Journey to the Carterets (Words and Photographs)

This month the photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert and I travelled to the Carteret Atoll, a collection of tiny coral islands far off the coast of Papua New Guinea. For at least 20 years now it has been obvious that the Carterets, and their population of 2,600 people, are sinking into the sea. As usual, it's difficult to state with absolute confidence why this is happening. Is it because of a submarine volcano which is causing changes in the level of the sea bed? Or is because - as this research demonstrates - global warming is causing sea levels in the South Pacific to rise steadily?

You can read my piece from Thursday's paper here; Jeremy's put a few of his photographs on his blog here, here and here; and a few of my own follow.

Click on any of these images to enlarge. (All photographs are the copyright of Richard Lloyd Parry.)

The last time I visited PNG was in 1997, and not much seems to have changed. The capital, Port Moresby, is the second most alarming city I have visited (after Baghdad). The ex-patriates I met there regard it as too dangerous to go out in the city centre on foot during the middle of the day. This sounded laughably cautious until I read in next day's paper about a French diplomat and his wife who had been robbed and beaten up while attempting to visit the National Museum. The next day, the Prime Minister's daughter was held up at gun point as she entered her compound.

But the launch pad for the Carterets is the town of Buka, capital of the autonomous province of Bougainville. Buka is a town from a Graham Greene novel, with dusty streets, lush greenery, and an air of intimacy and corruption.

Everyone knows everyone. One day you pay a call on the Bishop in the morning, and the Minister for Fisheries and Atolls in the afternoon. The next night you see them dining together at your hotel. If I was a more committed Greenean, I would settle here, marry a local woman, have a hopeless and guilt-wracked affair with the wife of a Latin American defence attache, and quietly drink myself to death.

The first question we faced was how to get to the Carteret Islands. They are 120km from Buka across the testicle-tighteningly deep Kilinailau Trench (if you're drowing, then I suppose there isn't much difference between forty metres and four thousand, but somehow it seems worse). The locals make the crossing in these -

- the open, twenty-foot crates known as 'banana boats'. Hot sun, churning waves, no radio or navigation equipment. One of our travelling companions had travelled to the islands in one of these a few months earlier, and been alarmed to see his fellow passengers throwing their belongings over the side of the boat to enhance its buoyancy. If there was any alternative to the banana boat, we agreed, we would have to find it.

This was it -

- the Shimmer Jean, a 45-foot fishing boat, with satellite navigation, radar, radio, galley, bunks and a reassuring Australian skipper named Mike. Nothing could rattle Mike. On our way back I witnessed him navigating a coral reef, in choppy seas, while his baby daughter, Phoebe, vomited copiusly over him, the ship's wheel and his navigation equipment. He didn't flinch.

For the cost of the fuel, he would take us to the Carterets and back in safety and relative comfort. We called on local merchants and quickly purchased the necessary victuals. Father Boniface Besco, a Catholic priest originally from the islands, agreed to accompany us to pilot the boat through the deadly reef - if he failed in this he would at least be able to provide expert spiritual succour in our last moments.

Ooh-arr! This wasn't even Graham Greene - this was Conrad! I began to feel quite the sea dog, and very worthy of the exciting beard that was developing across my chin.

There was a rather Conradian hitch at the last moment when the Minister for Atolls declared that the Shimmer Jean was not licensed to conduct such an expedition. "Do not go in that boat!" he shouted at me from the verandah of his ministry, a wooden cabin in downtown Buka. "That boat is under scrutiny. If you go out in that boat, you will be in the soup!" The problem was resolved with an impressive letter from an MP in Port Moresby.

We set out that night and came in sight of the islands just after dawn the next morning.

Having spent several weeks staring at them in the atlas, this was a thrilling moment.

The problem was how to get ashore. The launch which Captain Mike towed behind the Shimmer Jean was too low in the water to cross the reef. So we ended going ashore in this -

- a beautiful outrigger canoe, carved out of a single coconut log.

We landed first on Han, the largest of the islands - which is to say extremely small, rather than minuscule. Here is the main street:

Soon after our arrival, a group of musicians appeared playing guitars (amplified through a microphone in the sound box and played through a portable radio) and drums made of oil cans covered with a stretched inner tube.

Then these ladies appeared:

Soon they were doing this:

This was our traditional welcoming ceremony. I shot some video of it (I've never uploaded one of these, so bear with me). Try clicking this. Ooh, maybe it worked.

The sad story of the islands and their seemingly inevitable demise is told in the newspaper story, so no need to go over it again. The most stricken of all the communities was on Piul, a few hundred yards across from Han. It was fascinating how each of these islands, none bigger than few football pitches, had its own atmosphere. Travelling from Han to Piul felt like moving from the town to the village. The two islands have their own accents and words in the Halia language. And on Piul the damage done by the sea was stark. This used to be a jungle "garden", rich in taro, breadfruit, bananas and sugar cane.

The children were full of beans, but then gangs of kids always are. I suspect that on Piul, at least, they were suffering from borderline malnutrition. Some of them had rounded bellies. The lightness of the hair could be the effect of sun and seawater, of course, but it could be caused by a diet which these days consists of little more than fish and green coconuts.

This was the school finishing ceremony on Han the next day - speeches, prizes and graduation certificates.It was deeply impressive how the islanders take education, despite their meagre material resources.

The graduates:

More dancing:

That's the church behind:

I like this fellow's hat and shades:

This is Huene, which used to be one island:

Beach life:

Le moment decisif:

Goodbye ...

Comments

[Jeremy]

I thought you said I was doing the pics and you were doing the captions....?? I enjoyed the blog, and also your article.

Right, so where to next...?

[Gilman]

" . . . If I was a more committed Greenean, I would settle here, marry a local woman, have a hopeless and guilt-wracked affair with the wife of a Latin American defence attache, and quietly drink myself to death." - Brilliant!

[Peter]

Good article and photos about an interesting trip - I enjoyed reading it. I spent time in PNG and Bougainville in 1997 and 1998, and like you found that Buka was a nice place to stay, even though the first time I was there there was still fighting on mainland Bougainville.

Peter
www.kotare.typepad.com/thestrategist

[Andrew Phillips]

Blaming the sinking of the Carterets on global warming is just stupid. Global warming has not caused see levels to rise by metres. And how can sea levels rise in the South Pacific and not (or not as much) elsewhere?

[stephen morgan]

So you flew thousands of miles, emitting masses of CO2, in order to feel sorry about global warming. How does this make sense to you?

[I don't think that even those with the most acute concerns aboiut global warming believe that air travel should be completely abolished - just that it should be reduced, and that we should choose our journeys with care. RLP]

[humanoid]

Global warming is a cult. It is no more scientific than phrenology, yet it hides behind a mask of legitimate science. It will ultimately damage mankind's faith in the credibility of the scientific community for decades to come. This is the worst thing about the global warming cult.

[Mike]

I found you via Friends of the Earth, Melbourne. I worked on Nauru in the mid 60's and sailed the Pacific in the early 70's. I fell in love with the Kiribati people on Nauru and visited them on the yacht. I didn't know anything about the Carterets Isls but thanks to you I do now and they are in the same situation as the Kiribati.
Now we have a real refugee situation, there could be 1000's of wonderful Pacific people made homeless by our industrial lifestyle - they will have to move to higher ground but I pain to think of them living in our capitalist system.

[cate]

Thanks 4 ur awsome blog. I enjoyed reading all of it. Geez seeing all those beautiful photos made me shed tears because im from Bougainville (mainland) and I just got back from there..miss it HEAPS!!! I felt sad for the kids and people of Caterets Isles. If only i can do something to help them :(

thanks again

Cate

[cate]

thanks for your great blog. Brings back great and sad memories too of my Beautiful Island Paradise, Bougainville..

[ian mcdonnell]

Like another of your readers I am perplexed how this tiny group of islands is affected by rising seas caused by global warming, but no other islands in the South Pacific. All the scientific data on sea levels collected in the Pacific show a minimal rise.

Isn't it far more likely that the islands (of volcanic origin) are sinking rather than seas rising.

Perhaps the Melanesian habit of using dynamite to stun fish may have started the island's subsidence