One of those islands, Flores, of course, is reasonably close to Australia – whats it like?
Penny van Oosterzee: Flores is a stunningly beautiful island; it’s volcanic, it rises straight up out of the ocean on the southern side, and it’s remote. I mean it probably came up around 8 million years ago. In terms of getting to Flores, it’s one of the hardest things you can do. You have to make two crossings if you’re going along the Nusa Tenggara peninsular, one from Bali to Lombok, it’s about 25 kilometres long, and another one from Sumbawa at 8 kilometres if you’re going from west to east. But if you’re coming from the north from Sulawesi, you also have to make a sea crossing. But the most difficult thing to do is to get there because of the ocean currents. And really, pretty much the only way to get there is by accident coming from Asia, because even the rodents, which are the biggest, you know, group of super tramps in the world appear to have come from New Guinea and Australia. So the ocean currents actually work that way so they sweep around Flores and the only way you reall
