Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jayapura – The plot finally coalesced after years in and out of filthy Indonesian jail cells: equip a small outrigger for the long trip from Papua to Australia, fill it with people selected expressly for their likelihood of winning asylum and wait for the political fallout.
Expedition leader Herman Wanggai – now living in Melbourne after being granted a temporary protection visa in March – spent more than two years travelling to far-flung reaches of Indonesian Papua recruiting the best people he could find for the project.
His own chances of gaining political protection once he hit Australian shores were excellent: he had done two stretches inside for opposing Indonesian rule in his homeland, and his uncle, Thomas Wanggai, had declared Papua independent in 1988, raising the controversial Morning Star flag and then dying in a Jakarta jail for his troubles.
Several family members would also be good to go on the risky journey across the Pacific and into the Torres Strait, since they had in various ways supported the banned independence movement, but it was the others, drawn from Wanggai's extensive student network, who needed careful vetting.
The key criteria, Wanggai decided with lawyer Edison Waromi, was that they had parents involved in some way in the original independence struggle, after Indonesia subsumed Papua in 1969, long after gaining its own independence from The Netherlands.
"That way we could prove the potential for intimidation," said Waromi, whom Indonesia has regularly arrested and jailed for sedition. "I know about asylum law, I know what the international situation is on asking for asylum."
Indonesia's crackdowns on Papuan independence activists have long been noted for their brutality, and the province remains largely closed to the outside world. However, in lengthy interviews with The Australian over recent days in the Papuan capital, Jayapura, Waromi was expansive about the trip's overriding political aim.
Waromi left Wanggai to his own devices as far as recruiting, as "he had excellent connections in the independence movement and amongst students, and he knew who was pro- and anti-independence. What I said to him was, 'This is your organisational task; all we want to know is that the exodus succeeds'."
The participants were to come from as wide an area of the province as possible, to back the group's pan-Papuan credentials.
Waromi, leader of a loose coalition called the Papuan National Authority, and Wanggai were close to pulling off a project designed to propel the latter into the limelight as a genuine Papuan independence leader, with Waromi hanging on to his coattails. "We discussed tactics for the struggle, so that Indonesia would open its eyes," Waromi said.
The crafty politician in Waromi could guess what the impact on Australia-Indonesia relations would be when Canberra granted temporary protection visas to 42 of the 43 in March, although he admitted the speed and fury with which the friendship split was beyond his wildest dreams.
"We wanted to show the world a small picture of the terrible human rights situation across all of Papua," he said. "It was a tactical move in the struggle, to publicise the situation here."
He certainly got publicity, and in spades. Within days, ambassador Hamzah Thayeb was recalled, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made an extraordinary televised attack on Australia's decision and the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Michael L'Estrange, flew to Jakarta to smooth ruffled feathers.
Waromi refused to be drawn on when the next boatload would be setting off from Papua's treacherous southern coast, although that was likely to be more due to a lack of ideas and genuine surprise at the success of the last one than because of any plan now hatching.
The original plan was supposed to be for 200 people to set sail but 43 were all that could be mustered – "conditions and funding limited the project", Waromi said.
Wanggai's mother, Karubaba, and father, Sadrak, were also a key part of the plan to bring Papua on to the world stage, with Herman as its star turn.
They accompanied him from Jayapura, in the province's northeast, on a circuitous journey west and then east again, to meet up with the outrigger that would bear its cargo south across the Pacific.
The family travelled overland to the town of Sorong in the west, and from there split up: Karubaba, a tough woman with a fierce protective streak, was assigned grandmotherly duties, taking Herman's one-year-old twin boys, San and Joi, the rest of the way to Merauke on a ferry.
Herman and his father sailed a small skiff for nine days from Sorong to Merauke, picking up successful applicants along the way. Each had paid 5 million rupiah (about $700) to be part of the moment.
Ferdinanda Kumba, Herman's wife, flew from Jayapura to Merauke because she feared a bout of seasickness. The eventual days at sea proved easier than expected healthwise, but there were other concerns: allegations of embezzlement, with claims made to Papuan police that Kumba had collected money from a circle of people for a promised trip to Israel and was now swiftly bearing that cash southwards to Australia. "If that's true, then I should have been arrested, since I organised the trip," Waromi scoffed.
In Jayapura, Karubaba and Sadrak Wanggai were visited by police – they still are – but, in those first days, they stuck firm to their son's instructions: "Don't tell anyone where I've gone, and deny you had anything to do with my departure."
"Herman told me, 'I cannot return now, mother'," Karubaba said of the first contact with her son after that morning on the beach in January, when she and her husband saw the leaky boat off. "His parents, we couldn't sleep during that time as well. What I know is, he said to me, 'Mother, if I return I will die'."