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.
Until a few years ago,
it was thought that the largest lizard in the world
was a creature which is quite common in Java and Malaya,
so common, in fact, that when we were in Java, we were able to catch one.
It's a thing called a monitor lizard. And here he is.
He's not very large, he's only about three foot long, but, then,
he's not an adult and, when he grows,
he will be up to six feet long or even more.
He's quite a fierce creature.
He's got great big claws on him when he's grown up,
claws big enough to give you a very ugly wound,
comparable to that of a leopard, and he lives on carrion.
Quite an unpleasant animal, really,
although he's quite a pleasant...
quite a charming one to keep, I think.
But, in 1912, the astonishing news came that a new lizard
had been discovered that grew to the astonishing length of 12 feet
and weighed three hundredweights
and lived by attacking and catching deer and pig.
It was discovered on one tiny little island in the Pacific - Komodo.
Here is Komodo.
This is Sumbawa, Flores,
Bali and Java.
And Charles Lagus and I had travelled to Bali
on our way to this island
to try and film and catch these lizards.
We had with us an Indonesian helper called Sabran
and we hoped to sail down here to Komodo.
But, unfortunately, the trade winds were blowing that way,
so instead we got a plane, which fortunately was flying from there,
to a little town called Maumere in Flores.
Well, that was 200 miles away from Komodo,
but we had heard that Maumere
was pretty well the Piccadilly Circus of the Pacific.
There were cars and lorries all over the place,
so we were going to have no difficulty at all in hiring a lorry
to take us to the other end of Flores, 200 miles away,
when it was quite easy to just cross the strait and go to Komodo.
But, of course, we got to Maumere and there wasn't a lorry in sight.
They said, "Don't worry about that because it's not important,
"because the roads have been broken by avalanches anyway."
So instead, we went down to the tiny little fishing port of Maumere
and there we managed to find a small prow, which was about 20 feet long
and weighing about five tonnes.
She was crewed by one man and two little boys,
who said that they would take us to Komodo.
We loaded all our equipment into the hold beneath the tiny cabin.
That was the tape recorder...
..our kit...
..and the camera.
We didn't take much food
because we expected to be able to catch enough fish to last us
for the few days it was going to take us to get to Komodo.
Here comes Sabran.
The sail goes up.
We haul up the anchor.
And, at last, we're off.
We headed away from the shore
and soon the trade winds were filling our sails.
The boys took it in turn on the tiller.
This is Hassan, a cheerful lad who, unfortunately,
was not a particularly good steersman,
as he had the habit of falling asleep at the tiller.
Sabran, always eager to make himself useful,
had quickly improvised a kitchen in the stern.
He had found an empty petrol tin which would serve as a grate
and in it he had lit a wood fire.
Now he was beginning to prepare the first meal of the voyage.
The menu was not particularly interesting -
salted fish and rice, which he was frying in coconut oil.
But, to us, it looked a very welcome meal
and we weren't grumbling because, well, life seemed pretty good.
To the south of us stretched the mountainous coast of Flores.
Somewhere, 200 miles ahead, lay Komodo.
The wind was strong and fair
and we were making a good four knots
through the brilliant, clear-blue sea.
It was very hot in the blazing sun
and Hassan draped his sarong over his head
to protect him from the heat.
And we had nothing to do but to lie on deck
and wonder what lay ahead of us in Komodo.
Our fresh water was stored in this earthenware jar,
lashed to the tiny cabin.
Unfortunately, it got very hot in the sun
and, within two days, it was full of wriggling mosquito larvae as well,
but, nonetheless, it was quite refreshing.
You didn't see any pictures of the captain there,
because, strangely enough, he refused to have his photograph taken.
But things were going to get odder,
because we lay down that night to sleep on the deck of the ship
and I woke up at about two o'clock in the morning
with the most dreadful grinding noise going on.
GRINDING
That grinding noise, in fact, is the lizard!
But there was a dreadful grinding noise going on
and I looked overboard and found we were on a coral reef.
So I called to the stern, where the crew were,
all asleep I may say, and told the captain, who turned out to be deaf.
The next morning, when we woke up, having got off the coral reef,
I spoke to the captain and asked him how long it would take us
to get to Komodo and he said, "Well, I don't know."
And I said, "But, you know... you've been there, haven't you?"
And he said, "No."
And I said, "But you know where it is, don't you?"
And he said, "No, I thought YOU knew."
So I said I didn't know,
but, fortunately, I had got a sketch map
and we knew where the Southern Cross was,
so we decided to go on using that as a basis.
Then things got even odder with the captain. He didn't know the way,
er, he... When we asked him to try and catch some fish for us
he said he hadn't got any fishing apparatus,
and I thought he was a fisherman.
And then, after six days, we finally got to the strait -
at least I hoped it was the strait - which led down to Komodo.
It was dusk, it was blowing half a gale and I told him to turn south.
Well, we turned south and immediately we got involved
in the most frightful whirlpools.
There was surf breaking on the coral reefs,
it was blowing very hard, and we had a very nasty three hours -
the captain going round saying he was half dead
and Charles Lagus and I poling ourselves off the reefs
with bamboo poles.
But, at last, we found a sheltered haven
and we dropped anchor in the bay and spent there the night.
Well, it was a rather bad night,
but in the morning when we woke up,
there, for the first time, we saw the island of Komodo.
The tide was now slack
and the shallow water crystal clear as we poled ourselves off the coral.
Out in the deeper water,
there was enough breeze for us to hoist the mainsail again.
The gales of the previous night had mercifully died down.
Slowly, we once more got under way, out of the lee of the shore.
In the narrow strait between the islands,
the wind was blowing more strongly and the sea had become quite choppy.
With the foresail up, we were soon making good progress
and, within an hour, we were passing the headland
that guards the entrance to Komodo Bay.
We now had to thread our way through a maze of coral reefs
and shoals that lay between us and the bay.
And Hassan climbed up the mast to work out the best route.
So, at last, we sailed safely into the wide, calm Bay of Komodo.
The island looked most exciting as we sailed close by its shores.
Brilliant white beaches of coral sand,
clumps of bush near the water's edge,
and, above them, gaunt, bare volcanic hills,
covered in sunburnt brown grass with a few palm trees here and there.
This was the home of the dragon which we'd come so far to see.
We anchored a few yards from the shore
and Sabran and I climbed into our little dugout canoe
to go to the village and pay our respects to the population.
We were so happy and relieved to have arrived
after such a long and tricky voyage
that, to our eyes, the village seemed a real paradise,
though, in fact, it's a poverty-stricken little kampong
of not more than 30 or 40 houses.
The inhabitants live by fishing
and also by collecting shellfish,
which they dry on mats in the sun.
This old woman was turning them over to dry
and, as we walked up to her, she showed them to me,
perhaps under the impression that I'd come all this way to buy some,
I'm not sure.
But I kept asking for the patingi, or headman,
and at last she understood
and pointed to his house further in the village.
No-one took the slightest bit of notice of us
and, as we walked past, the islanders didn't seem
in the least surprised to see us,
or thought it at all strange that we should appear out of the blue.
The patingi was sitting on the steps of his house.
He welcomed us very kindly and invited us inside.
The patingi told us a great deal about the dragons
and it was quite apparent that he held them
in a certain amount of awe.
Indeed, he told us that one man on the island had been killed
by one of these giant lizards only a few months earlier.
The man had been walking in the bush, had not noticed the lizard,
which was lying doggo, and as he approached,
the lizard swept round with its enormous tail,
broke the man's legs and then mauled him so badly with his jaws
that the man died afterwards.
We subsequently learned a great deal more from the patingi,
not only about the dragons, but about our mysterious captain.
One day he said to me, "You know, that captain you've got,
"he's not much good."
And, of course, I agreed with him, but asked him why he said so.
And he said, "Well, you know, he's not a man of these parts.
"He normally spends his time smuggling machine guns from Singapore
"to the rebel army in Makassar, in Celebes."
So I said, "Oh, yes?"
And he said, "As a matter of fact,
"he's asked three of the men of the village
"if they'd like to come with him when you leave the island."
And I said, "Why, do you want go back to Java?"
He said, "No, no, but the captain says that you've got
"a lot of valuable equipment and money on board.
"He said if there are a lot of them, they can get them from you."
And I said, "Oh, well, are they coming?"
He said, "No, no. You know, there's the fishing here
"and they don't want to leave home."
So it was all ended quite amicably.
But...we went back to the dragons
and I asked him how best we could attract them.
And he said the thing the dragons liked most of all was goat's flesh.
Fortunately, he had two carcasses, a little high,
of goats in the village, and these he sold to us.
So, the next day, we walked across the beach carrying the two goats,
with our cameras and recording equipment,
ready for this final stage of our expedition.
The bush was quite different from that we had seen elsewhere.
It was full of the calls of sulphur-crested cockatoos.
This is a little inlet from the sea with its murky, opaque water.
It's not so much fun walking through water as cloudy as this,
because you can't see what you are going to tread on.
We lit a fire and roasted some goat's flesh,
not only to create a smell, which we hoped would attract the dragons,
but also to give us the first square meal which we'd had for some days.
I had brought some coconuts in their green husks
to provide a drink to go with the meat.
There was no fresh water to be found in this part of the island.
And very refreshing it was, too.
The bait lay in a dry riverbed in front of us.
We waited, but not for long.
Within half an hour,
there was a rustle in the bush and there was the dragon!
This was tremendously exciting for us.
Our first sight of this magnificent monster,
the climax of four months of arduous travel.
He was enormous.
I reckoned about ten feet long.
As he circled us, flicking out his great yellow tongue,
savouring the smell of the goat's flesh,
he looked almost as though he had walked out of some prehistoric age.
There was a noise from the direction of the bait and another dragon,
this time a much smaller young one,
had come to begin investigating the bait.
The big one joins him.
And it begins tearing and ripping at the goat's carcass.
That is the leg of a full-grown goat that he's tugging at,
so you can judge his size for yourself.
They are trying to drag him away back to their lairs.
But we've tied the bait with rope onto a stake,
so they have to eat it here.
We were so close to him
that we could see every scale in his hoary, black skin.
Now we had proof that the dragons were indeed here,
so, before they ate too much of the bait,
we shouted and waved to scare them away.
Now we had to set about building a trap.
First, we cut saplings in the forest and sharpened their ends.
Then we began driving them into the ground.
This will be one of the corner posts.
The trap I was planning to build had been taught me by the Dayaks
when we were in Borneo.
Its great quality is that, with the exception of a short piece of rope,
all the materials you need to make it can be obtained in the forest itself.
This is the last of the corner posts.
To tie the poles together, we used fibre from palm leaves.
First, you remove the leaf.
Then you split the stem.
Crush it.
Then you beat it on a stone to make it pliable.
And you have a perfectly serviceable strong string.
The boys, who had come with us,
were out in the forest cutting more poles.
We worked as rapidly as we could, for we hoped to complete the trap
before the dragons we had already seen really took fright
and left the neighbourhood.
This is to be the door of the trap,
which, when weighted with a boulder, will hang poised at the entrance,
ready to drop down as soon as the trigger is released.
Boulders have to be put round the sides so that the dragon,
if we ever get one inside, won't be able to prise the poles apart.
And now comes the trigger.
Again, this is made from material cut in the forest, this time a creeper.
Lift the gate.
Set the trigger,
touch the platform inside,
and it works.
We put a piece of goat's flesh inside
and then shrouded that end with palm leaves,
so that if dragons approached the trap,
they wouldn't be able to see the bait, except from the trap-door end.
Meanwhile, we decided to hang the other goat carcass high in a tree,
so that its smell would spread as far as possible,
and also so that the meat would be out of the way
and not distract the dragons from the bait in the trap.
And now, all we had to do was to wait.
We looked intently at the trap, watching for the dragon to reappear,
when, suddenly, there was a rustle behind us.
I swung round and there, only ten yards away,
sat the big dragon again.
He watched us sleepily.
A butterfly settled on his nose.
Obviously, he wasn't frightened of us.
He is the king of his island and fears no other creature.
As we watched him, it occurred to me
that we were in the direct line between him and the trap.
Then we heard a noise from the direction of the trap.
The young one had reappeared.
This was inconvenient
because we didn't want to catch such a small one as this
and I sat hoping he'd go away.
All this time, the big one had got his beady eye fixed on us.
And then, infuriatingly, he went in.
I could stand it no longer and leapt to my feet to chase him out.
This disturbed the bigger one.
He heaved himself up and slowly walked around us.
Once more, he set off towards the trap.
As I feared, he went to the wrong end,
in spite of the shroud of palm leaves.
But, not being able to get inside
to the smell which was attracting him,
he came round to the front.
But now he caught a whiff of the smell of the suspended bait.
I hadn't reckoned on him being so big
and, to our dismay, we saw he could reach this hanging bait.
But, fortunately, he couldn't get enough to satisfy him
and he retreated with some of the goat's intestines
dangling from the corner of his mouth.
And down came the door.
Hastily, we piled boulders on the door so that he couldn't lift it up.
We had got him.
And we thought our troubles were over.
We'd filmed him and we had caught him.
But we reckoned without one thing.
Unfortunately, in the end, bureaucracy defeated us
and we weren't given a permit
to export those dragons from Indonesia.
So I'm afraid they're still there.
That was the end of our zoo quest.
Good night.