Tag: Pacific

The Riddle of Norfolk Island

The Riddle of Norfolk Island

A view across the water to Phillip Island from Norfolk Island, taken near the landing place where a British agricultural settlement was established in 1788.

When I was a little girl who collected stamps, some of the most beautiful and intriguing examples to come my way were from Norfolk Island. There were pictures of birds and butterflies and shipwrecks and, loveliest of all, an engraving of a sea-girt, pine-forested landscape that appeared in a multi-coloured series of stamps ranging from a ha’penny to two shillings in value. My aim, of course, was to collect all the different colours.

At the bottom of each stamp in this series was the proud wording ‘Founded 1788’ – the same year as Sydney, my hometown. I had a vague understanding that Norfolk Island both was and wasn’t part of Australia, that its history was entwined with ours but that it was also somehow separate and different.

Part of the classic Norfolk Island stamp series, first issued 1947.

I loved the Norfolk Island stamps, particularly the ideal landscape represented in that classic engraved series. One day, I thought, I would like to go there.

It took more than 40 years, but finally, this month, I did visit for a week’s holiday with my husband. Not a travel-writing assignment – just a bit of R&R, tinged with the glamour of those long-ago stamp-collecting memories.

Forest and sea on the island’s north coast.

We had to check whether our flight was international or domestic (the terminals at Sydney Airport are separate). Definitely international, but online advice varied as to whether a passport was needed. I’m glad I didn’t rely on the Australian Government information that ‘Passports and visas are not required when travelling to Norfolk Island from the Australian mainland’ (www.regional.gov.au), because it turned out that passports were indeed demanded.

Once at the airport we checked in, received a gate number, and confidently followed the sign that said ‘All Gates’. At the Smartgate, though, our passports were refused. A kindly airport employee came over, looked at our boarding passes, and told us that we had to go to a special gate, because this was a domestic flight. Really? A domestic flight leaving from the international terminal?

The ‘special gate’ we were sent to had no electronic passport scanners, just good old human passport control. The woman at the desk asked our destination, and when we told her, her face went hard. ‘Have you been there before?’ We said no, her lips tightened and she made a kind of ‘Hmm’ noise, before subjecting us to the closest facial scrutiny we have ever experienced at any airport in the world.

Calm, clear water at Emily Bay on the south coast.

You honestly would have thought we’d said we were going to Syria or Afghanistan, not a little island halfway between Vanuatu and Auckland that’s a favourite holiday destination for Australian retirees.

On arrival at Norfolk Island, things stayed weird, although they were a lot more relaxed. We’d been instructed on the plane that we should mentally substitute ‘Norfolk Island’ for ‘Australia’ when completing our landing cards. First: what kind of official advice is that? And second: easier said than done!

By the time I’d finished with it, my card was a real mess. How long will you stay in Australia? 7 days. Where will you go when you leave Australia? Australia. What is your address in Australia? A hotel on Norfolk Island. What is your permanent address? A house in Australia. On it went, a tissue of absurdities. I thought the official on the incoming passport desk would be sure to reject it, but she just waved me through with a smile.

Anson Bay, on the west coast. It was strange to watch television from the Central Australian desert when surrounded by this kind of scenery.

In our hotel room, we turned on the television to find that all the advertisements were from Alice Springs or elsewhere in the Northern Territory. Never have I felt so tuned in to the lifestyle of our desert regions. My Australian mobile phone not working, I purchased a SIM card from Norfolk Telecom so I could call family at home. My daughter informed me that my calls appeared to be coming from the Australian Antarctic Territory.

Visiting Norfolk Island was turning out to be the most geographically incoherent experience of my life. I decided to try to find out if the place made any more sense politically.

The answer is not really. You get the sense that something is up as you drive past the Centre for Democracy in the town, Burnt Pine, drop in to the tent embassy at the Kingston historic area, or notice the many green-and-white Norfolk Island flags flying from homes all over the island.

The Tent Embassy in the Kingston Historic Area.

Depending who you talk to, Norfolk’s present political situation is either a dastardly plot or a bureaucratic nightmare. Basically, the island’s financial problems during the GFC ten years ago raised questions about the sustainability of the self-government they’d enjoyed since 1979. In 2015 the Australian government passed legislation, which came into effect in 2016, revoking Norfolk Island’s right to self-govern and imposing a Canberra-led administration.

Let’s just say that the Norfolk people aren’t happy with the new order, and there’s a definite David-versus-Goliath feeling in their attitudes towards Canberra. This antipathy doesn’t extend to visitors from ‘the mainland’, who are warmly welcomed, but it does apply to our national anthem. Norfolk Islanders refuse to sing ‘Advance Australia Fair’ and remain faithful to ‘God Save the Queen’ – meaning Victoria, the monarch who allowed their ancestors to settle the island.

Placard about the ‘Hands Up for Democracy’ movement on Norfolk Island. Note the reference to Queen Victoria, whose memory is revered here. 

It’s certainly not my place to offer an opinion on the new political arrangements, many of which boil down to issues of compliance (on taxation and industrial relations, for example). The only comment I will venture is that if, like the inhabitants of Norfolk Island, I was told I must vote in Australian Federal elections but that I had been assigned to the electorate of Bean in Canberra, I’d be astonished and angry. How the voters of Norfolk Island are supposed to feel that this gives them any real representation in the Australian parliament is a mystery to me.

I dropped in to the Post Office to see if the Norfolk Island stamps were still as beautiful as ever. Alas, they are no more – since 2016 Australia Post has subsumed the island’s philatelic service. (Although, to be fair, there are some lovely new Australian stamps with Norfolk subjects.) But the gorgeous scenery that captured my attention in those old-fashioned stamps I collected as a child is, in reality, even more stunning than I’d imagined.

View near the Captain Cook lookout on the north coast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living the Dream on Dravuni Island

Living the Dream on Dravuni Island

Pacific paradise

You hear a lot about ‘living the dream’ these days, especially when it comes to travel. There tends to be a touch of ‘one size fits all’ in the assumption that everyone will recognise and share the same, single dream. But for each one of us ‘the dream’ may take a specific and personal shape, depending on our particular imaginative influences. When you are lucky enough to live one of those dreams, one of your dreams, you may have one of the most joyful and intense of all your travel experiences.

I was able to live one of my dreams earlier this year, and I can’t think of a better way to start this blog than by sharing the experience.

Dravuni Island, Fiji

My husband and I had booked our first cruise together, part of a Holland America repositioning voyage that would take us from Sydney to Honolulu. The itinerary included a day spent at a tiny Fijian Island we’d never heard of before, called Dravuni Island.

Lying towards the south of the Fiji group, Dravuni is all but surrounded by the Great Astrolabe Reef, one of the world’s largest coral formations. The island is only 2km long and half a kilometre wide, and fewer than 200 people live there. Its village has a primary school, but children have to go away to a neighbouring island for high school. There are about 25 cruise ship dockings each year, and no other obvious way for outsiders to visit.

World of colour

The people of Dravuni live a fairly traditional life in an isolated location, and that of course is the appeal for us Westerners. The island’s remoteness and lack of tourist development provide the kind of pristine setting that travellers prize.

Paradise

With its graceful palm fronds and sparkling sea, Dravuni is the picture-perfect Pacific island. By the end of our day there, practically everybody I spoke to who had gone ashore said that they had now seen paradise. There are two types of tropical islands, ‘high’ (volcanic) and ‘low’ (coral atoll or ring). Dravuni is a fine example of the first kind. For visitors there are two main activities: climbing the steep hill, with its magnificent 360° view of the ocean and surrounding islands, and snorkelling the reef.

View from the heights of the ‘high’ island

But my dream day on Dravuni involved much more than the island’s geographic beauty. For me, it was primarily a social experience, providing a version of an archetypal Pacific encounter that I had read about in dozens of books and pictured in my mind hundreds of times.

It began with our arrival by tender boat right to a small pier on the beach, as there are no docking facilities for large ships. Even just arriving in this way can make you feel like an old-time explorer ‘making landfall’ in a new world.

Crossing the beach

Next we did something very significant: we crossed the beach. If you’ve read Captain Cook’s log or the journal of Joseph Banks, if you know the story of the Bounty mutineers, or if you’ve read the Pacific tales of Herman Melville or Robert Louis Stevenson or Jack London, you’ll be aware that this small journey of just a few steps can mean as much as a whole ocean voyage. To cross the beach is to leave ‘our’ world and enter ‘their’ world as certainly a guest, almost certainly a trader, possibly a teacher (for good or ill) or a student. In the past it often meant also being an invader and conqueror. This shadow from our culture’s history of exploiting the Pacific islands and their people weighed on my mind when I arrived at Dravuni, tempering the elation I felt at being there.

The welcoming committee

You know that dream-like sense of feeling that you recognize where you are and you know what will happen next? Some people call it ‘like being in a movie’. When I heard the children of the island singing their welcome song and I saw how beautifully they were all dressed in honour of the ship’s arrival, I realized that I knew this scene from dozens of journals, letters and stories I’ve read over twenty years of researching Pacific literature and history. There was performance, and then there would be trade, or at least the exchange of gifts. This is how the scene almost always unfolds.

Gifts

Gift-giving is integral to the rituals of Pacific cultures. The children’s song was a gift to us. We reciprocated with gifts of school supplies – new exercise books and pencils, and every spare calculator that we could find lying around our house. (A tip on Tripadvisor had let us know such gifts would be welcome.) We handed them to the head teacher, wide-eyed children looking on, then visited the two spic-and-span classrooms that make up the small school. Exchange of goods, exchange of knowledge – for better or worse, every Pacific encounter will involve these. The great thing is to try to do no harm, and if possible to do something of use.

In the classroom

‘Pleasanter groves can not be imagined’

After visiting the school we did the steep, hot hike up the hill; it was satisfying to achieve the summit, where we admired the celebrated view. But for me, a more exciting encounter with the landscape took place on the path from the village to the hill.

Palm groves

I’ve seen many palm-fringed shores – the classic ‘tropical paradise’ shot – but never before have I walked through a natural grove of palms and other island trees. It was enchanting, a cool and shady green space with well-spaced trees creating a pattern of elegant shapes. ‘Pleasanter groves can not be imagined’, wrote the botanist Joseph Banks of such an island landscape in 1769; here we were in 2017 seeing the same thing.

The visitors’ dance

No food is sold on the island, so everyone had to go back to the cruise ship for lunch. Many people were happy to stay on board ship after that, but not me. I was so intoxicated by the experience of being on the island that I had to return in the afternoon. I took the tender again at about 3pm, and joined a small but determined group of ‘stayers’ who seemed, like me, unwilling to drag themselves away from the idyllic location.

There were still quite a few people in the water, while others browsed the racks of island shirts and dresses set up by local people along the beachfront. I heard the sound of Hawaiian music and followed it to a thatched, open-sided building, which I recognized from my Pacific reading as the village ‘Speak House’. (It may be called something different in Fiji). And there I witnessed something wonderful.

A troupe of Hawaiian dancers and musicians who had joined the ship at our previous port were putting on an impromptu show, not for us cruise passengers, but for the local men of the island. (The women were operating the market stalls further along the beach.) Children didn’t seem to be allowed into the Speak House, but crowded around the perimeter to watch the unfamiliar spectacle.

Women relaxing by the market stalls.

Of course, I didn’t go in either – it wasn’t my place to do so. I hovered outside with the children, while the Hawaiian dancers performed their graceful moves and the Fijian men stirred their kava pot, applauded and called for more. It suddenly occurred to me that people who live on idyllic islands must get tired of putting on dances for visitors when nobody ever puts on a dance for them. Here was an exception to the rule, and I was privileged to see it, a moment of cross-cultural connection that was the icing on the cake of my island dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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