One episode of David Attenborough’s 1957 series was named for the Wahgi Valley itself and went to air in Britain on 1 December 1957. It is the valley this journal takes its name from.
In 1957 David Attenborough was 31 and had never seen a bird of paradise display in the wild.
He went to find out. The BBC series was Zoo Quest for the Paradise Birds, six black-and-white episodes that began on the Great Barrier Reef and ended in the mountains of New Guinea. From the Wahgi Valley in the highlands, he and cameraman Charles Lagus walked for days along a narrow track into the Jimi Valley, past men who still made axes from stone. There he finally watched the dance he had come for.
Zoo Quest was a programme of its time. It was made with London Zoo, and its expeditions collected live animals for display as well as filming them.
Attenborough turned 100 this May. He kept returning to those birds, and in 1996 he made Attenborough in Paradise to film them again.
He walked for days to watch a bird dance. He has been doing versions of that ever since.
Photograph: Jeffry Surianto / Pexels. Illustrations, 1806: Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library / Unsplash