by Graeme Lay
Christian explains the technique. We shine our torches into the rock pools. When we spot a crevette we hold the spear over him and, still shining the torch, bring it down on his body, skewering him. It sounds simple, and already I can see a large crevette in a pool, his eyes turned fluorescent red by the torchlight. I hold the spear over him, aim, plunge it down on the prawn. Supposedly. In fact my spear strikes only the stone over which the creature was recently hovering. Sweeping the pool with my torch, I can now see no sign of my quarry.
Moving upstream, I illuminate another pool, locate another crevette. Shine, aim, strike. Miss. Two–nil to the crevettes. The problem is that the little crustaceans, with those swivelling eyeballs on stalks, are sharp-eyed and very, very quick. They dart, in reverse, at top speed. Then they vanish. I can see Christian’s torch waving about downriver and hear him splashing about. I stumble over to the pool where he is hunting. He has just one crevette in his bag. He suggests we try further downstream. Climbing over boulders, clutching our pics, we scrutinise every pool we come across. The large crevettes seem to have vanished completely. Now there are only tiny ones, who drift about waving their antennae idly. After an hour, hot, tired, wet and frustrated, we give up.
As we take the long, steep road back up to the relais, Christian observes, ‘The Tahitians say that when the moon is full, it is no good for catching the crevettes.’ It’s the empty-handed fisherman’s oldest defence – blame the moon. I decide against pointing out that last night, when Michel went crevetting, he caught plenty, and the moon must have been much the same shape as it is now.
Nevertheless, Christian and I look up reproachfully at the gleaming globe. Then I think of the scarpering mutineers from the Bounty, who ran away up here to escape their pursuers. Perhaps it was a good thing they were caught. If they hadn’t, they would have gone insane trying to catch crevettes. Not that the poor wretches were saved, in any real sense. After being cruelly incarcerated in ‘Pandora’s Box’ – an iron-grilled cell above decks – for weeks on the voyage back to England, and surviving shipwreck on the Barrier Reef off Australia, Burkitt and Millward were tried by the Royal Navy, convicted of mutiny and desertion, and publicly hanged aboard HMS Brunswick on 29 October 1792.
Resuming my cross-island journey with Poken the next day, we head off in the direction of Mt Tetufera. Now the road is not really a road, just a grassy track, barely three metres wide, winding tortuously around great bluffs and ridges. To our left is a ravine hundreds of metres deep; ahead is the huge green face of the mountain, so sheer and high it is obvious no road could conquer it. How will we get over Tetufera? I don’t dare ask Poken: he is concentrating on keeping the truck on the track, wrestling with the wheel and the gear lever, his face set grimly. Some corners are so tight that we can hardly get around them. The road is still climbing, and although the long grass covering it suggests that it is not used often, I cannot imagine what would happen if we met another vehicle coming the other way. One of us, I suppose, would have to reverse. The very thought makes my palms sweaty.
Now the narrow road is traversing the face of the mountain, past waterfalls and bush-covered bluffs, still with the dizzying drop to our left. I manage a moment of admiration for whoever it was who incised the road into the cliff face, but I’m still bothered by where it will end. We’re now well over 1,500 metres high and still climbing. Then, lo and behold, the track swings abruptly right, and we enter a tunnel, about 100 metres long, cut straight through the basalt rock. Grids of reinforcing steel are plastered into its sides and roof, from which water pours constantly. We slosh through and out the other side. ‘Very good too-nell, uh?’ says Poken. I have to agree. French engineering must be on a par with French cuisine.
On the western side of Tetufera it is all downhill and perilously steep. On several hairpin bends Poken has to reverse and have two shots at cornering. This backside of the mountain is obviously wetter, and on our descent we pass through rain-clouds and stands of tropical forest, huge trees whose boughs and foliage enclose the road. Cataracts spill over the walls of rock to our right, draining away down the mountainside to Vaihiria, Tahiti’s largest natural lake.
Gradually, carefully, we follow the river’s course down the ravine, through the mountain mist and rain forest to the lower reaches of the valley. Barrages, man-made lakes and small power stations appear once more. Far ahead I can see a patch of blue sky. At last the road levels out as the valley floor widens. There is a house, some coconut and banana palms, plots of taro. Minutes later, more buildings, an expanse of greenhouses, then the valley merges with the coastal plain in the commune of Mataiea, once home to Paul Gauguin, and later to the brilliant young English poet Rupert Brooke. Brooke left England in 1913 after suffering a nervous breakdown – the result of a complicated romantic tangle – and spent several months travelling in the South Pacific. He found sanctuary for a time at Mataiea, in the arms of a lovely young Tahitian woman, Taatamata, and, it has been claimed, even fathered a daughter. Lack of funds caused Brooke to depart for England in July 1914; a few months later World War I began, he enlisted, and died of blood poisoning in the Aegean, in 1915.
The sky is wide and blue, the lagoon sparkles in the afternoon sun. Tahiti’s interior has been penetrated, its heart explored. As I look back on those huge, green, jagged mountains, I think again of awestruck Sydney Parkinson’s description: ‘As uneven as a piece of crumpled paper … a beautiful verdure … even to the highest peaks’. Parkinson was never to see Scotland again. He contracted dysentery in Batavia on the homeward voyage and died on the Indian Ocean, in January 1771. But his marvellous botanical illustrations of Tahiti endure, as does his peerless summation of the physical allure of a high tropical island, an allure which is unending.
Then there is Moorea. Not only artists and explorers, but also writers, scientists and sundry scapegraces have been entranced by the sight of that high volcanic island, Tahiti’s neighbour, just a few kilometres away across the Sea of the Moon. It is the first thing that visitors to Papeete notice, and one of the last sights they see as they leave. Moorea is just eight minutes by light plane from Tahiti; twenty minutes by catamaran; forty by car ferry. Any way you go it’s a treat. From the air you can stare down at its great saw-tooth peaks, the mottled pink of its lagoon, the white ruffle of its reef waves. Approaching by sea, its green spires seem to rise up from the water, moving slowly and hypnotically into focus.
To appreciate Moorea, however, it’s not necessary to go there. It’s enough to watch its shifting moods from Papeete. Early in the morning the peaks are a soft, gin-and-tonic blue. By day they are usually concealed by a mosquito net of cloud. In the late afternoon the clouds lift and the sinking sun backlights the island, bringing the mountains into sharp relief. But it is in the early evening that Moorea and the western sky turn on their best show.
Back in my waterfront hotel in Papeete after my traverse of Tahiti, I’m again captivated by Moorea, as no doubt Sydney Parkinson was as he strolled along the black sand of Matavai Bay, sketch-pad in hand. My hotel is not in the prettiest part of Papeete: it’s at the eastern end of Boulevard Pomare, the part the locals call the Gaza Strip. By night the streets are full of strutting soldiers and strident music. Raucous vehicles roar past the plump Tahitians hookers who lurk in the shadows of the buildings’ colonnades.
The hotel itself is, to put it charitably, unpretentious. Its small lobby contains a few vinyl-covered chairs, some soft drink-and cigarette-vending machines, and a TV set which is never turned off. The receptionist is a kind young Tahitian woman who gives me a fruit drink every time I change my New Zealand dollars for Polynesian francs because she pities me the exchange rate. Through the tatty curtain behind her sits a morose, chain-smoking, ageing Chinese man with a face as pale as the rind of uncooked pork. The whole building has a sad, soiled, profitless feel about it. Judging by the furtiveness and frequency with which different couples come and go through the little lobby and up the clunky lift, I suspect that some of its rooms re
nt by the hour. Another curious feature of the hotel is that it has no restaurant or dining room. Finding a place to eat is no problem, however, as every evening over on the waterfront dozens of little food vans – les roulottes – trundle up to dispense everything from crêpes to kebabs. Their braziers glow in the hot black night and the aroma of their dishes invades the waterfront.
On my second-to-last night in Papeete, sitting at a roulotte and looking up from my plate of poisson cru, I notice that my hotel is very high, a fact I had not previously realised. Now I can see that from the top floor there must be a grand view of the harbour and Moorea, a panorama which I long to capture on film.
The next day the sky is almost totally clear, suggesting that sunset conditions will also be favourable. At six o’clock that evening I take the jerking lift and my camera up the fourteenth floor of the hotel. Outside the lift is a small, gloomy landing and a set of bare concrete stairs. At the top of the landing is another landing, covered with dusty, stacked tables and chairs. Behind is a solid door bearing the notice, ‘Restaurant Capitaine Cook’. I push past the furniture and try the door. Locked. Merde! In minutes the sunset will be starting, and there’s no window, no balcony, no view, and thus no photo. Then I notice another stairway to the right of the landing. At the top is another door. I don’t hold out much hope of its being open, but climb the stairs anyway and try the door handle. It turns; the door opens.
Before me is a wide, slightly convex expanse of asphalt. There is a concrete shed and a big TV satellite dish, but the roof is otherwise bare. I walk across to its leading edge. It is like standing on the brink of a canyon. There is no guard rail, no guttering, just an updraft of hot tropical air. Far below is Boulevard Pomare, its vehicles as tiny and silent as cars on an architect’s model. To my left and right, already pricked by firefly lights, are the buildings of Papeete. Behind them are Parkinson’s crumpled paper mountains. But my eyes do not linger on any of these. Instead I stare ahead, over the waterfront, over the Sea of the Moon.
There are only smudges of cloud. As the sun slips below the horizon, the sky begins to flare, suffusing the entire horizon with light, saturating it with variegated colours: red, pink, orange, vermilion. And beneath the sky, looming like a dark iceberg, is the jagged profile of Moorea. It is an opera and I am in the royal box.
Then, with startling speed the colours begin to fade, as if somewhere in the mountains behind me a dimmer switch is being turned. I pick up my camera, frame the scene, pause, and press the shutter.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Several people have been very generous, not only enabling me to visit the islands of the South Pacific but also providing me with guidance and hospitality while I was there. I would like to thank in particular: in Auckland, Richard Hall, Renae Pocklington, Lola Carter and Robert Thompson; in Rarotonga, Ewan Smith, Mike Mitchell, Brett Porter and Ross Hunter; and in Tahiti, Dany Panero, Taina Meyssonnier, Huia Smith and the late Jack Rowley.
Special thanks too, must go to artist Andy Leleisi’uao, for the use of his painting ‘Lagoon’ from his Ufological Village series, on the cover.
ALSO BY GRAEME LAY
TRAVEL
Passages: Journeys in Polynesia
Pacific New Zealand
The Cook Islands (with Ewan Smith)
New Zealand – A Visual Celebration (with Gareth Eyres)
Samoa (with Evotia Tamua)
Feasts – Festivals (with Glenn Jowitt)
The Globetrotter Guide to New Zealand
Are We There Yet? A Kiwi Kid’s Holiday Exploring Guide
The Best of Auckland
NOVELS AND SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Mentor
The Fools on the Hill
Temptation Island
Dear Mr Cairney
Motu Tapu: Stories of the South Pacific
The Town on the Edge of the World
YOUNG ADULT NOVELS
The Wave Rider
Leaving One Foot Island
Return to One Foot Island
The Pearl of One Foot Island
EDITOR
Metro Fiction
100 New Zealand Short Short Stories
Another 100 New Zealand Short Short Stories
The Third Century
Boys’ Own Stories
50 Short Short Stories by Young New Zealanders
An Affair of the Heart: A Celebration of Frank Sargeson’s Centenary (with Stephen Stratford)
Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past – Present (with Jack Ross)
First eBook edition published in 2012 by
Awa Press, Level 1, 85 Victoria Street
Wellington, New Zealand
eISBN: 978-1-877551-06-2
© Graeme Lay 2004
Copyright in this book is held by the author. You have been granted the right to read this e-book on screen but no part may be copied, transmitted, reproduced, downloaded or stored or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system in any form and by any means now known or subsequently invented without the written consent of Awa Press Limited, acting as the author’s authorised agent.
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand
The author and publisher would like to acknowledge those publications in which some material originally appeared: Tandem Press for some of the Niue, Tonga and Rarotonga material in Passages: Journeys in Polynesia, and the journey into the heart of Tahiti in their anthology A Passion for Travel; Metro for first publishing the story of the visit to the Outer Islands of the Cook Group and a version of the Tonga story; the New Zealand Listener for Herman Melville’s story and the hike on Tahiti Iti; North – South for the ‘Losing Errol’ story; Canvas for the Gauguin story and ‘The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest’, and Cuisine for a version of story of the Hawaiiki Nui Va’a. Acknowledgement is also made to the estates of the writers Herman Melville, H.E. Bates and Robert Louis Stevenson for the incorporation of some of these writers’ lines in the text.
Cover illustration ‘Lagoon’ by Andy Leleisi’uao. Author photograph by Jane Ussher. Map by Geographx.
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