Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, has had to be evacuated from a remote mountain location in Papua New Guinea after developing a serious pressure sore while on an expedition to find exotic birds of paradise.
The journalist, who uses a wheelchair after being shot by al-Qaida gunmen in Saudia Arabia in 2004, was partway through a three-week journey into PNG’s remote highlands last year when he developed the sore after being carried over a strenuous mountain range in a makeshift sedan chair.
Medics on the expedition, which was being filmed for a BBC documentary, judged the 10cm ulcer to be at serious risk of infection and ordered a reluctant Gardner to be evacuated by helicopter to Australia, where he was treated for open wounds exposed almost to the muscle.
Having recovered from his injuries, he was able to complete the expedition by a different route later in the year, fulfilling a lifelong ambition to see PNG’s birds of paradise.
Gardner said he had been yearning to see the birds since he was given a packet of playing cards bearing colourful images of them at the age of eight.
“My dad had always said: ‘One day we’ll go, I will take you there.’ And we never did, he died about seven years ago. But I have always wanted to do this, I have birdwatched for the last 20 years, I love birdwatching and wild, remote places, and it doesn’t come much more remote than Papua New Guinea.”
He had not allowed his injuries to put him off the expedition, Gardner said, though he knew he would not be able to complete all of the arduous trek under his own steam. “The thing I didn’t like was the idea of being a passive lump of meat, being carried around, but that’s how it had to be done,” he said.
Having come so close, it was enormously frustrating to leave against his wishes. “I could not believe it. I really fought against it, I said: ‘There’s no need for this. Clinically I am fine.’ To prove it i did 10 pull-ups on a beam in our hut.
“But the medics in New Zealand who had seen the picture said: ‘No, we’re not messing around with this, this looks like it is turning septic. Get him out as soon as possible.’
“I have to accept now that it was the right decision, because things could have been very different if it had gone the other way.”
The opportunity to return four months later, and the prospect of finally seeing the birds of his childhood dreams, was so significant, he said, that he felt it offered “a form of closure to my injuries”.
“Since coming out of hospital in 2005, I have pushed myself quite a lot physically. I have embedded four times in Afghanistan with the military, I’ve been to Colombia several times, to Borneo, to the Arctic twice. I ski, I scuba dive, but the one country I have always wanted to go to, one of the most distant, remote, exotic and difficult places, has always been Papua New Guinea.
“I have always yearned to go there, it’s in travel terms the holy grail, and I have felt that if I can do that, there is really nowhere on the planet I shouldn’t be able to get to.”
• Birds of Paradise: The Ultimate Quest starts on BBC2 on Friday 3 February at 9pm.
