Will Millard Question and Answer
Where does your passion for travel come from?
As a child I remember telling my Mum I was never leaving the Fens and that I could make a living as a professional magician, so it definitely wasn’t something that there was there at birth! Everything changed at aged 16. I guess I realised there was more to life than my village, and travelled on the, now very standard, gap year to Australia, New Zealand and Thailand. I never really stopped again after that. It definitely helped having inspiring geography teachers at secondary school though.
Why Indonesia for this trip?
I first travelled to Bali when I was 18 and remember being blown away by the sheer multitude of languages, religions and communities spread right out across the Indonesian archipelago. On that first trip to Indonesia it felt incredibly open and tolerant of visitors in a way I hadn’t ever really experienced elsewhere before, and I ended up really falling in love with the place. By the time it came round to ‘Hunters of the South Seas’ I had spent over two years leading expeditions and working in the country, and had also learnt it housed one of the most bio diverse areas of ocean on this planet. Many of the local communities there have a uniquely strong bond with the ocean, but even though many lived on remote islands and atolls, change was beginning to come at a furious pace. We wanted to visit them before it was too late.
Tell us how you became fluent in the language?
It definitely helps that the vast majority of the places I have worked speak Indonesian as a second language! With such an enormous level of linguistic diversity Indonesian became the lingua franca for hundreds of different communities in the country and is quite simple to pick up. At its most basic level, which is where I most certainly am at, there are no articles (the, a, an) or any tenses, so you can get going pretty quickly with just a fistful of nouns and greetings up your sleeve. I had to learn fast after I moved to the Indonesian province of West Papua in 2007. I was on a contract to teach English for a year and was one of only a handful of other Westerners working out there; it would have been quite a lonely experience had I not made an effort!
What was your favourite experience during your three month trip?
Blimey, that’s really tricky. There was a moment during the Bajau episode when we were heading off to a night time hunting ground and the crew couldn’t follow in their boat, as the water was too shallow. Kabei and I walked his canoes out over a large patch of seagrass where it was absolutely, wonderfully, silent, and very still. We just moved together chucking any crabs or fish into the bucket that crossed our path, totally comfortable in each other’s company, telling jokes and messing around. I felt like we really were proper friends for the first time. It was a really lovely feeling.
What was your most terrifying experience?
Unquestionably the whale hunt. It was one thing to live in a whale hunting community, quite another to be the only boat attached to a 25 tonne leviathan after everyone else’s lines had come free. I felt a weird feeling of detachment; I guess a form of shock of sorts. There is a moment in the film where you see my hand shaking uncontrollably. I remember that very clearly as I almost couldn’t believe it was my hand, that I was actually sat in that boat. Afterwards Stefanus and the whaling crew were pleased I had experienced what they described as a “bad one”. In a way I was too, as I felt closer to understanding their unique culture as a result, but I would never ever want to repeat that experience again.
What surprised you most during filming?
The openness of the communities I met and lived with. I wonder really whether I would be quite as welcoming if a complete stranger turned up on my doorstep and followed me to work, but time and again the people of the South Seas demonstrated an unfaltering sense of hospitality that was thoroughly humbling.
What essential items do you pack for your travels?
I always take my travel diaries so I can write down my experiences every day. It’s useful not just as a tool to offload after a difficult day, but also I find I forget the little details of daily life: funny things people say, what I ate, a late night story or chance occurrence, that might not make it into a film but certainly build on those wider experiences we all encounter when travelling. That, and pictures of my friends and family, both to remind me of home but also so I can share a bit of my background with the people I’m living with.
Where to next?
I would love to spend more time in Africa or visit South and Central America for the first time. As much as I love Indonesia and the South Pacific it would be really cool to branch out and investigate communities living in other parts of the world, but it would be hard to leave behind the water theme for good. I learnt the hard way that I don’t particularly like expeditions where you go for days, or even weeks, without ever meeting other people, so perhaps a big river journey, or maybe just something on the river Taff here in Wales. That would go down a lot better with my loved ones for sure!
