Original subtitles

Specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.

For this collection, Sir David Attenborough

has chosen documentaries from the start of his career.

More programmes on this theme and other BBC Four Collections

are available on BBC iPlayer.

Last July, Charles Lagus and I were in a little truck,

travelling eastwards through the island of Java.

In the back, we had our cameras and recording machines,

and we were out there looking for animals.

We were trying to get to the little island of Komodo, farther east,

several hundred miles farther east, to look for the giant dragons.

The lizards.

But as we came down here,

the island of Bali lay on our route.

Well, Bali, of course,

is one of the most famous and most romantic islands in the world.

500 years ago, the whole of the islands of Indonesia were Hindu.

But in the 16th century, there was an invasion of Mohammedan people,

and they drove out the King of Java and his court

and his artists and his musicians, and they went eastwards,

and they took refuge in the little island of Bali.

And for the last five centuries,

they've kept alive their Hindu religion there.

So it's not only a beautiful and famous island,

but also a unique island in this part of the world.

And finally, we came to the little port of Banyuwangi.

Across the strait, we could see the blue volcanoes of Bali.

Ports are always interesting places, and this Banyuwangi was crowded

with the little prows which travel far throughout the Pacific.

We had been told that a motor ferry left for Java

at five o'clock in the morning,

but in the delightful eastern way, time is a little elastic,

and it wasn't, in fact, midday before it left.

But there was a great deal of interest to see in the harbour,

and here comes our truck.

I can't say that this chap's instructions

were very much help to us!

And so we left Java to cross the narrow, turbulent strait,

less than two miles wide, which separates it from Bali.

On our way, we passed many of the small prows which voyage

far throughout the islands of Indonesia,

trading in coconut oil and copra and dried fish.

Some of the ships were carrying men who will spend weeks

diving for pearls amongst the remoter coral reefs.

And within an hour, we had reached the shores of Bali.

A few minutes of travel was enough to show us that,

in coming to the island of Bali,

we had come to a different world.

There were high mud walls round the houses,

which we'd never seen in Java.

The people looked quite different,

and as we travelled along the grassy tracks,

we passed through the terraced rice fields

for which Bali is famous.

HE PLAYS WHISTLE

Rice is the basis of all life in Bali,

and the Balinese are among the most skilful

of all rice growers in the world.

They plant throughout the year, so that now, in July,

we could see rice in all stages of cultivation.

To begin with, the thick, red-brown mud of the paddy fields

must be ploughed and harrowed

with buffaloes harnessed to the traditional wooden ploughs.

The age-old terracing of the fields is so beautifully constructed

that any one field can be flooded or drained at will.

When the terraces are ploughed,

they must be planted with the young seedlings.

Not anyhow, but in a special order,

governed, like most things in Bali, by ritual and custom.

The Balinese keep their fields meticulously tidy,

and the seedlings are always planted in neat, straight rows.

As the grain ripens,

so offerings must be erected in the fields

to protect the crops from vermin,

and to thank the gods for the fertility of the harvest.

In the neighbouring fields, the rice had been gathered,

each stalk having been cut individually,

one by one, as prescribed by custom.

And the golden sheaves were being gathered

and carried back to the village granaries.

But, above all, we were impressed by the great number of temples.

There were temples everywhere.

Each household had its own group of shrines,

each village had at least three temples.

There were temples on the seashore, by the sides of rivers,

in cemeteries, on cliff tops,

and all were decorated with a wealth of intricate carvings.

This one lay in the centre of a small forest.

Many Balinese temples are sacred to a particular animal,

and the courtyard of this one was haunted by a troop of monkeys,

ever hungry to snatch food from worshippers who came to the temple.

After having spent several weeks crawling through the forest,

trying to track down troops of shy, timid monkeys,

it was a real joy to meet these bold creatures,

even if they did do their best to steal things from my pocket.

We discovered that, in fact, there are two troops of monkeys,

and that there was constant warfare between the two.

Each group had its own territory,

and if one lot invaded the territory of another,

then there was wholesale fighting.

When we were there, however, there was only one troop in occupation,

so the monkeys could devote themselves

to the gentle social activity of grooming one another.

These are macaque monkeys, the kind that, in Sumatra and Java,

are sometimes trained to clamber up palm trees

and gather coconuts for their masters.

These Balinese ones, however, seem to regard things the other way round.

It's us who have to provide food for them.

When they are grooming one another,

they're not simply looking for fleas,

but are searching one another's skin

for tasty little grains of salt.

Although these monkeys look charming and sweet

scampering over the temple carvings,

they're really quite a savage lot,

ruled over very harshly by one old male.

There was no sharing of the grains of maize I offered them,

and often, they would fight and squabble over them.

As a result, the older and bigger ones

got far more than their fair share.

I tried hard to give these little babies some food,

but always the adults snatched it from my hand.

And once a baby did manage to grab a grain,

its mother wrenched open its jaws,

extracted the maize and ate it herself.

Hanging outside another of these numerous temples,

we saw these beautifully made decorations of cut palm leaves.

By a stroke of luck, we had arrived at the beginning of a festival.

And down the village street towards us came the procession.

It was headed by the tall, white, ceremonial banners.

CELEBRATORY PERCUSSION MUSIC

The women carried on their heads offerings of rice cakes and fruit,

which would be blessed in the temple

and then taken back to their homes in the evenings to be eaten.

And with them, came the barong,

a magnificent, mythical animal which each village possesses,

with its hide of gilded leather, glittering with mirrors.

This is the priest, carrying a burning offering.

And behind him, one of the shrines,

specially draped in gold-painted cloth.

The shrine, in fact, is empty.

It is the home of an invisible god.

The Balinese temple is not a gloomy, dark, mysterious place,

but a series of courtyards open to the sun and air.

There, in the background, are the tall, pagoda-like shrines.

Preparations for this festival have been going on for many days.

It was the anniversary of the date of its founding.

Once inside the temple,

the shrine was set down to be blessed.

The people put down their offerings

and the priest began his ceremonies and prayers.

THEY CHANT AND PRAY

Now would follow a night of dancing, singing and feasting,

but we had to continue on our way to another temple.

The tall, many-tiered shrines of this one

were built in front of a cave.

And as I walked past them,

I discovered that the temple was sacred to the cave's inhabitants.

Bats.

During the day, they blanketed the roof of their cave,

squawking and squabbling.

But at nightfall, they will all fly out

to hawk through the air in the dusk, in search of insects.

BATS SQUEAK

The shrines beneath them were heavily encrusted with bat droppings.

And the ground of the cave was crawling with cockroaches.

Inside, it was hot with the warmth of the bats' bodies

and all the time, there was a steady hail of lice and droppings,

and once, as I passed, a dead bat flopped onto the floor.

I ventured inside

and found, on a ledge at the back, this large python.

It had dwelt in the back of the cave for many years,

living off the dead bats as they dropped from the roof.

Not far from the cave,

we found a colony of a different sort of bats -

the giant fruit bat or flying fox.

They were hanging upside down from the top of the trees,

fanning themselves in the midday sun.

I clapped...

..and the entire colony took to flight.

The wingspan of these creatures is several feet across.

I spent a long time trying to discover how they managed to alight.

I couldn't make out how he did it that time.

Or that time.

But this one just let down his hooked undercarriage and flopped over.

And here is one of these fruit bats.

My goodness, that's a rather big lump of banana! Can you manage?

HE LAUGHS

One of these fruit bats eating banana.

And with him is Mr Dalby from the London Zoo, who looks after him.

Come on! How long have you had this one, Mr Dalby?

This particular one we've had for the last nine years.

- So they obviously do very well? - Very well indeed in captivity, yes.

Well, you can see from this wing, which I'm holding out,

that, really, this is just like a normal animal

whose hand has been extensively modified to become a wing.

There's his first finger, second finger, third finger,

fourth finger, and there is his thumb, which is modified into a hook.

- He's quite happy like this? - Very happy, yes.

Shall we just hang him up, as he did in the film? Now, flop over.

That's fine.

Now we'll turn him round, so that people can see his face

because... Oh, you would, wouldn't you?

Come on! His face is... Come on!

A very foxy-looking face,

so just by a bit of... Whoops!

..of television trickery, to show you how foxy he is,

we WILL turn him upside down. HE LAUGHS

And now, you can see what he looks like

if he were the right way up like any normal mammal.

Do they breed?

This particular one, we've had a youngster

for the last five years running, so they do very well indeed.

- And they're quite happy. - And they feed on fruit only?

Mainly fruit. But I have known them at times,

when there's the odd mouse sniffing about

- that shouldn't be there... - Really?

They make quite a meal of it. Most unusual.

Although, David, you should know! Have you seen that?

Well, I saw them out there in those big colonies,

and it seemed to me that they fly far afield.

I was seeing them flying across that strait between Bali and Java to feed.

Well, I was rather going to disagree with you on that point

because I've always understood myself that these bats are lazy.

They stay in one tree, clean it, and then move onto the next one.

Now, we differ on that point because you say they fly.

Well, certainly, I saw them flying, I should say,

a minimum of three miles and, the village we saw them at,

they said that they had lived there for 20 years,

and they flew farther and farther afield each year.

DALBY: But surely they're cleaning the trees completely before they go?

ATTENBOROUGH: They certainly do. They certainly do.

Well, I think he's very nice, although, actually,

- I wouldn't keep him as a pet. - Why?

He's got a bit of a smell on him, hasn't he?

I don't think so. I differ on that point. I don't think so.

- I think he's very nice. - What about fleas?

Well, a lot of people say so,

but I think that really applies to

only an animal that's really run down.

And if you look at his face, a fox-like face.

- Yes. - It's pretty, really.

Well, yes, I suppose so. Every man to his taste.

- I'll let you keep him, I think! - I think I'd like to, yes.

Well, thank you very much, Mr Dalby, for bringing him in anyway.

Well, passing over the bat to Mr Dalby...

we continued in Java, in Bali, for another week or so,

and we saw lots more things there - dancing -

and actually, we did, in spite of everything,

come across quite a number of animals.

We'll be back next week to show you something of that.

So, until then, good night.