill going as well as a deep fryer. We (actually Ade) selected what fish we wanted and then chose how we wanted it prepared.

It was quite good! Although I must say I haven't found anything here that was offensive, at least to my palette! Some things I do try and stay clear of or at least consume in moderation. For example they use tofu a fair amount and like to deep fry items in palm oil.

After lunch we went to "Fort Rotterdam" - a relic from the Dutch colonial days, and about the only sign I had seen up to this point of remnants of their long period of influence and control over the country. Making the trip to down-town Makassar also exposed me for the first time to something that I also got to see a lot once we got to the east side of the island, and that is the "bemo" (or at least that is the name referenced in my phrase book). These are "public transportation" vehicles and consist of aqua coloured mini-vans. And they are all over the place and become a real nuisance as they will stop anywhere and do anything (i.e. back-up while still in the driving lane!). Note the ones in front of the Fort entrance.

The fort is also home to a museum which records both the colonial history but also information on the ethnic groups and cultural characteristics of the Indonesians.

We then returned to the airport for our flight across to Kendari, which takes less than 1 hour. We spent the night there and left in the morning for Pomalaa at 5:30, before sunrise. While only about 150 km it takes a full 4 hours as much is narrow, winding roads, that rather than go straight through various valleys go along the hill sides and follow every curvature they make! It appeared that on every sharp corner there would be a small cluster of shops, again each with virtually the same spectrum of snacks and drinks as the one beside it! I guess the store operators figure that you have to slow down anyways so that would be a good place to set up shop.

Pomalaa is right on the west coast of the southeast arm of Sulawesi. There Amtam, the Indonesian national mining company, has a ferro-nickel plant. While they have mined out all of the available ore from their land holdings PTInco is mining from their land holdings next door and selling the ore as feed to the Antam plant. Here is a view from the top of the hill that PTInco is mining looking towards the Gulf Of Bone ("Bo - nay") with a glimpse of the Amtam plant.

The next day, after touring around the mine site looking at how they do their drilling, ore control sampling, mining and sample preparation and assaying we then drove back to Kendari.

Kendari is like no place I have seen in Indonesia so far in that it actually looked a bit metropolitan, an impression I did not get from Makassar (as for Jakarta I have only seen the airport). Streets were relatively wide with wide boulevards and virtually all buildings looked reasonably well maintained. As in Makassar though those darn aqua bemos are everywhere!

One store that is very common (and many of the Indonesians make sure they stop at while in Makassar before returning to Sorowako) is KFC! As they do tend to deep fry things a lot and chicken is a common meat source around here it actually is a natural fit!

The next morning we made our way back to Sorowako, via Makassar. While a bit of a whirlwind trip it still was quite fascinating seeing the different styles of houses, relative to Sorowako, as well as the different way of mining.