[R-sig-Geo] Read raster data in Big Endian (Motorola) byteorder on Little Endian (Intel) system

[O'Hanlon, Simon J]

Dear all,
I am working with some raster data (.bil format), with values stored in big endian byteorder. The info in the associated .hdr file is:
BYTEORDER      M
LAYOUT       BIL
NROWS         9194
NCOLS         8736
NBANDS        1
NBITS         16
BANDROWBYTES         17472
TOTALROWBYTES        17472
BANDGAPBYTES         0

When I read in 'mydata' using raster I see that it correctly states the min (-9999) and max (2376) values of the data (I assume from the .stx file since I believe the values are not actually read to memory at this stage?). However when I do str(mydata) I see that @file at byteorder slot is "little" and if I try:
 
values <- getValues(mydata) 
min(values)
2
max(values) 
55537
And most weirdly if I do:
summary(values)
Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
      2     757   55540   35030   55540   55540

Does anyone know if/how I can specify the byteorder as Big Endian to the rgdal driver/raster function? I have tried changing BYTEORDER      in the .hdr file to "big", but it does not work.

Thanks,

Simon