There Once Was an Island Blog

Theatrical Release DISCOUNT tickets

2011-06-21T12:19:00.005+12:00

"There Once was an Island" is opening in New Zealand theatres Thursday this week! It's a film that we think is best served up on the big screen, so this is your chance to enjoy it at its most fetching.

DISCOUNTED TICKETS! Email takuufilm.
For those of you able to attend the Thursday 6pm screening at Rialto Newmarket, Lyn is doing a Q&A and we also have 20 discounted tickets available. Adults are $13.50 and kids/seniors $8.50. If you want to take advantage of this pricing please email takuufilm and we'll put you down. Tickets can be collected at the theatre on the night, and you will need to pay cash. This is a first come first served offer.

If you're not in Auckland or you want to go but can't make that session, here is a list of the cinemas and locations the film is also screening at. Have a look online for confirmed screening times:

June 11 – 29
Arthouse Cinema, NEW PLYMOUTH. To book, call (06) 757 3650

From June 23
Rialto Newmarket, AUCKLAND. To book, call (09) 369 2417

Waiheke Island Community Cinema, WAIHEKE. To book, call (09) 372-4240

Paramount Cinemas, WELLINGTON. To book, call (04) 384 4080

Gecko Theatre, NELSON. To book, call (03) 528 9996

Rialto DUNEDIN. To book, call (03) 474 2200

We hope to have some more special offers later on.

Thank you Cinemambiente

2011-06-06T12:21:00.003+12:00

We're now at liberty to share the news that Cinemambiente has awarded "There Once was an Island" the jury prize for Best International Documentary. The Jury was headed by director Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter). It's all getting a bit overwhelming. But is nevertheless very appreciated.

Theatrical Release!!!

2011-06-05T22:32:00.004+12:00

Well - we've been hoping to be able to bring TOWAI to the big screen in New Zealand once more, and have finally managed to get it to happen.

Our limited nation-wide theatrical release begins on June 23, with two earlier screenings at Arthouse Cinema in New Plymouth on June 11 and 18.

If you're a teacher and would like to bring a class to a screening, we're giving two free posters per class which you can pick up at the theatre. Different special offers for groups apply at the different cinemas - for more details check the website for the cinema in your area or give them a call - details below.

Cinema contacts:

Auckland
Rialto Cinema, Newmarket
To book, call (09) 369 2417. Special rates are given for groups of 10 or more, and for group bookings before 5pm.
www.rialto.co.nz

Waiheke
Waiheke Cinema
To book, call (09) 372-4240
www.wicc.co.nz

New Plymouth
Arthouse Cinema
To book, call (06) 757 3650
www.arthousecinema.co.nz

Wellington
Paramount Cinema
To book, call (04) 384 4080
www.paramount.co.nz

Nelson
Gecko Theatre Motueka
To book, call (03) 528 9996
www.geckotheatre.co.nz

Dunedin
Rialto Cinema, Newmarket
To book, call (03) 474 2200. Special rates are given for groups of 10 or more, and for group bookings before 5pm.
www.rialto.co.nz

Feel free to slip this link to everyone you know (!) and let them know we'd love for them to see the film on the big screen!

There Once was an Island on Rialto Channel 8.30 TONIGHT!

2011-02-10T17:13:00.002+13:00

It caught us by surprise but There Once was an Island is screening on New Zealand's Rialto Channel at 8.30pm tonight and there are more dates and times this month and next. Check us out for free if you're a Sky subscriber!

Wild and Scenic

2011-01-12T22:19:00.002+13:00

A quick post - anyone in Nevada City this weekend might want to hop along to There Once was an Island at Wild and Scenic Film Festival. Quick reference details:

Wild and Scenic 2011
NEVADA CITY, USA
Saturday 15 January — 11:00am
Miners Foundry Stone Hall
325 Spring Street, Nevada City, CA 95959

Sunday 16 January — 3:25pm
 Nevada City Elementary

A New Year's Reflection

2011-01-11T10:14:00.003+13:00

Having There Once was an Island in distribution has been - well - not different than expected necessarily, but busier and more intense. This is my first time as key producer for post and distribution and despite having managed aspects of both on another feature doc, the growth of new ways to self-distribute documentary has been so fast that I find myself constantly learning - I think this is something all independent filmmakers find.

Many times I've found myself lost in a sea of possibilities - post-production workflows and facilities, technical delivery options, distributors, festivals, distribution platforms and approaches - it's a multifarious list and I'm blessed with so many work commitments that it's next to impossible to be fully informed about a decision before making it. I'm really lucky to work with a second producer (and also the film's director - Briar) who is able to bring so much new information to the table, but even so, the process of choosing an option from the plethora on offer, knowing that it will foreclose an unknown number of others, is often nerve-wracking, as is taking responsibility for ensuring that technical parameters are met to the satisfaction of all parties involved in any screening of the film.

We are now almost a year into our festival run and have enjoyed success in the form of invitations to prestigious festivals like IDFA and Dok Leipzig, prizes and honours - including the Jury Grand Prix at FIFO (Tahiti) and Best Documentary at both Cinefest (Miskolc, Hungary) and Raindance (London), the Filmpreis Leipzinger Ring and the Qantas Film and Television Award for Best Editing, Documentary/Factual. We have also been broadcast in Sweden, Germany, France, in Africa and across the Asia-Pacific region on ABC. It all seems a million miles away from the hot, sweaty experience of shooting on Takuu, the welcome of the community there and the hard reality of their largely pre-industrial life-style and incipient environmental problems. It's also a long way from the time spent in endless applications for funding - a two-year process which prepared me for the myriad difficulties of distribution if only because being told "no" became commonplace.

I've learned countless things from making this film, but if I had to distill out the most important it would be this: if you really want to achieve something and you refuse to give in, you will eventually attain your goal. Briar has always believed this, and thanks to working on There Once was an Island with her, I find I now do too. Be careful what you wish for - it's out there and coming your way....

IDFA - boo-ya!

2010-10-20T23:35:00.003+13:00

To anyone out there still reading us, you will have realised that we're getting a few fests - check out the giant list on our website www.thereoncewasanisland.com - but we're delighted to add one more - IDFA. The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam is considered by many to be the top fest for documentary in the world and what makes it even more exciting is that we're screening in their new Green Screen Competition. If you're in Amsterdam in November come check it all out!

Wellington Screening October 10

2010-10-07T09:01:00.003+13:00

We're excited that There Once was an Island will screen at 8pm Sunday October 10 (this Sunday) at the Paramount in Wellington as part of the 350 Aotearoa Global Climate working Bee 'Film Night Finale'. You can find out more information on their website here, but the ticket price is $20 and this is a full event with music, stalls and fundraising for the island. The whole thing kicks off at 7.30pm.

For more information about the Global 350 movement try the 350 Aotearoa website www.350.org.nz. This is an exciting event - we hope you can be part of it.

Editing win at Qantas Film & TV Awards!

2010-09-18T09:14:00.002+12:00

I'm so excited to be able to say that Prisca Bouchet and Briar won the Qantas Film and Television Award Craft award for Best Editing Documentary/Factual yesterday. I was so beside myself I (briefly) shed a few tears before getting it together. We were up against two highly respected and extremely experienced editors (Ken Sparks, and Cushla Dillon) so the win was a serious surprise and a huge thrill. It reflects significant respect for the craft skills we have honed on this project. For Prisca, as a fairly fresh editor, it is already opening doors to more work, and given that Briar also co-produced, directed and shot this film, the fact that she managed to also also get an award for editing is a testament to her uncompromising attitude to quality in everything she does.

Now - wish us luck for TONIGHT - we're up for Best Documentary at the Qantas F&TV Gala awards - I've got my fake tan and hollywood tape at the ready. I'll try and post some shots from the ceremony - stay tuned.

Lyn

There Once was an Island Premiere

2010-07-17T13:36:00.006+12:00

Hi Guys,

Just an update, we are doing the New Zealand premiere of the film tomorrow (Sunday 18th July at 1.30pm Skycity Theatre). We are so excited, its going to be a blast. Sorry that we haven't been able to write more, but Lyn and I are super busy with promotion. We will be filming the event and plan to upload a short video on the blog. If you haven't bought tickets there are still some available - we would love to see you there. Thanks for your support.

Briar

Dialogues with Tomorrow Thursday!

2010-05-17T19:34:00.003+12:00

I had some good intentions about writing a little update about all that's been happening behind the scenes, but events have caught up with me - as usual...

Thursday this week I will be speaking at the Dialogues with Tomorrow Series at the Downstage Theatre, Wellington. Briar will be there in spirit, or in other words via some pre-recorded pixels she's currently putting together.

Dialogues with Tomorrow is a series of talks that aims to examine the roles art and science can play in debates about the environment and other issues. We're going to be sharing the stage with Sean Weaver, a climate change scientist. The session will be moderated by Hamish Campbell.

Details
Event: Dialogues with Tomorrow - ISLANDS
What: Lecture
Start Time: 20 May at 17:45
End Time: 19:00
Where: Downstage Theatre, Hannah Playhouse Building 12 Cambridge Terrace
Te Aro, Wellington
+64 4 801 6946
http://www.downstage.co.nz/
You can book online on their website - tickets are only $15 for an adult and cheaper for everyone else...

Sunrise!!

2010-03-30T21:31:00.001+13:00

It's late to announce this we know but Lyn will finally be doing an interview on TV3's morning show Sunrise at 8.50am tomorrow. Look out for it!!

Screening at Big Sky

2010-02-15T20:42:00.002+13:00

I’m sitting in Starbucks at the Seattle airport. First of all let me tell you this is the second time I have ever been in Starbucks. The only other time was in New Zealand when I had to meet a potential documentary subject, who only agreed to talk to me if we went there. This time I am in Starbucks because it is the only place I could find a power point for my laptop. Even though I still feel strange about being here, I have decided it is all part of the American experience, and Starbucks is part of this culture isn’t it? Well sorry for all this digression but I am just getting warmed up. You see, I am actually in Starbucks, at Seattle airport, writing this post, because I am on my way to Montana to screen our film at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. This is the film’s USA premiere. I am feeling nervous. It is a terrifying thought that I am releasing the film out into the world. I know Lyn has already been through this in Tahiti, but since I wasn’t there it doesn’t seem that real to me. This is my first experience of the film being screened in public and in a moment like this I feel a little sentimental just to think that I am coming to the end of a process. I can’t quite believe that we’ve been working on this film for four years. If you are new to this blog you can see that our earliest posts began in 2006, but we were working on it even before then.

Although I’ve never had a child, I reckon that making a film is like having a baby. You grow with your film, you change because of your film, and you can never get rid of your film. Once the edit is finished and you think that finally you might get some rest, there is a whole new set of tasks to complete; such as festival submissions, decisions on where to screen first, getting a distributor or sales agent, the marketing and designing of flyers and posters, DVD sales, press and interviews, and the list goes on. The film just continues to follow you about. It is like it has its own life and its life takes over yours rather than the other way round. There is the pregnancy stage in which you have an idea floating around in your head that over time starts to expand into something bigger and bigger until finally you give birth to it by shooting. Then there is the teething stage, when you start the editing and you don’t know what you’ve got yourself into and you want to give up. There is the maturing stage, which is like the fine cut of an edit. And then finally you have to release your baby into the world and let go of it (which can be rather painful if you are a perfectionist like me). Maybe this is what a parent feels like when their child reaches puberty? So can’t you see, its like having a baby, and now is my turn to release it to the world. The film will screen tomorrow. Please wish me luck! - Briar

Interview on Sunrise on Wednesday Feb 17

2010-02-14T18:49:00.003+13:00

For anyone who's interested, Lyn will be doing an interview on TV3's Sunrise programme this Wednesday (February 17) from 8.30am.

Tune in if you're having a late Breakfast...

Winners!

2010-02-02T23:15:00.003+13:00

Anyone following our twitter posts at the weekend will be aware that, despite a field of quality and high profile films screening at the FIFO festival in Tahiti, There Once was an Island took out the top prize. Simply amazing to get this validation after the journey to get the film completed.

Following the win we've had press in a variety of places including Tahiti newspapers and television (below), ABCs Pacific Beat, Radio New Zealand National and International, BFM and TV3s Nightline.

Woo - what a ride!!

Tahiti Press 1
Tahiti Press 2
Les Nouvelles
La Depeche 1
La Depeche 2

Found in paradise!

2010-01-30T15:01:00.001+13:00

Well – I (Lyn) have been in Tahiti a week and it seems like I arrived yesterday

I’m currently sitting in my hotel room with the sliding door to the balcony open, listening to the traffic on the motorway, the barking of dogs, the clucking of chickens and the tweeting of tropical birds in the trees below. Papeete is very much a product of its parts – French, Polynesian, some other cultures, in ways that I can’t pretend to understand, but the whole is somehow quite familiar. This might be in part because I’ve been here before (albeit nearly 20 years ago) but it’s also because Polynesia has its own flavour, elements in common with New Zealand and with Takuu. The chickens would be a big part of island life, but also the language, the tattoo traditions (to my eye the new Tahitian styles are most beautiful of any), the sea at the door. The sashimi is plentiful and mostly pretty good…not a New Zealand tradition per se but thanks to Ken’s Yakitori on K-Road, extremely reminiscence of home nevertheless.

The festival provides unparalleled hospitality to guests and filmmakers – Gallic grace meets Polynesian honour perhaps. We were initially taken to Moorea (a neighbouring island) for the day, went swimming with sharks and rays (not my favourite) and ate incredible poisson cru (tuna sashimi salad with lime juice marinade and coconut cream) on a small private island. The whole experience formed an initial time for filmmakers and press to bond and get to know each other in a really relaxed natural way and was a fantastic start to the week.

Every night we’ve been here, there have been cocktails – at the hotel, the president’s “office”, the High commissioners home and culminating last night in a sit-down dinner at the Hotel de Ville – the town hall. Of course I damaged my fancy shoes (borrowed from my sister) the second night and have been reduced to wearing sandals ever since, but Tahiti is a pretty relaxed kind of place so its ok. I’m just sad not to have them for the big prize-giving ceremony tonight. The attention the film has received has been such that I’m hopeful we might pick something up.

Generally speaking it’s been a big six days – TOWAI’s screening run is over now but the feedback from people on the selection panel and from the press has been overwhelmingly positive. We’ve received interest from a European distributor as well as generous comments from other filmmakers and the audience reactions have been enthusiastic. I’ve been able to do more publicity than I anticipated and some of what has been done is getting picked up by other media outlets – which is just wonderful.

With representatives from ITVS, large productions companies in Australia and independent programmers, producers and directors from all over the Pacific region, FIFO is actually not a bad place to network, which is a bonus. The festival has just started a pitching forum this year and this looks set to help Pacific filmmakers develop their contacts and skills as well as offering anyone from further afield a chance to get some attention for their projects.

On balance FIFO has also run a very successful bilingual event with dialogue between French and English parts of the Pacific made possible by bilingual subtitling on all competition films, selective translation at events, the presence of bilingual press and FIFO organisers and the efforts of a surprisingly large number of New Zealand, American and Australian filmmakers with “un peu de franglais” stringing some sentences together when required. Given the physical distance and variation within the Pacific region, a coming together of many of the different parts in one place for a cultural event like this is rare and it’s great to experience a flow of information between the francophone and anglophone elements.

I leave tomorrow and I can hardly believe that the time has slipped away so fast. I haven’t seen nearly enough of the country and of course I want to come back – Tahiti is a perfect place to slip into island time and to think about all the best ways to about set the world to rights. It hasn’t been a holiday, but certainly a welcome change of pace.

For a link to an interview I did yesterday on ABC’s Pacific Beat and ran out of time to blog about go here.

Press update and pics

2010-01-28T15:53:00.008+13:00

Slight update - I (as in Lyn) will be doing a live interview tomorrow on Radio Australia's Pacific Beat, so if you're in the mood, feel free to listen in (I've got stage fright already).

In the meantime here are some snaps from last night's premiere, the cocktail party in the garden of the French Polynesian "Presidence" the palatial office of the President, and one of Papeete from the main harbour area which is very near the Maison de la Culture where the festival is running. The person in the foreground of the last shot is Joy-Marie Scott who is on the jury!

Coming to you from FIFO in Tahiti

2010-01-28T10:40:00.006+13:00

Apologies to anyone who has been eagerly awaiting an update from the Pacific. I've been here at the FIFO festival in Tahiti for three days so far and its been pretty amazing. The festival staff look after everyone really well and the accommodation is great - although not without its foibles. The second day I moved to a room with working internet (my own being unfixable), only to be woken up in the middle of the night by the safe in the new room beeping, and having to move rooms again....I am the queen of small dramas.

Now to the matter at hand...we've had three screenings of the film so far, and it seems to have been well-received despite some technical difficulties. We had a full house this morning and very respectable audiences for the two evening screenings last night. The final screening is the jury screening on Friday (Saturday NZ time) at 8am but this is not as early as it sounds in Tahiti. I'm hopeful that the technical issues will be well resolved by then and that our audiences so far have been able to see past these to the heart of the story.

In the meantime I have been delighted to do interviews with ICA TV, RFO and the French ABC radio service. If you get French news in the Pacific, look out for these - you'll be able to hear me in translation. The press and publicity have been well-organised and the festival itself has a high profile in Tahiti so we've been fortunate to have this much attention to the story - long may it continue.

If you haven't visited our website recently you should head on over to thereoncewasanisland.com and have a look at our updated effort. You can now make a donation to the island via paypal if you go to thereoncewasanisland.com/what-you-can-do. Any money will go direct to the Council of Elders on Takuu for projects they nominate.

More later.....

The big update!!!

2010-01-10T22:40:00.003+13:00

Well - those of you still following the blog and wondering what has become of us will be delighted to hear that, as I write, the film is nearly finished and we have our world premiere at the FIFO festival in Tahiti on January 26. We're in competition in this festival which is really exciting. Lyn will be attending the premiere and prize-giving as Briar is now studying full-time at Stanford University and won't be able to get there.

Our US premiere is soon after on February 15th at the Big Sky Film Festival, an increasingly recognised event in Montana. There Once was an Island is also in competition there for "Best Feature" and Briar will be attending this as it's in her neck of the woods.

We will be twittering from FIFO onwards and will let you know all about the festival experience as it happens. Unfortunately we can't advise on New Zealand screenings yet but stay posted.

Coolio...

Climate change in the Pacific – a first hand view

2009-06-28T20:14:00.004+12:00

The last month has seen a variety of press, blogging and talkback responses to a current affairs article on climate change that screened on the Sunday showon New Zealand’s TV1. Sunday featured footage from a sea flood on the atoll of Takuu, 250 km Northeast of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. This footage is part of a larger documentary, There Once was an Island: Te Henua e Noho, that I am producing with director Briar March. Our film follows the atoll’s community as they consider whether to stay on Takuu or prepare to relocate to the mainland. The film also considers the possible impact of climate change for people living in low-lying areas so we were happy to be included in a wider discussion on this topic.

The situation Takuu faces is a complex one but this complexity has not been fully addressed in the commentary I’ve seen or heard since the article aired. In particular there has been a heavy reliance on a factually incorrect article on Wikipedia (now updated). This article claimed that the atoll was “sinking” and stated tectonic activity as one of two reasons for this phenomenon. In fact, reasons for the sea flooding, erosion and salination that the community can see happening on the atoll are not clear. This is largely due to the fact that, until Briar and I took oceanographer John Hunter and geomorphologist Scott Smithers to the island, no one had examined the local situation from a scientific perspective. Their research indicates that tectonic activity is not contributing to what is happening on the atoll. This begs the question – what exactly is? And why so much misinformation?

Having been on the ground in Bougainville, it is apparent that lack of research in the area is due to poverty and the extant political situation that goes with it. No one can pay for research to be done and there are more immediate social concerns. In other words the negative impacts of floods and salty gardens on the Takuu community are exacerbated because the atoll communities of Bougainville, at the very bottom of an impoverished heap, are unable to get adequate infrastructural support to ensure that basic standards of living are met on a continuous basis. Bougainville is still recovering from the long-running civil conflict of the 1980s and 1990s while PNG’s national government is apparently unable to help.

This meant that, during the floods on Takuu, there was no early warning, no reliable news from the outside, no way of understanding, even with two scientists and a satellite phone, what had caused the situation. The nearest we could guess was that a large storm to the northwest had caused waves that increased the level of an especially high tide, at a point in the La Nina cycle where water levels were already very high. In any case, there was no hope of rescue. The local government was unable to send a boat to help, and when we left, six days later, no relief supplies were on their way. While we were shooting in Bougainville just after leaving Takuu, the boat that services the atolls put out to sea but lost its engine and was adrift, full of passengers, for two days until it could be located and towed to port. It was some time before a boat did finally make it to the atoll with the food that the people needed.

About a month ago we heard that the people from several atolls, including Takuu, have signalled to the Bougainville government that they would like to be considered for relocation. With current levels of financing and the political issues surrounding land-ownership after the civil conflict, this will take years, but the decision itself speaks volumes. When we left the island in the wake of the 2008 flood, people once determined to raise their children on Takuu were beginning to think they had to move for the safety of those children. It now appears some people have made a firm decision to go, knowing this will eventually spell the end of their cultural identity, their language and their way of life. In his editor’s preface to Richard Moyle’s recent musical ethnography of Takuu, Dr David Hanlon noted prophetically, “It would prove a sad irony indeed if this first full ethnography of Takuu were also the last.”

I’m very aware that it would make for a simpler, more easily understood storyline to say that Takuu is being swamped due to climate change, or alternatively that this process has nothing to do with the atoll’s situation. However at this point it’s not possible to take such a didactic position – not enough research has been done on the present state of the atoll and the future is notoriously difficult to predict. What I am attempting instead is a reasoned look at the available information.

Although analysis is still ongoing, Scott Smithers’ initial observations suggest there has been a relative drop in sea level at Takuu over the last few thousand years. His feeling is based on the fact that remnants of a higher reef flat, - most likely of mid to late Holocene in age - perhaps 5000 years old – occur and are elevated around a metre above its modern equivalent. This suggests a relative sea level fall over that period, and there is no evidence of significant relative sea level rise as would be expected if the islands had been subsiding. The geomorphic evidence from Takuu therefore suggests that active tectonic subsidence is not, as I mentioned previously, in action. The comparatively recent past has, in fact, shown a drop in sea level around the island.

John Hunter has looked extensively at sea-level rise around the world and is looking to the future. He believes that the kind of flooding events that the community experienced while we were on Takuu are likely to become more common as the earth’s sea level rises with climate change. This is not all bad - these floods would normally build the atoll up by washing sediment onto it, and living on Takuu could be managed so that homes and gardens are not destroyed. John also believes, however, that if ocean acidification takes its toll on the coral reefs, this replenishment with sediment may not happen. The only solutions for the islanders would then be "engineering-type" ones such as mechanically building up the island and beaches with local sediment. These measures could well prove expensive, although there is no ready information on the relative costs of all the different options, but John believes it would be desirable if all options were considered before there is any wholesale relocation of the population.

From my perspective however, the unfortunate reality is that Takuu has no access to early warning or rescue when a really big storm comes along. The community have no money or support to build the atoll up or change their housing to protect themselves. The poverty they find themselves in inevitably makes relocation the most logical, if heartbreaking, option. Sadly this is also true for other atolls in the Bougainville region, and doubtless for many other poor communities in low-lying areas around the world.

I am a filmmaker, and certainly not a climate change scientist. I came to be making a film that touches on climate change because I could see a compelling story about a group of people and what is happening in their lives right now. The immediacy of their situation and the flooding event we shot on the island reflect the focus that the news media usually takes – things that are topical, sudden or a development of an earlier story. But climate change of any kind is usually a long process – longer than our personal experience or living memory, longer than the interval between floods, or hot spells or unusual typhoons. It’s certainly longer than the production period on a film and is extremely difficult to predict. Like so many of the climate change deniers I hear on talkback or read on the blogs, I am not an expert on the complexities of the science. However, when I consider what I know, I tend to believe that the balance of probability cannot be in our favour. If my pessimism is founded, places like Takuu – unique, powerless and with a tiny carbon footprint – will be the ones who suffer first. And there’s a terrible irony in that.

- Lyn

Help Takuu!

2009-05-03T19:30:00.001+12:00

If you saw tonight's broadcast of "Sunday" on TV1 and want to find out more about the island of Takuu and our film, please read below for the story of the shoot and the big flood, or visit our website www.thereoncewasanisland.com.

If you would like to help the community of Takuu Atoll, or you would like to help us complete our film and share what's happening on the island with the rest of the world, please contact us:

Lyn Collie
+ 64 27 282 9593

Briar March
+ 64 27 474 9021

Briar and Lyn talk about Takuu on "Sunday'"

2009-04-29T09:07:00.003+12:00

Briar and I are excited to announce that we're appearing in an article on climate change in TV1's Sunday" show on May 3 - that's THIS Sunday.

We're going to be talking about the situation for the people on the island and everyone's experiences during the huge flood - you'll get a sneak preview of some of the footage we shot then - this is the first time that these scenes have been seen anywhere and they're really quite full-on.

Tune in at 7.30pm and if you can't make that time, or you miss the show, check out "Sunday's" Ondemand site.

Drop in any feedback on the show that you'd like to share to the comments section on our blog and - catch you on "Sunday"!

Damaged trees

2008-12-17T08:54:00.003+13:00

Trees on the shore of Nukutoa damaged by the waves.

Men's dance

2008-12-16T21:53:00.002+13:00

Many of the younger men doing a stick dance at the concert on the school grounds. In this photo Satty and George can be seen dancing with several schoolteachers and other village men.

The Graduates of 2008

2008-12-16T21:52:00.002+13:00

8th grade graduates of Mortlock School stand on the undamaged basketball court the day before the big waves came.

Damage to the school library

2008-12-16T21:50:00.003+13:00

This was the school libary. All the schoolbooks were ruined by the waves.

Concert day in brief with curious weather effects

2008-12-16T21:00:00.010+13:00

Its been a big day and I'm tired so I'll try not to make this too long.

It started, sort of, when Satty woke Scott and I to look at the big waves surging past the island. It was supposed to be a low tide with a half moon but the water level looked like a high tide and every seven minutes a huge sheet of water came racing towards the island with a hissing roar from the north west to crash against the northern shore. It was kind of impressive. If this had been a full high tide these sheets of water would be racing across the school playground. We figure these surges must be long period waves generated by a far off storm or cyclone (can anyone out there find a graphic of the weather map for the 7th and 8th of December 2008 that we can post on this blog?)

The rest of the day started at dawn. We started shooting at 6am with Endar to get some work done before the big concert. Scott, Lyn and John were roped into the event as dignitaries to give out prizes to the school children. Dr Scott Smithers had an extra job (he must be more dignified) he had to give a speech through a megaphone and tie the teachers ties.

Then there was a big lunch followed by the concert bit. Twenty nine acts. Traditional dance and church singing. It finally finished at dusk. It was a great day that we totally enjoyed.

-Jeffrey

P.S. Tomorrow we are going to Takuu to film some more taro pit action. Judging by the vicious state of the mosquitos at Petasi this afternoon the little winged creatures on Takuu promise to be truly unbelievable. Also, in case you were wondering if we plan to come back, our departure time on the Barbarian is set for midday on Sunday.

Too far away to get evacuation warnings (and too far away to be evacuated)

2008-12-16T20:40:00.018+13:00

Its been an interesting couple of days here on Nukutoa. Yesterday the strange wave patterns that we have been noticing all week began hitting us with full effect as tides have become higher. Large sections of the island have been flooded and the shore has been eroded as waves have broken across the seawalls of the eastern shores.

This morning Scott and John held a meeting presenting their research so far to the islanders. Soon afterward everyone left to prepare fortoday's tide at 1pm. The news we had managed to glean via the radio was that low lying parts of northern PNG had been evacuated and that Manus and Kavieng had been hit hard by large waves. In Wewak water had reached the airport runway.

Here in Takuu we are too far away to get evacuation warnings (and too far away to be evacuated). People here can only guess at what must be going on. We suspect a huge storm north of here, perhaps around Guam, is generating huge ocean swells; swells with long period waves that carry them over the shallow water of the reef and still hold enough energy topenetrate the island.

As the tide rose so did the waves. Near Petasi (which is close to the edge of the reef) the water sometimes reached our knees. We had to be careful that the camera wouldn't get swept away with the rest of the debris hitting us as we filmed shots in the waves.

Over half the island has been flooded with most of the damage in the eastern parts. The school has been heavily hit with the schoolteachers house, the library and the elementary classrooms sustaining major damage. Schoolbooks are ruined, boats and water tanks float on the basketball court.

Only a few days ago the dance concert was held in the school grounds, now the grounds are a mess of coconuts and rubbish floating in the saltwater. The wavespenetrated into the middle of the island ruining houses and flowing into the wells.

All along the northern shore, houses sit without their walls, pools of water lie in the interiors upon which float the remains of household effects. Coconut trees have fallen and coral rocks have been thrown up on the land. There has been great damage to the sandy points upon which the canoes are kept. Several fishing canoes now have holes and lie tipped upon their sides.

All is calm tonight. The tide is low and the waves cannot get over the reef. Tomorrows tides are higher and on Friday to Sunday will be even higher still. We sent a press release to the NZ herald and John has talked to the Sydney Morning Herald so watch out for some articles.

-Jeffrey

When you are here, you get the privilege of being part of the family too...

2008-12-10T12:49:00.001+13:00

Over the last two years when I have thought of Takuu - the isolated atoll I lived on for two months in 2006 – 2007 - I have remembered a pace of life that moves in time with the tides and the rising and setting of the sun. One that is structured around community and people and less around money, property and careers. People are incredibly hospitable and there is a general feeling of openness and acceptance by the whole community. It is this feeling that makes staying on Takuu so special and what resonates with me most as I return.

In particular is the way families operate and the roles each will take in caring and looking after each other. When I was here before, Avo the chief of the island and the father to Sini whose family is looking after us, had two legs and appeared fairly fit and healthy. Last year his foot became infected after he accidentally stepped on a fish bone. Because Avo has diabetes the infection grew, until a few months ago his foot had to be amputated. At the same time Avo's wife Samoa had a stroke, becoming unable to talk or walk. Now both are disabled and they rely a lot on their extended family to help them. It's impressive to see how easily this happens. A special chair has been made for Samoa, which has handles on either end so that the ladies can carry her to the water to wash and toilet, while Avo is pushed around by his grandchildren in his wheel chair. If this couple had lived in New Zealand they might have easily ended up in an old person's home. Here they are constantly around their family, and if it is not Sini, or Sio their daughter or son-in-law who help them, it is the cousins, nephews, aunties and uncles. In additon to these changes, Avo's daughter Jane has had a baby. The father is not on the island so it is the extended family who are taking part in the raising of the child. The baby is always in some body's arms, being admired, talked to or played with. And Sio, the father of the house, seems to be making a special effort to be the father figure in the baby's life.

I am sure families operate like this all around the world, and as much as possible they will try to help each other. I guess the main difference here is that there is no traveling time, or distance between people, making it much easier to be together. In fact, you could say the whole island is an extended family. Lyn tried to do a family tree of our three characters and she found that they were all related twice to each other on both sides of the family.

When you are here, you get the privilege of being part of the family too. One lady, after a few glasses of kareve (coconut beer) told me I was her booboo (grand child), giving me a visongi (hongi – rubbing of noses). That definitely felt like some sort of initiation into the island life

When bitten by a crab - bite back.

2008-12-10T12:44:00.001+13:00

The last few days have been difficult as far as making films on small atolls goes. Our subjects have often been unavailable due to the ongoing funeral ceremonies and we have had equipment trouble as well. All on the same day we had problems with playback on the camera, a virus on our computers from a pen drive and our generator (which we use for topping up our power if its cloudy or we have put too big a load on the batteries) suddenly started jumping around with a clattering noise while white smoke poured from the alternator.

So work shifted to the Barbarian where a small office for Rose and George was set up to translate the video tapes while Briar and Rod shot the underwater sequences for the beginning and end of the film. For these sequences Briar roped in a young man called Dan and a canoe. The first days filming took place in the north west passage where the tides bring in clear water from the ocean. Here Rod filmed shots using the canoe. The second day involved filming diving shots off Queen Emma's Island (Kapeitu). I took the chance to go ashore with Endar and Barbarian's crew to take a look at the ruins of the old plantation house which was abandoned in the 1930's when the village moved to Nukutoa.

The concrete walls of the house and some kind of factory are slowly crumbling into the jungle in the interior of the island. Trees are growing on the walls and lumps of concrete cover the area where the floors once were. The roof and anything wooden have been eaten away long ago. The layout of the house is still there and you can easily see where the bay windows and the veranda once where.

After messing about looking at the house I went back out into the glaring sunlight of the beach where Endar taught me to catch crabs for bait. The method is this -
1. Find a crab hole in the beach.
2. Dig until you find a crab.
3. Grab your crab from behind.
4. Throw the crab with force upside down on the beach to stun and kill it.

My first crab went well but with my second I failed at step 3. I grabbed the frightened little animal from the front and it bit my finger hard with a pincer drawing blood. I then learned another trick. When bitten by a crab - bite back. Biting its pincer causes the shell to crack and the crab loses grip. Endar had the crabs for lunch. Barbarian's cook, Daisy, fried them with chilli.

Yesterday I went fishing. There was no filming going on to speak of (Briar did squeeze off a few shots though) so I went on a trip with Cio (whose family we stay with), Scott and Leonard (Barbarian's engineer) [Briar and Lyn weren't allowed to come, they are girls, they are unlucky and we couldn't even talk about it to them]. We zoomed out of the lagoon in an orange fiberglass canoe circling the small reefs on our way out to catch bait. We had dolphins surfing in our bow wave for a while and outside the lagoon huge whales could be seen in the distance rising and crashing back into the water.

The fishing technique was to zoom into flocks of seabirds feeding on the water while trailing as many fishing lines as possible. In this fashion we caught six large fish, two tuna and four rainbow runners. Most of these fish are destined for the big event - Monday's Dance Concert. A lot of the men are still out there tonight - fishing for the concert.

Today we were back to the usual routine. We filmed Satty and Endar this morning and sequences with the scientists in the afternoon.
-Jeffrey

Animals we have seen so far on this expedition:

2008-12-09T18:44:00.001+13:00

-Centipede
-Huntsman spider
-Scorpion (in Briar and Lyn's house)
-Turtles
-Dolphins (in Buka Passage and surfing the bow wave of our canoe in Takuu lagoon)
-Frigate Birds (talo has one as a pet)
-Fairy Terns
-Blue Starfish
-Rats (in our house)
-Chickens
-Jellyfish
-Manta Rays
-Sharks
-Whales (breaching at sea about 4km from the reef)
-Mosquitos
-Noddy Terns
-Cats (only at night)
-Geese
-Corgis (in Buka)
-Pigs
-Black Skinks
-Geckos
-Clams
-Yellowfin Tuna
-Skipjack Tuna
-Rainbow Runner Fish
-Moray Eels
-Coconut Crabs (on Takuu)
-Hermit Crabs
-Termites
-Mushroom Coral
-Angel Fish
-Mosquito Fish
-Sea Cucumber
-Sea Urchin
-Ants (in our peanut butter)

Possibly to be continued....
-Jeffrey

This is how most days pan out for us here -

2008-12-09T18:37:00.001+13:00

You may get the impression from reading this blog that all we do on the Mortlock Atoll is swan about looking at the sights and complaining about the toilet arrangements. The truth is in fact that most of our day is spent working.

This is how most days pan out for us here-

5am: We get up. Yes I know 5am sounds early but here on Nukutoa this is the time most people get up. At this time the sun is up, the roosters have left our roof and things are happening. The girls disappear for their morning kaukau (strangely the word for wash is the same as the word for kumera - go figure!), and we boys take the long walk to Patasi.

6am - 7am: Breakfast. Time for some Hardman cabin bread biscuits (Hi-Way Hardman. Strongpela Bisket!) with peanut butter (we bought 5 jars of peanut butter but no jam) and a cup of Milo. The crew of the Barbarian usually turn up with blocks of ice for our water cooler.

After this the scientists disappear for some morning science (measuring stuff, surveying and cutting up coral mostly - they have a lot to do on the low tide) and we filmmakers try to locate the people we are filming and prepare the equipment.
8 or 9am to 11am: We film a scene. I hold a microphone while trying not to let any equipment die in the heat / wet. Briar fusses over the camera and Lyn checks the shots / questions against the script. Meanwhile Rose and whoever else we can rope in work on translating the tapes from previous days shooting.

11am to 12:30pm: The hot part of the day begins. The light becomes harsh and full of contrasts while the equipment is in danger of overheating in the full sun. We try not to do any filming. Lyn and Briar start planning the next days shooting while rewriting the script against what we have just shot. I usually fiddle around with the batteries at this time trying to squeeze as much power out of the sun as possible before the equipment sucks it all up again.

12:30 pm: Lunch. Usually rice, instant noodles and fish or corned beef stew. All our meals here are made for us by our host family. We don't have to cook a thing, also they do our laundry! The scientists have turned up again by now and are working on their notes while adding up sums on a calculator.

1pm to 2:30pm. Back to planning / adding up sums. Its still too hot to shoot. Today at this time a big rainstorm broke over the islands. We ran around in the rain with buckets trying to catch as much of it as possible to refill the tanks. Fresh water is precious here. Some laundry water can be drawn from wells in the middle of the island but most washing and drinking water comes from the sky. As most houses are thatched only a few can catch rain.

2:30pm. The second shoot of the day. We go and interview someone or follow them around with the camera to see how much they can put up with.

5 - 5:30 pm: Sunset begins. Time to grab those atmospheric shots before it all disappears for the day.

6pm. It's dark. Time to write blogs, fiddle with the script and wind things down. The chickens are back on the roof and are falling asleep. We may try to wash ourselves using a couple of cups of fresh water.

7pm. Dinner time. The menu varies. Often a slight variation on the lunch menu. Sometimes it can be an incredible feast of local dishes. Today Endar cooked for us and there is a kind of kaukau flat cake / pudding as well as roast chicken (chicken doesn't turn up often on the menu). We don't forget to take our malaria tablets.

8pm. We try to send and receive emails while cursing the gods of the satellite phone. It often takes several tries to hook up and then sometimes throws us off the network. The signal strength comes and goes and we constantly play with the aerial trying to make it better.

After this we go to bed. Nicely tucked up under our mosquito nets until the roosters begin again.

Oops! Dinner time - better go.
-Jeffrey

The special dangers of Petasi.

2008-12-09T18:35:00.000+13:00

A decision to travel to Petasi is never taken lightly. This little island is full of hidden (and not so hidden dangers) that include pandanus grass (which has sharp serrated edges to the leaves with little thorns that must be pulled out of the skin with tweezers), sharp coral rocks and piles of excrement. Petasi is the little island connected to the eastern tip of Nukutoa and when walking can be smelt before it is seen.

Petasi is often called Pootasi or Poo Island in our camp. It serves as the mens toilet. Briar has earlier described the special details and dangers of the women's toilet in the sea at the northern tip of the island and I have to admit that perhaps they have it worse, they have to get wet each time they go, but the men's isn't easy either. Finding a fresh area on the sharp coral where you won't get pandanus thorns in your backside can be a challenge on some mornings. Luckily our diet of fish, rice and kaukau results in less journeys to Petasi.

PS You may wonder what they use as toilet paper here. Scott has just discovered it is coconut fiber.

-Jeffrey

A demanding sort of holiday. But, nevertheless, not an experience I'd be without.

2008-12-06T17:03:00.003+13:00

Am clearly not keeping my end up in the blogging stakes here, but Jeffrey has made sure that the side has not been let down.

I'd say I'm not blogging because I'm so busy, and in a sense this is true, but in all honesty, the days float by here like we're on some strange, confronting holiday. Which is not to say that we're not working hard, but that its very hot, and humid and free time usually gets spent yarning or wishing you were asleep (in the middle of the day) and then trying to sleep at night (which is sometimes impossible.)

Life on Nukutoa is rather like full time existence in a caravan park at the height of summer in the 70s. There are little houses about the size and shape of caravans on similar sized sections, communal toilets and washing facilities and constant good weather. The footwear du jour, every jour, is jandals. People dress casual – t-shirts and laplaps (sarongs) and sometimes not even that. Every day brings its small dramas – flooded out-riggers, crap fishing, children who get grumpy and fractious because of chest infections. But generally things slide along in their own way, in their own time. Women work very hard here, but its still possible to see them drowsing in the sun after a long day. It's very safe. Children are free to roam and play and take physical risks because the other kinds of risks that we're familiar with – stranger danger, traffic, Internet nasties, simply don't exist. People treat us very very well, from the family we're staying with, to people that we don't even really know, to the people that we're working with on the film – this is a very close community. The fact that John and Scott are here to assess what's happening on the island is something that everyone appreciates very much as well. We're trying to make every second count.

That said – there's a flip side to every situation. Imagine living in a camping ground year round – no TV, no Internet, no shops, no variations in food, no showers, no privacy and worse – no doctor, no hospital and no transport out.

The toileting situation is something to get your head around – I was always taught not to pee in the pool, but now I not only have to pee there but shit there as well – if the lagoon counts as a pool. Not only that but I have to do it in plain sight of other people, including (sometimes) the men who keep their boats at poo-point – otherwise known as Tealoki. I'm confronted with physical evidence of other people's activities too, usually in the middle of a conversation with them about the film (people are curious) or village gossip (people are happy to divulge). Or sometimes just because. The other thing I find confronting about Tealoki is the eels. At night, at low tide, and when you're at lowest ebb, when you're expected to squat over about 3 inches of water miles from the shore, there are moray eels, white and curious, perched along the water's edge. Scott suggested not to worry unless I was presenting the eels with something reassembling a small crustacean, whereupon I put my hands over my ears and went “la la la”. I've figured out how to get around the problem but I don't want to divulge any more than I already have. It's simply too Freudian.

The constipation remains a problem – only psychological in part (dehydration and a lack of dietary fibre take care of the rest) and poo stories are regularly shared amongst our band of five reprobates. The worst part though, is having to get wet every time you need to go. It's a round trip of 15-30 minutes depending on your circumstance, and plays merry hell with your sunblock and insect repellent applications. Actually – I lie – the worst part is having to wake up, put on a laplap and then stagger to the water to pee in the middle of the night – I seem to save it all up for then. I've developed a number of dodgy strategies for making the process easier but they're all fraught – for example – tonight I took a short-cut and nearly ran over a giant pile of what appeared to be turtle guts and also a cat trying to eat them. Thank god for headlamps.

I've managed now to have had a close encounter with most of the confronting fauna that Takuu affords – bitten to the quick by clouds of giant mosquitos, had a giant spider fall out of the roof and land next to the spot where I was sleeping on the floor, found a scorpion in the bed itself (Briar wanted to take a photo), and one on my mosquito net, watched a centipede – the only really poisonous thing on the island, run out of my sleeping mat when I picked it up in the morning, played spotlight with a pair of rats and chased one out of our rubbish, repeatedly flicked off a jumping spider that had to have me and just got dive bombed by some kind of beetle while trying to write this. The coral gravel floor of our hut is alive with small crabs and, when you lift your sleeping mat off the floor in the morning, Slater's. While washing in the comforting blanket of darkness (because you have to wash standing next to a bucket in the street), strange, inbred zombie-cats slink past like ghosts.

So – yes – a demanding sort of holiday. But, nevertheless, not an experience I'd be without.

- Lyn

There were actually two parties going on at the same time on Saturday

2008-12-06T16:35:00.005+13:00

30 November
If you are wondering why there has been a slight delay in the arrival of new blogs we have some good reasons.

Firstly all our batteries have been running down. The car batteries that we use in our solar system are now not as reliable and don't hold their charge as long as before. Also most of the equipment batteries have run down and need charging. Today I resorted to putting on the generator and have given everything a jolly good charge - so we will see how we go.

Secondly, yesterday we had an all day drinking session - so nothing got done (but it was good for public relations). Karave (and I'm not sure I'm spelling that correctly) is a kind of beer brewed from the sap of the coconut tree. It's collected in plastic or glass bottles hung at the top of the tree and fermented for a while. Additives improve the alcoholic content but not the taste. The resulting drink tastes a bit like a mix of beer and rice wine but isn't too bad after the first glass.

There were actually two parties going on at the same time on Saturday hosted by two of the main characters in our film. Satty (who is in his mid thirties and messes about with canoes) was re-rigging his outrigger in the men's boat shed / carving house at one end of the island. Briar and her camera were discouraged from showing up to this one possibly because last time she filmed one of Satty's boat launching captured on video the men telling Satty how he had done it all wrong - or it could be that he just didn't want to be bothered and asked to repeat his actions five times for the camera.

The other party was at Talo's house (Talo is in his 60's, gardens on Takuu, has a lovely wife called Madeline from the Solomons, is missing most of his teeth, keeps pet birds (including a frigate bird named after a footballer) and doesn't stop talking).

So the day passed much like a typical summer student party in Grey Lynn. I talked to many old men - their English vocabulary decreased as their consumption of Karave increased. The young men of the village were blind drunk by midday and everyone else drank until sunset.

Today (Sunday) we woke to find most of the village leaving for Takuu Island. During the night one of the elderly gentlemen died and as everyone is related to everyone else here, most people have departed for a five funeral on Takuu (many dressed as their best imitations of beekeepers). Some people here are worried about the funeral arrangements. Normally the fathers family of the deceased would perform the ceremony but this time none of them are available. Apparently the only person from the fathers side who was is a christian pastor - so he isn't able to do it.

So this time the mothers family will perform the ceremony. This could result in arguments in the land of the dead that may spill over into the land of the living.
After drawing family trees of our three characters I'm not sure how this situation could be possible. Our characters are related to each other on both their mothers side and their fathers side. When drawing out the family tree diagram Lyn put the ends of her paper together to form a circle and the two parts of the diagram matched up! At that point Lyn didn't even have all the connections drawn up yet.
To give you an idea of one connection: Satty is married to Telo's daughter from his first marriage, which makes Endar his great aunt in law.
The funeral means Talo is away but luckily Satty and Endar are still here so we can still continue making the film. Also this means the eagerly awaited school end of year dance contest has been delayed.

Everyone is very excited about this contest. There are little teams practicing all over the island I first became aware of them late one night when I half awoke to the sound of hundreds of sticks been beaten together all over the island. This resulted in a strange dream in which I thought the island was being invaded.
The dances are traditional to the atolls around here (the Carterets, the Tasmans etc) and seem to have no syncopated rhythms - just a steady beat. Apparently everyone has their own team including Beauty (the twelve year old girl who lives next door to us) whose team Briar named "Nukutoa Princesses" and Telo whose team of boys Briar, Lyn and I joined for a practice a few years ago.
Speaking of Briar and naming - it seems Satty has named his daughter after her. This new Briar is almost two months old (she was born on the 6th of October) is the same colour as the old Brair and has big serious black eyes.

-Jeffrey

Like having an entrance to a beehive in front of your own face!

2008-12-06T16:29:00.004+13:00

You haven't experienced mosquitos until you have been to Takuu Island and photographed the giant taro.

Takuu is a short boat trip or lagoon wade through shallow warm waters from the friendly village of Nukutoa in the Mortlock Atoll. Visiting times are between dawn and 3pm. It is forbidden and also very unlucky to stay beyond 4pm.

When visiting Takuu it is fashionable to dress as a beekeeper. There are no shops on Takuu or Nukutoa selling beekeepers clothing but suitable facsimiles can be constructed from boiler suits, paper safety suits, wide brimmed hats and mosquito netting.

It is expected that visitors to the island not appropriately attired whip themselves with palm leaves. This ritual if consistently applied may discourage as much as 10% of all mosquitos.

Visitors to Takuu will want to photograph the giant taro. These impressive plants grow to over twice the height of a man and have huge wide leaves. Other types of taro on Takuu are worth viewing too. Visitors to the island will be impressed by the size and depth of many of the taro pits, some of which are hand dug to below sea level!

Of course the highlight of the trip for many people is the mosquitos. Those visitors unused to travel in a major tropical swamp will be amazed by the numbers and size of the little animals. It's like having an entrance to a beehive in front of your own face! I'm going back today and I hope you get the chance to visit soon.

-Jeffrey 27/11/08

Chickens-

2008-12-02T06:38:00.002+13:00

Chickens. I am amused, slightly fascinated and irritated by chickens. My family used to keep a small collection of these birds when I was a teenager. Our chickens were very inbred and slightly feral. They would constantly do bizarre and stupid things.
The chickens on Nukutoa seem to follow the same plan. On your house, in your house, under your feet, on the beach, they are everywhere and seem to believe they own the island.
The chicken day begins just before dawn when they cause an almighty racket crowing and clucking at the top of their little lungs on the roofs of the houses. This wakes up the people of the village and serves as a collective alarm clock.
A little after dawn they descend from the roof to begin their day scavenging for food.
Roosters spend their day scavenging, attempting to out do each other in an endless crowing competition, taking dustbaths, fighting and sneaking up behind unsuspecting hens.

Hens spend their day scavenging, trying to build nests in stupid places (I have chased the same hen five times already today from my house, she wants to build a nest on the floor within our battery equipment), getting surprised by roosters jumping on their backs and losing (or forgetting they ever had) chicks.
Chicks spend their day trying desperately not to let their mothers forget about them while eating whatever they can.
Scott killed a hen the other day. It was an accident. He moved a wooden pallet to create a floor for our generator. As he dropped the pallet into position no one noticed the small black hen racing under it to eat the bugs coming out of the wood. The result was squashed chicken.

The chickens are desperate. I witnessed a chicken fight over an unlucky gecko. The poor little lizard was caught out in the open while at least a dozen chickens of various sizes descended upon it. The lizard didn't have a chance.
Dropped food or opened coconuts can also result in chicken mayhem.

At sunset the chickens ascend once more to the roofs of the houses. A common sight at dusk is to see a chick racing around a house squawking madly while its mother sits on the roof listening.
The thought in the hen's head probably runs like this "I hear a chick! Did I have one of those? Where is it? Perhaps its not mine. No I didn't have a chick today. Or did I? Its nice on this roof. I can see everything from here. Hmm sleepy... I still hear a chick. I wonder if its mine...." Eventually this problem is resolved. Either the chick dies and is eaten by cats or the mother comes down.
Night comes and all is peacefully silent as the exhausted chickens rest, preparing for another day of complete stupidity.
I must go now, I have to chase that hen off the batteries again.
-Jeffrey

The Reef

2008-11-27T17:24:00.003+13:00

I got up at dawn and went for a walk with Scott and Endar on the reef from Nukutoa towards Takuu. We picked up Endar at her church where apparently she had been awake since 2am. She sleeps a lot during the day because of the heat.

The top of the reef is like concrete. At low tide you can walk across it with water only ankle deep. It feels like walking across an old tennis court upon which somebody has randomly scattered large rocks. On the reef various plants and animals break up the old coral limestone into sand which is carried by the currents and deposited on the island and into the lagoon.

Halfway between Nukutoa and Takuu is the wreck of the Koko Maru, a fishing boat that was wrecked here in 1994. The bow section sits at the edge of the reef, other parts are scattered behind towards Takuu. One major section, a part of the side of the ship painted with the registration number in large black letters, sits like an outdoor stage on the beach at Takuu.

Also behind the bow is the remains of a large oil slick. For hundreds of meters behind the rocks and reef are covered with a slippery black tar. Algae has just begun to gain a hold here and reclaim the rocks.

Small holes in the reef are the home of baby moray eels which can be quite aggressive, they will attack a jandal waved at them but once they realize your size they will flee to the safety of the nearest rock.

Upon reaching the beach at Takuu we were bombarded by waves of mosquitoes forcing us to make a hasty retreat back across the lagoon to Nukutoa. On the way we carefully avoided an area of water that was a cemetery back in the far past. Bodies were buried here for a while before the heads were removed, placed in clam shells and buried upon the land. On Takuu if you find a giant clam shell in the forest you know you are standing in the wrong place.

Back on Nukutoa the first task of the morning was to film Talo and his family having breakfast and talking about the meeting last year.

Talo had some interesting information. Originally the village on Nukutoa consisted of two rows of houses on the main street (the widest, straightest street you can see on Google Earth). There were rules about what you could build, where and how. At the back of these houses were the kitchens. The kitchens were the only buildings allowed on the foreshore.

When the old chief died in 1983 the building restrictions were relaxed (some say these restrictions were relaxed in the 70's). People replaced the kitchens on the foreshore with houses. These houses are the ones on the edge of the seawall today and are the ones that sometimes get flooded in westerly winds.

At some point the government dropped off wire baskets to build a seawall but there were no instructions with these baskets on how to use them so the villagers used the baskets to build the seawall that exists today.

Also at some point possibly in the 70's the swampy area on Nukutoa that used to contain the gardens were filled in with rubbish and sand to create new areas for housing.

Also today I went swimming on Nukuafare – the next island north of Nukutoa. This island is only used for camping, it has beautiful clear water and white beaches. It is only permanently inhabited by two pigs called Homer and Hutura.

The solar power system is working well. We have had it running 24 hours a day charging our equipment. There are three batteries. At any given time I have one on the solar panel charging and the other two supplying 24.5volts to the inverter.

Barbarian is currently anchored off one of the small islands north of Nukutoa where the crew are getting a much needed rest.

Seawalls

2008-11-22T16:04:00.005+13:00

We have been filming the seawall. This wall runs along the edge of the western side of the island - almost along its entire length. In the Google Earth image you can just make out the canoes anchored a few meters offshore. There is almost no current here - the water is very still (In this season the wind blows from the east sheltering this side. Soon the season will change, the wind will blow from the north west reversing the current past Nukutoa). In the photo the darkness in the water is seagrass, underwater this stuff looks a lot like long AstroTurf. If you look carefully at the image you will see blotches of coral further out. At this point the water becomes deep enough never to dry out at low tide.

The seawall was first built many years ago but needs constant attention and maintenance. The nets that hold the stones wear out and need to be replaced frequently. The wall was built because apparently when the north west winds came they would whip up the waves pushing the water into the houses on the foreshore during the high tide. Building a wall keeps the waves off the land but the sand of the beach gets pulled out into the lagoon by the reflected wave where it gets trapped in the seagrass.

Rubbish on the island is buried behind the seawall to build up the level of the backyards of the houses on the foreshore and further prevent incursions by the sea.

The result in the western shore of the island is that what once was a beach is now slippery rocks and what once was deep water off the beach is now shallow sandy water covered with seagrass with the occasional bit of rubbish washed from broken sections of seawall.

There is also a seawall along the north shore of the island. This wall doesn't look as bad possibly because new sand made on the reef is deposited here by the strong current. Sometimes, however, it seems that the current pulls sand off the shore faster than it can be deposited. This sand ends up in the seagrass and doesn't come back.

Scott and John have begun surveying the island and surrounding reef and are learning more daily about how erosion affects this island. Soon we should start building up a clearer picture of what is going on here.

-Jeffrey

Understanding what is appropriate can be a challenge in itself.

2008-11-20T17:30:00.006+13:00

After making it through the phone/shower ordeal I met geomorphologist Scott Smithers in John's room. They chatted science and I wondered what was going to happen next. What did happen was the arrival of Briar, Jeffrey, Endar and Rose, still reasonably fresh from a day of shooting in Moresby. After meeting Peter Mildner, Briar and Zane's main contact in Moresby during the last shoot, we managed to organise everyone into a room, and then met the redoubtable Jim Robins in the restaurant next to the pool for dinner. This is the second time that Jim has managed the vaguaries of PNG bureaucracy to get everyone a visa into Moresby in time to make a film. I, for, one, was very pleased to be able to put a face to the name, although my mental picture of him is so different to the reality it's like there are two Jims in my head.

Our next port of call was Buka. People there are wonderfully friendly and the town is putting up new buildings everywhere in a most industrious way but infrastructure is limited compared to what we're used to and mechanical issues, getting basic types of supplies and making sure we communicate with the appropriate local authorities have all required negotiation. Understanding what is appropriate can be a challenge in itself. Buka seems to be a developers dream but a place that gives the impression of being very much the last outpost. Despite the new building projects there are still people crapping and washing in the strait.

The shops are fascinating - each one sells the exact same stuff as every other one and we must have been into about nine of them to get appropriate supplies during our two days in the town. Of interest in the smell department - perfumed toilet tissue reminiscent of cat piss, available in more than one place. That and the fact that the shops all smell really interesting and not necessarily in a good way. We stayed at the Kuri Resort, which had a couple of bamboo bands through in the time we were there and that was interesting - a sort of fifties style of music played on bamboo and pvc piping with jandals. Briar caused quite a stir on the first night by taking a chomp on Rose's betel nut and suffering all the usual effects including blurred vision - and a very red mouth. Jeffrey, for his trouble, was accosted on the second day by a drunk guy from a political rally who made declarations of love until he was finally pulled off - by a girl no less.

We had a few dramas waiting in Buka for the MV Barbarian which didn't show up on the day we anticipated - but hey, this is PNG - what's new? We spent a night on board waiting for the weather to clear so we could head off. This first night some drunk guys came out to us in a banana boat but Scott (the geomorphologist) struck a blow for the earth scientists by appearing in his boxers and standing on the deck until they went away.

As of November 15 we are in still in the boat which will remain broken but usable. Jeffery bought a part to repair the malfunctioning autopilot but it didn't fit the current arrangement and this makes all travel harder, particularly for the skipper. We're still waiting for the weather out at sea to clear sufficiently for us to begin the journey to Takuu. Because conditions are rough outside of the shelter around Buka we will have the first leg via the Carteret Islands. This Atoll is also sinking fast and is closer to the mainland than Takuu, making it perfect for laying over if the weather turns to crap.

Our skipper is Rod Pearce - when I first took a banana boat from the Kuri Resort to meet him he hadn't slept for more than two days as he had been piloting the Barbarian off the compass through rough weather and through the night. However after a day unconscious he emerged from his cocoon of incoherence as a very curmudgeonly butterfly. He is so careful about the weather on the open ocean that he actually suggested we shoot the doco on the Carterets, which are closer to Buka. And Briar actually started shouting. We managed to detach him from this idea but it had already become obvious at that Rod is as crusty a seadog as ever rode the waves - and he is extremely cautious about going out in unsuitable conditions, so we know that we're as safe as the situation allows.

There have been more developments since but you'll have to wait to get those.....

It's amazing how many men with grey hair, beards and glasses there are in airports.

2008-11-20T17:22:00.006+13:00

I've always been accident-prone, especially in new situations, so the fact that my new sneakers had already chewed a hole through the back of my heel by the time I reached Brisbane airport was no surprise.

The problem started in Auckland and I actually went and purchased a packet of sticking plaster to patch myself up, but optimistically only put on one and then lost the rest of the packet somewhere in my luggage. The lack of sleep didn't help my decision-making - I didn't get to bed the night before, having marked exams until 3am, then raced home to shower, give my partner instructions on dealing with the mountains of laundry left in piles in the flat, collect a last few things from the production office, pay the phone bill and bust a move to the airport. Briar and Jeffrey left a day before me so I had to make it as far as Brisbane on my own. Then I would be meeting Oceanographer John Hunter.

On arrival at Auckland International I managed to check in without much incident (although the check-in chick wanted to prevent me taking the big solar panel on the grounds that it was like an energy efficient light bulb - ?). However when I made it as far as customs the scary woman there took one look at my carry-on bag as I staggered in and asked to weight it. Next thing I was back downstairs at check-in arranging to pay excess baggage with a woman who clearly believed I was evil incarnate and a scam artist from way back. I managed to get away with paying significantly less than the $382 she wanted to sting me for, on the grounds that no one could figure out how to charge for the domestic leg of the journey, so I gave the person concerned a bag of lollies we were hoarding for the trip. I didn't want to pay excess on them anyway.

After bleeding my tired way through arrivals at Brisbane airport I found a place to buy a very nice set of superior Australian band aids with which I swathed my heel and the offending shoe which was merrily grating its way towards my achilles tendon. I then spent the next hour watching middle-aged men with beards and glasses and wondering if they were John Hunter. I actually approached one but got it wrong, and decided that I wasn't going to ask every likely guy. It's amazing how many men with grey hair, beards and glasses there are in airports. Maybe they're the only ones with enough money to travel. Eventually John located me - a much better proposition - and we made it on to the flight to Port Moresby - which was surprisingly on time, given previous experiences with Air Nuigini.

My first impression of a new place is always the smell and the relative temperature. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea's capital, rewarded us with the hot, sticky sort of weather you find in Tahiti. The smell part of things didn't, however, kick in until we reached our accommodation. Everything about the Airways Hotel was amazing - except for an odor issue that, having tantalised you with, I won't go into detail about. However, one thing I can tell you is that the tiles on the floors of their rooms are more slippery than glass. Running from the shower to grab the phone I slipped, rolled like a sausage and bounced twice. The bruise was quite impressive. It currently looks like an atoll map - a red ring with yellow on the inner part of the circle where the lagoon would be.

Bodies with pale, grim faces littered the deck...

2008-11-18T20:00:00.003+13:00

16/11/08

Our first day sailing. We were all woken at 4am with the crew preparing the engines. The plan was to break our voyage to Takuu into two sections by overnighting at the Carteret Islands. Autopilot steering on the Barbarian is currently broken so this means the boat has to be steered all the way by hand, which isn't easy on this boat.

The anchor was pulled up at 5am and we stood on the aft deck watching with great excitment, sipping tea as Buka slipped past. We saw a pod of dolphins, fishermen in dugout canoes, and a banana boat of people also headed out across the ocean to the Carterets. It wasn't a rough day but as soon as we hit the open ocean sea-sickness hit our group. Briar, Lyn, John, Rose and Endar were all struck down with it to a greater or lesser extent.

Bodies with pale, grim faces littered the aft deck. It's with a certain smugness that I can report that I wasn't one of them. Scott had a go steering, I attempted to fix the electronic chart display, and did my washing. We saw flying fish and hit a heavy squall before reaching the outer reef of the Carterets around 3pm. After carefully navigating the passage to the lagoon, we are now anchored in the shelter of the reef.

Now far away sits a wreck of a small ship, a reminder that things can quickly go wrong out here.

- Jeffrey

First Blog - by Jeffrey

2008-11-12T12:59:00.001+13:00

Only 7:43 and I'm tired! Perhaps it is that my body is still in NZ time, Perhaps it was the 4am start this morning, Perhaps it's that I'm in a new place.
We caught an early plane out of Port Moresby this morning, a 6:30am flight on a Fokker 100 jet reaching Buka just after 8pm.

Our group finally met all in one place last night over dinner at the Airways Hotel eating with a view over the blue and yellow lights of the taxiways of Port Moresby Airport.

I'll let the others describe themselves properly but our group on this expedition consists of Briar - our veteran director, Lyn - our NZ production manager, Scott and John - the scientists (Scott is here to to look at coral, John will look at the water table on Takuu). Rose and Endar are actually from Takuu. Endar is in front of the camera, Rose is our production assistant and one of our translators.

My name is Jeffrey. I am the sound recordist and technician for the solar power system.

Briar and I had already been in Port Moresby for a couple of nights. We arrived on Monday briefly seeing Scott at the airport (he arrived on the same plane). We stayed with Peter, an architect, in his high rise apartment with a great view overlooking the sea. At night the trade winds howled around his building while the voices in the street below filtered through the window.

On Tuesday we met with Rose and Endar. We held a careful conference on how to travel to film Endar as Port Moresby is famous for it's security problems. Unemployed young men gather on the streets, with nothing to do they spend all day drinking and causing trouble. People are drawn to the big city from the provinces but there is often nothing for them there. The results are predictable.

Briar and I cut our gear to the bare minimum. Just a mic for me and a camera for Briar. We hid our equipment in shopping bags, Rose roped in her friend Luke who is a taxi driver to drive us around. We filmed Endar packing and leaving her house, we sheltered in a pineapple stall from a rainstorm before travelling to film a sequence in a supermarket.

-Jeffrey
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14/11/08 - Buka Harbour -

Briar, Endar and I have been wandering around the town for the past few days filming interviews with local politicians and various street scenes. There are none of the security problems here that Port Moresby has. Buka is very busy, there is a lot of construction, it seems that people are trying madly to catch up and rebuild after the crisis feels like a river town. People move constantly between the two banks of the Buka Passage (Gaelen are you able to find a link on Google Earth for this?) using fiberglass banana boats Sohano. The current is swift. Last night we watched the Rabaul Queen (quite a large ferry) leave port. It pulled out into the current listing heavily to one side. It raced past us at high speed before swinging around again to collect a couple of late passengers from a banana boat. It was quite a performance.
Today while filming interviews with the scientists our boat, the Barbarian, finally entered harbour searching for an anchorage away from the current. Finally it found a spot behind Sohano Island out of sight of the town. While we kept filming, the others loaded out equipment on a banana boat and joined the ship. The Barabarian was late because its skipper Rod Pearce had been battling day and night, hand steering through increasingly higher seas to reach us. It is now too rough in the open ocean to leave and we now have to wait for we don't know how long to leave harbour. If the rough weather continues the wait will seriously eat into out tight shooting schedule.

-Jeffrey

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15/11/08 11am

Last night we were visited by pirates! Ok - its not as dramatic as that. Some very drunk guys pulled up to the side of the Barbarian in a banana boat about midnight to be stared at my our crew. We don't know if they were looking for drinking buddies or were up to no good. Eventually they sped away. Today we are sitting behind Sohano Island waiting for the weather to subside. While Briar and Lyn stay on the boat translating tapes and doing paperwork the rest of us will go to Buka where I hope to send theses blogs. Perhaps we sail tonight or tomorrow morning on a 3 day trip that promises to be very rough. We will be out of contact for cellphone and Internet and we are unlikely to get any sleep. The banana boat has arrived so I must go.

-Jeffrey

Hallo!

2008-11-09T23:51:00.006+13:00

I'm Gaelen and I'm helping out There Once Was An Island team. I'm going to be posting blogs on behalf of the team. Briar, Lyn and Jeffrey's internet connection from Takuu Island is extremely slow, slower than dial up and so they will email me what they want to post - and I shall post it up.

I joined Lyn and Briar in September from Wellington to do a spot of Production Assistant work - and now, here we are, on the eve of the long awaited trip, running around looking for lost lap laps and smaller batteries.

I'm looking forward to hearing from the troops on the Island and relaying all I can through the blogger. In the meantime, check out the website www.thereoncewasan island.com .

A quick update

2008-11-05T17:57:00.011+13:00

Ok - last time I posted we didn't have enough funding to return to Takuu to shoot the final part of the documentary, but thanks to Pacific Islanders in Communications we're cashed up and actually about to leave (Monday next week!). And when I say we I mean the drew - myself (Lyn Collie), Briar March and Jeffrey Holdaway, technician, boatee and sound-guy extraordinaire.

Sponsors Panasonic, Sony and Rocket Rentals have come to the party again, as has the Airways Hotel, Port Moresby.

This time we're also taking an oceanographer John Hunter with us, and geomorphologist Scott Smithers is coming along for the ride.

While on Takuu we're going to catch up with our main characters Satty, Telo and Endar and find out what's happened in the two years since we last saw them. The John and Scott will explore the island and attempt an explanation of what's happening and a prognosis for Takuu's future. They will share this with the people on the island. We'll follow this process with our cameras and also observe the personal journeys of our island characters as they decide whether to leave Takuu or stay with the island and fight to keep their culture alive.

We'll update the blog via a slow satellite link while we're away so stop in to follow our progress.

For more about the project please visit our website: thereoncewasanisland.com.

If you want to donate to the island they're currently running a fundraising drive. Please email takuu(at)yahoogroups.com, introduce yourself and say that you would like to make a contribution. Someone will get back to you with details on how to do so.

If you would like to make a contribution to the film please email us at takuufilm and we'll send you through details of where to deposit the money.

More unheroic slog

2008-04-26T15:01:00.003+12:00

By special request and because it really is time that we made an update for anyone who's interested, here is the latest on "There Once was an Island: Te Henua e Noho".

In the year or so since my last post we have not been idle. We completed the promo mentioned previously, which was dispatched to Screen Innovation in April last year. Screen Innovation elected not to give us further funding given that they felt we would be able to finish the film without this. We were therefore unable to follow up on the kind offer to travel to the island with the ham radio enthusiasts, so we turned our attention to getting 120 hours of footage from the first shoot fully captured onto two harddrives kindly lent by Zane Holmes. Post-production facility Images and Sound have been incredibly supportive and allowed us to use their facilities through what was a very long video capturing process. We employed a fantastic assistant editor, Glenn Horan, to help get it done, and also made use of an editing suite at Auckland University's Film, Television and Media Studies department. Briar and Prisca Bouchet were absolute trojans in keeping on at this till the mammoth task was finally done. Around this time we also adopted an intern from the Master of Creative and Performing Arts at AU. Pramen Prasad is the most organised character to set foot in our office. He put in an application for funding for to bring an interview translator from Takuu to the Cathy Pelly Trust. We unfortunately didn't get the money, but it wasn't for want of a great application, that's for sure.

Things on the edit began to progress faster when Zane Holmes donated the use of his personal editing suite. We've been working on this part time (which is all our schedules will allow) since mid-year last year. This was an amazing thing to offer and is just unbelievably appreciated.

About this time Lyn put in a funding application to the Pacific Development and Conservation Trust, and that was successful to the tune of $10,000. This is less than what we need to return to the island and complete our story, but a large grant for the Trust in question and a great start.

At this time we decided to put in an application to Pacific Islanders in Communications. To do this we knew we'd need to work with an American producer. Briar had met Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, directors of the amazing documentary "A Lion in the House" at the New Zealand International Film Festival last year. Through them we made contact with Andrea Torrice, a brilliant director and producer, possibly most famous for her film "Rising Waters" about sea-level rise in many parts of the world. While she finally decided she couldn't come on board as producer, she did agree to act as script consultant, and we finally found the young and extremely talented Yoran Porath to work with us. The application was lodged with PICCOM in October.

A little before this we had applied to pitch the film at DocNZ and were delighted to be accepted to showcase the work done to date to commissioning editors from ITVS, Al Jazeera English, SBS, ABC Australia, TVNZ, Maori Television and others. We also undertook a master class in pitching with Carole Dean of the From the Heart who was great to work with. On the basis of the feedback we got at DocNZ we prepared applications for ITVS and Maori TV. Briar also put in an application to Wide Angle.

In between all of the applications Briar and Prisca have been editing the film and with a grant from Zane Holmes and some of the money awarded by the Pacific Conservation and Development Trust we finally managed to bring Rose Tione over to complete our translations. Sony leant us a camera to burn DVD's for Rose to work from which was just unbelievably appreciated. Rose is currently here in New Zealand and will be returning home in May. She has been great to work with and has adjusted to life in New Zealand incredibly well. It's been such a pleasure having her here.

The applications to PICCOM, ITVS and Maori TV were not successful, so we still don't have enough money to return to the island. However PICCOM have asked us to resubmit our application, which we just did this morning, and we may yet get a grant from them. This would allow us to complete the film as written, as long as we continue to work for free. Wide Angle have shown some interest in the project and have asked for more material, so we will be sending this to them shortly. We hope that our moves to make the story more character-driven and focus closely on climate change may prove fruitful in getting a committment from either funder. If that doesn't work we have a French language prop finally ready to send to ARTE in Europe, and Al Jazeera English may be able to offer us a limited amount of money for a 20 minute current-events cut for a magazine show.

Our final application will be to the Sundance Foundation. If we don't receive any money we will complete a cut from the footage we currently have.

None of the above makes a particularly exciting story when told in dribs and drabs, which is why I haven't been keeping the blog regularly updated. However, things do continue to move along. If anyone out there is concerned that the film isn't being made fast enough I would encourage them to consider digging deep. A lack of funding the only thing standing in our way. Briar, Prisca and I all work full-time as well as doing the film, and we all put our time and our own money into it week after week. Zane has obviously donated a significant chunk of money and equipment and Sony has yet again come to the party to help us, as have Images and Sound. Annie Goldson continues to offer support. We just wish that we could finally get enough cash to finish the film and tell the story of the island in the words of its people. At the moment we can get the film in the can for about US$50,000, which with today's rate of exchange is about NZ$70,000. If you want to see this film, if you believe in what we're doing and you think you can help, then I would encourage you to get in contact. We'd love to hear from you.

All about the unheroic slog

2007-05-17T16:45:00.000+12:00

Aah production work. It’s not glamorous that’s for sure, and it’s always a moveable feast. But it’s all that’s been happening on There once was an Island since Briar and Zane got back, so there’s not much else to talk about right now.

You’re probably wondering what’s been happening and why it’s been so important that no one has updated the blog for the last millennium, and the simple truth is that it’s all about the bottom line. Along with Briar and Zane, I know that there are only a finite number of hours in a week, and when a good chunk of them are spent engaged in other work, work that can offer a paycheck, the time spent on the film shrinks and often comes a poor second.

Here's what's been happening - more or less: Immediately on their return from the island Briar and Zane walked into different short-contract editing jobs, which took up pretty much all of their waking hours. Fortunately I work four evenings a week at nzherald.co.nz, and so that left – gosh – a whole 7 days and three nights into which I could squeeze work on the film – who needs sleep?

We started editing a promo reel at ImagesPost about the time that Briar and Zane got back, something that was only possible because of the amazing generosity shown by Paul and Grant who run the facility. The lovely Prisca Bouchet started helping us with the monumental task of digitising and editing a very large amount of footage, and I found that my plans to get funding applications started had to be put on hold to get as much footage logged and digitised as possible.

After much titivating the promo was duly finished and dispatched with our application for post-production funding to the Screen Innovation Production Fund and we’re waiting to hear what the results of this will be. In the meantime we’ve shown the DVD to several people, got feedback on it and have added titles and subtitles. Zane is in the process of grading it properly and we hope to be sending off copies to a number of networks and distributors soon.

After work on the promo, Prisca has come on board as our editor. She's great to work with, extremely talented, passionate about editing and willing to work for free. There's nothing more we could possibly ask for!

If we get SIPF or any additional funding we’ll be able to head off to the island again, and perhaps this time take a scientist to explore what exactly is making Takuu and its neighbouring atolls sink so quickly. We’ve been offered an opportunity to tag along with some ham radio enthusiasts. Derek Cox, Hans Hjelmstrom and Stig Nyman are heading out to the atolls as part of a project to broadcast from the farthest reaches of the world and are chartering a yacht to do so. I’m for anything that could mean avoiding the scheduling challenges presented by the Sankamap so it sounds good to me!

In the meantime Briar is working about 4 jobs, I’ve got a giant pile of writing to do for the project and a mass of funding to assess and apply for, none of which seems to be happening, and when he’s not doing our promo, Zane’s off developing a number of additional projects of his own.

That about gets you all caught up. I’ll try and post something again soon. Here's pic of Rose and Briar to keep you going.

Lyn

Last voyage on the Sankamap

2007-02-18T15:09:00.000+13:00

Contemplating the joy of sailing and the sadness of leaving, Zane has written the following. For a final taste of Takuu keep reading to the bottom. The final departure seems to me as tragi-comic as the initial one from New Zealand but, really, much more moving...

Ahhhh the Sankamap... It probably seems strange how much we refer to the ship in the blog and the fact that we do so by name. But once you've been here and seen how important this ship is and how its very character influences the lives of so many, you quickly start to think of it not so much as a thing but as a living breathing being. She was built for the PNG government around 18 years ago (I'll try and check this date the ship looks and probably is older), specifically so that the Atolls could be regularly serviced, and the plan worked well for a while...For a while it was a great little cargo ship that was air-conditioned, had a cook for the cabin passengers and a working shower. It could take about 130 passengers and, I would estimate, about 50 tonnes of cargo.

However from the outset it was doomed. It was originally designed with two cargo holds and two loading cranes, but then in order to save a few million Kina the decision was made to reduce its length by 10 metres. That reduction in length was achieved by simply cutting out one of the cargo holds and cranes. The money saved supposedly disappeared into some dodgy individual's pocket never to be seen again. As a result, the ship can't really carry enough cargo to be economically viable and, what's more, its sea handling has been ruined by the fact it’s so much shorter than it was designed to be and hence it doesn't ride very well. If you look at the photo of it you'll notice how stubby it seems to look due to the missing length in between the bow and the superstructure.

Despite being handicapped at birth, the Sankamap has had a busy and colourful life. She was used to run troops around during the crisis and even played a role in repelling rebels when they attempted to invade Buka Island from Bougainville by crossing the narrow Buka passage. Armed troops lined the side of the ship, which was tied up on the Buka side, and waited silently while the rebels attempted a night crossing. Then when the rebels were mid passage the troops opened fire. I don't know many details of the event but I can imagine it was a bit of a slaughter. The Sankamap got a bullet hole to show for her part in the successful ambush. This story is one of the seemingly endless supply Richard had about the ship.

The Sankamap has been the main lifeline to the Atolls off Bougainville for the last 20 years. At present management of the ship is in the hands of a company from Nukumanu (Tasman Island, one of the Atolls around Takuu). I'm still unsure as to whether the actual ownership of the vessel is in the hands of the company or the government but nevertheless there are a lot of people unhappy about the current set up.

You would assume that with control of the vessel lying in the hands of people from the Atolls the islands would be getting good service. However this is not the case, as the ship now has to put profit first in order to survive whereas before, while profit may have been nice, the first duty of the ship under her government-run management was to provide a service and that service was aimed at looking after the residents of the five outlying atolls. Under the new regime and its need to try and generate profit, the quality of the service to the islands has reduced and servicing and maintenance of the ship has sunk to the bare minimum. Gone are the air-conditioning and any of the creature comforts enjoyed by passengers in years past. The ship has numerous rust holes, many of which are dangerous for the passengers, and others I suspect seriously affect the seaworthiness of the ship.

The Sankamap regularly runs to Buka, Rabaul and Lae but only infrequently to the Islands as it has to try and earn enough in order to be able to afford what is a loss-making trip. As the most isolated of all the Atolls, Takuu suffers the worst from this fact. In the case of the other islands, either the Bougainville mainland or the Solomans are within fairly easy reach, but Takuu, in the middle of the atoll group, has no easily access to off-shore facilities for getting supplies or in case of emergencies.

In case we haven't mentioned it in previous entries, the Sankamap is pigeon for Sunrise and it is literally pronounced “Sun come up”. Despite the positive name, this ship is probably the single biggest problem that the Atolls face. A regular and well run service to the islands would create the ability for the islanders to set up their own businesses. These would help them to fund the ship’s trips to the Island and to fund and import better amenities for the island such as medical and educational supplies. It would also reduce their dependency on hand-outs from the cash starved Bougainville government. It would open the doors for tourists to visit and stay upon the Islands which would be a much welcomed economic boost. At the moment Takuu would by very lucky to get four Sankamap visits a year and has had to go up to seven months without a visit, meaning food and fuel supplies on the island are exhausted and if anyone has gotten seriously sick they are quite simply dead. The ship will not do mercy trips to the island so if you get sick and your family can't raise the 9,000-18,000 Kina (NZ$4,500 – 9,000) needed to pay for a trip you die. No ifs or buts - you die... they do a brief ceremony and put you in the ground before your body goes off in the heat.

So yes - the Sankamap is about as important as a machine can possibly get and yet due to a huge range of factors (many of them political and hence off limits to mention in a public forum) she is dying and while various people try to get an alternative vessel set up; none at this point exists so the ship remains the only lifeline for the Islands in the truest sense of the word 'lifeline'.

With all this knowledge we finally boarded the ship to leave Nukutoa Island in Takuu...

After waiting for so many days for the ship to come we got caught out by the fact that when it did, it actually arrived several hours early. I wrote this on the day that we left Takuu:

Briar is off getting shots of the kids at school which has started yesterday while I am frantically dismantling and packing all our gear deciding as I go what we really need to take and what can be given to the Islanders. I’m frantic because the ship is coming at 1pm and it is now 9am and there is much to do especially as we need to shoot an interview with the school principal at 10am which will take at least 30 mins. Suddenly Richard walks in and tells me the ship is in sight and be ready to go at 11am. He also adds a reminder that it can't anchor so please make sure we're ready in time as it would be most embarrassing if not actually impossible for it to wait for us. This sends me running through the village looking for Briar... No sign of her anywhere..Damn...

Rush back, keep packing, then Briar is there, phew! She's been filming Endar's leaving prep. I tell her the problem then we both pack like mad doing our best to make everything as watertight as possible due to the fact we know we will be boarding a moving ship from a banana boat. Abruptly Sio walks in, are we ready he asks? The boat is here waiting to take us to the ship. Suddenly as we shove the last items in bags, the bags themselves are being grabbed by many different hands and disappearing from the house. I try to do a last check to see what we have missed but it's cursory as I am practically dragged out the back of our house to where the banana boat sits in the water loaded and ready to go. People I know are surrounding me saying goodbye. It is a sea of confusion and emotion as we shake hands hug and kiss everyone. In the background we can hear a child screaming - grief stricken as his grandmother boards our boat to leave. Briar is close to tears as are some of the ladies. Even the usually staunch Sio looks a little weepy. The ship is slowly moving past the island a few hundred metres off shore, her presence adding fuel to the mad inferno of rushed farewells we seem to be caught in.

Avo the Chief is there happily shaking our hands, his gnomelike face smiling in appreciation of our visit. I'm feeling almost dizzy as I try to remember the names and faces before me and say goodbye appropriately. Then we're in the banana boat and heading away from the island and all is silent but for the throb of the outboard and the sobs of the grandmother. Briar and I look at each other kind of shellshocked. Is that it? After nearly two months here, are we really going? The last 10 minutes of machine gun farewells seemed both surreal and deeply moving...Did all that really happen?

The ship looms over us and then we're on board. Our gear is quickly stowed and we're on deck looking back at the islands as the last of the banana boats with the other passengers arrive. Rose is with us and pulls out food prepared for our trip. At first it looks like cooked coconuts but when cracked open they reveal that they are stuffed with rice and Karave; the sweet sap of the coconut tree. All this has been cooked in the shell so that the coconut flesh, the milk, the rice and the Karave have all caramelised into a deliciously sweet treat. We eat this, still warm from cooking, with sticky fingers as the ship finishes loading and swings her nose towards the reef and towards the passage through to the awaiting Pacific.

We’re set for 20 hours to Buka upon a ship that is probably overloaded and on which the liferafts are six years past their service dates, the toilets are places you avoid going at all costs, and every surface is covered in a thin layer of grime and rust, meaning that very quickly we are getting filthy...and yet we are happy

We have a long way to go... but we have started heading home.

A week in Buka lies ahead; a small frontier-like town on the edge of civilsation in a newly formed nation that has arisen from a long and bloody civil war... Should be fun!

Zane out.

It's toilet time...

Stranger in a strange land

2007-02-14T17:34:00.000+13:00

I'm at liberty to say that Briar and Zane are on the plane as I write (unless something utterly unforseen has happened) and I'm expecting to see them in about two hours, cavity searches at customs notwithstanding.

Briar has sent a post descibing the last few hours on the island which she couldn't get through till recently (they've been without the internet for the last two weeks). It's a moving and soulfully insightful piece and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Here is a post that I wrote just before leaving the island:

A wild cyclone is devouring Takuu. It rips through the coconut trees. The lagoon is stirred into a murky grey and its surface is littered with hundreds of tiny white caps. The banana palms are shredded into fine green strips which remind me of thinly cut paper used for decorating the edges of cakes or cocktail straws. Rain falls in bucket loads, hitting the ground in violent splashes. The chickens and roosters squawk and scream with horror but the ducks stand dead still, showering their waxy backs. The wind has a constant drumming sound, like that of a tide moving back and forth, but with a viciously wild and unpredictable edge. It blows directly through our tiny shelter, inside the eastern door and out through the western one. It deafens the sound of my thoughts like an oddly intoxicating blanket of gloom which wraps itself around you and over takes your mood and mobility. Rain and hair are in my eyes and a wet lap lap clings to my blistered legs. Nobody is outside (except for me and the birds). All have crept away. Men are sleeping. Women are huddled around open fires in the cook houses. Children stop their noisy games finding quieter activities inside. Meanwhile a lap lap from a clothes line is hurdled across the street. There is a loud crash as something three yards away has fallen from its place. Could it be the loose corrugated iron which acts as our make shift door, or the roof from our neighbors cook house? Before I have time to find out the whole place shakes from the violent clapping of thunder, followed by bright flashes of sheet lightening.

Do you think the boat will be here today? Hmm I don't think so. Every twelve hours we have a new piece of news. The last few reports have said that the rusty hulk that is the Sankamap is still in Tasman. First with a missing engine, then with the absence of its three anchors all lost along the way. We have learnt not to care or worry about when it will arrive. This is a great opportunity to put into practice what Echart Tollie calls " the power of now" (basically staying in the present moment) and perhaps it would be better to travel on the Sankamap when the sun-really-does-come-up?

I stand soaking wet in the middle of this storm and think back over our trip..

What will I take away and what will I leave behind for the winds to ravage? It is hard to know what you have actually learnt from a place while you are still in it. Usually the most valuable insights occur when you return home. I like the way T.S Elliot puts it in his poem 'Little Gidding':

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

I was pleasantly surprised when these words turned up at the beginning of the film Run Lola Run. Speaking of quotes, I should add (while standing in the marae drenched through)

"There is nothing so strange in a strange land as the stranger who comes to visit it".

I read this at the beginning of a Denise O'Rouke film and fits appropriately with the way I look now. Something that could fit the description of perturbed drunkard – although this is just me stumbling around as I fight the elements! It also sums up the many ironic moments we have had since our arrival. For example, one day I was standing in the middle of the street holding the satellite phone to my ear (this is a plastic brick with a huge aerial) whilst being interviewed by Radio New Zealand. Around me villagers are hauling giant taro into piles, for an annual customary ritual. The situation just seemed too surreal.

I wonder what it would have been like for missionaries a hundred or so years ago. They wouldn't have had radio reports with news from afar, nor satellite phones or blog posts, only handwritten journals. They wouldn't have known whether their boat ride home had lost its three anchors, let alone become ship wrecked with no surviving passengers! They would have ventured to foreign lands like Takuu, with the expectation that they may never come back, or with rumors that they could be eaten alive (this is eventually what happened to the famous John Williams – an English Missionary from the early 1800s). Our trip is hardly remote by these standards, especially considering we can still use internet and even ring our producer Lyn for help when things get rough. Perhaps one thing I have learn is just how dependent I am on modern inventions. Live in a place with no hospitals, medicine and little news of the out side world and you have a completely different view on life.

The other thing I have been reminded of is the importance of staying positive. For some, this might sound like a 101 self help book lesson, but many times I have needed to focus on this simple wisdom. I was particularly inspired by a man named Ben. He turned up near the end of our stay and I got the opportunity to interview him one day with no prior warning. He is one of those guys who has an extra bounce in his step. He had once lived in Australia but has come back home expressing that he wanted to do his part to help his people. Part of Ben's work involves a business buying and exporting sea cucumber from Takuu. It is the only economy on Takuu (before this there was nothing for quite some time). The selling of the sea cucumber provides a way for families to find funds for their school fees and buy other living essentials and food items. Zane and I have been talking of and scheming up many other options and ideas that could help the community, and it was encouraging to hear the same thoughts being voice by Ben.

I have been asking many of my characters what is their view on change. When I asked Ben he immediately replied with one word: "Positive". He went on to say "we must take the word 'positive' into every situation and in every negative circumstance we must find a positive outcome". So many times during this trip I have tended to look at the glass as if it was only half empty. It is easy to get carried away thinking about how much nicer it would have been if I could have only taken this bit of gear or that lens etc. It is also quite stressful knowing that we have a limited period of time to shoot the film and that it is hard to get back to the island, so as much as possible must be filmed on this trip. Sometimes it has been hard to organize shoots and get the interviews I have wanted. In the hot sun and the dense coral the process has often felt like a long battle up hill (but I must say almost always exciting and enjoyable).

I have learnt that the important thing is to enjoy the journey rather than focus on the destination and to always stay positive (you never know - if I was living in John Williams time – I might have ended up being eaten when I got there so best not to think about it too much)! So I will throw all my negative thoughts to the winds. I will splash in a few more puddles, sing in the rain, and continue looking like a perturbed drunkard.

"There is nothing so strange in a strange land as the stranger who comes to visit it".

- Briar signing out from Takuu..

It's not over til it's over...

2007-02-12T13:16:00.000+13:00

Ok everyone, predictably things have got a little delayed in Port Moresby - the plane from Buka was about three hours late in arriving on Saturday, and so that put the kibosh on shoot plans for the afternoon and knocked the schedule out by a day at least. This in turn has put back the return home 'til (I estimate) Wednesday, because it's difficult to get a same day connection from Brisbane and Auckland if you've flown in from Moresby. I know that many of you are really looking forward to their arrival (although possibly not even as much as they are themselves) but you're going to have to hold your proverbial, at least for a couple of days.

Briar and Zane have now got access to the web again, and there'll be some blogs from both on the last days of Takuu and the Sankamap coming up. They're also checking the Takuu gmail address sporadically, so if you're desperate to get in touch you can find them there. Bear in mind that they're still very busy tidying up lose ends and doing final interviews, so they may not be able to respond before they get home.

In the meantime, check out the interview that Briar did on Checkpoint from the island, by clicking the sidebar link, and watch out for archive of interviews on Breakfast, ZB and Nine to Noon which should be available soon. I should have a link to the article that appeared in the Sunday Star Times last week available soon as well.

The end is in sight....

2007-02-10T15:07:00.000+13:00

After a week shooting interviews with expats and politicians in Buka, Briar got some sad news from home. With this in mind we're making an effort to get her and Zane back into New Zealand as soon as possible and are hoping that this will be Monday. This is a little bit earlier than any of us thought, but we've discussed it and we think that it's best, and won't materially affect the film. I'll try and post when I know what time they're getting in, but with current difficulties in communication, even I may not know much before they actually arrive.

Thanks everyone for all your interest in the shooting process, and all of the adventures on Takuu. Things are going to be a little quieter for the next week or so, but with the possibility of going to AIDC (the Australian International Documentary Conference) in Adelaide if we can find $1700.00 for the tickets, and a shoot in Rarotonga with climate experts at the SIDS Expert Meeting on Adaption as part of the Frame Work Convention on Climate Change, there's always more about to happen, including more travel. Please keep reading.

In case you were worried

2007-02-01T11:15:00.000+13:00

We are safe in Buka at the guest house. Richard maybe flying out shortly so may be last contact till we find other means.

No flights BRISBANE TO AUCK TILL AFTER THE 10TH

Dry land

Yay

Z and B

Takuu transport trials continue unabated

2007-01-31T17:32:00.000+13:00

Well it is Monday the 29th and here we are in the Island paradise of Buka. The sun is shining, exotic birds are singing', happy young couples are walking hand in hand through the coconut groves and along the white sand beaches. There is power here so we are enjoying cocktails freshly made at the bar on the beach and the condensation on the frosty glasses sparkles like translucent pearls in the rich tropical sunlight.....

Actually no :-(

We are still on Nukutoa.... a storm has been raging for a few days meaning we are out of solar power and have had to borrow a generator while we wait for the Sankamap to return from Tasman Island where it has been since about last Wednesday or Thursday. First the boat stayed a night at Tasman as it always does and should have left the next day, then there was a party so they stayed another night (most of the crew are from Tasman), then they developed engine trouble and stayed another night then the engine trouble mysteriously went away much like those mysterious headaches one gets after consuming lots of alcoholic beverages. Then it was raining so they couldn't load the cargo. Now finally they're ready go the next day except now the storm is upon them.

Yesterday (Sunday) they tried to load the ship but must’ve failed due to the weather. Overnight they lost all three of the ship’s anchors so now the boat can't keep in position for people to board. Apparently it has to leave the choppy Tasman lagoon and go into the ocean where it will wait for the passengers to come out over the reef in small boats and board the ship in the gentler ocean swells. Going over the reef is no small feat. According to Richard you stand in waist deep water beside your boat on the lagoon side of the reef then when the boat driver feels there is a gap in the breakers everyone clambers in and you head full speed through the waves to the Pacific Ocean beyond.

If this happens successfully today at Tasman the ship will begin the 24 hour trip to Takuu (that's traveling at 6 knots in fair conditions - it will probably be longer with the weather). If the lagoon is calm when it arrives in Takuu, the ship will come through the channel from the ocean and, unable to moor due to lack of anchors, it will steam slowly round the lagoon while we chase it in small fibreglass boats and attempt to board it while still moving....That's plan A.

Plan B (The B is for Ballsy): If the lagoon is choppy we will have to brave the reef as outlined above. Sponsors need have no fear though, because all the gear is insured....right Lyn??? (Ed’s note – yes, of course, absolutely).

Luckily my will is up to date. My sister Renee will do very well in the event of a reef crossing calamity, however I fear my wishes for my ashes may go unfulfilled ;-). I'm afraid Briar's next blog may have to be the bequeathing of her worldly possessions.

Meanwhile on Nukutoa Briar is making use of extra time here to get more of our footage translated (although I think our translator Sio is hiding from her) and we will have the chance tomorrow to film the kids back at school, which reopened today after the holidays. At the moment I'm being slowly asphyxiated as I type beside the smokey generator while keeping one eye on my lunch to make sure Briar's rat doesn't eat it.

After lunch Briar has organised to interview Apava, both the oldest and scariest man in the village; he's kind of a cross between Grandpa Sinpson and Hannibal Lector.

Anyway as this is probably my last blog ever and sometime either tomorrow or the next day my body will be dashed to a bloody pulp against the razor sharp coral lying beneath the monster waves that crash upon Takuu's outer reef (affectionately known as 'The Widowmaker'), I have to say to any rich, attractive girls reading who have unspoken desires for me, this may be your last chance to express your true feelings.... Well I'm not really expecting a huge response there, but it's worth a shot.

That is all for now....And perhaps forever..DUMMM DUMMM DUMMMMM (that's my dramatic music outro)

Zane out.

"The Widowmaker" and the wreck of the last ship that tried what we will attempt.

And on a completely unrelated note....

2007-01-27T19:03:00.000+13:00

Those of you who know and love Briar may be interested to know that the launch of her documentary Allie Eagle and Me on DVD is happening 6pm Thursday February 1 at Corban Estate Arts Centre, Waitakere City. The DVD is being launched alongside the opening of The Big Picture: A Working Process, an exhibition featuring a huge new work by the inimitable Allie Eagle and other pieces by Allie and her atelier, as well as a brickwork installation by Peter Lange. If you happen to be in Waitakere on Thursday evening, pop along - after the official launch there will be a spit roast (koha appreciated), film screening and various entertainments that reflect the cultural groups present in Waitakere and which are featured in Allie's painting. You can even purchase the DVD.

More information about the film and the DVD can be found at allieeagleandme.com.

For address details and a map of how to get to Corban Estate Art Centre, go here (you'll need to scroll to the bottom to get a link to a pdf map).

I'm giving a short speech on Briar's behalf so please come, sample the complimentary wine and, when suitably lubricated, make a supportive response!

Never jump the gun on the boat

2007-01-26T19:19:00.000+13:00

An update for all you keen beans out there - and just to give you a taste of what it's usually like trying to plan on the Takuu project: Briar and Zane haven't left yet. They MAY leave tomorrow morning, but if I were you I'd keep this page bookmarked so you can keep abreast of the ongoing saga. They've still got a couple of weeks in-country in Buka and Port Moresby before heading back to NZ and, knowning Briar, that could mean they end up in some fairly unorthodox situations.

In the meantime this is one of the latest offerings from Zane - an image of the beach that he photographed earlier at high tide, only this time the tide is out and you can see the full extent of the degradation, especially when compared to the earlier shot which I'll publish again here so you can get the full effect of the comparison:

Note the exposed coral in the recent shot taken with the tide out. If it was proof you were wanting, here it is with boots on.

The plane the plane!!!! I mean the boat the Boat!!!

2007-01-25T16:49:00.000+13:00

The Sankamap

From Lyn:

I'm at liberty to say that Zane and Briar are about to leave or are in fact on their way from Takuu as I write this. After much fitting and starting, as usual, the Sankamap has finally begun its journey up the line of atolls, and when I last got word from the island it was moored in the lagoon (as pictured) waiting to complete the round trip. In fact on Tuesday Zane wrote:

"Hey Lyn - as I type the Sankamap is sitting in the lagoon not far out side our house, unloading as quick as it can. If it leaves today for Tasman (unlikely due to it getting late and they don't risk the reef passage in the dark), it will be back Thursday and we'll leave then and be in Buka on Friday - more likely we'll be there Saturday."

This means that there's probably only another two weeks to go before B and Z are finally going to be touching down on NZ soil again, although everything in PNG is always subject to confirmation, and this date is no exception.

And this LITERALLY just to hand from Zane!! (Seriously - I was typing this entry when it arrived in my in-box) -

From Zane:

It is Thursday the 25th and this might be my last entry from Nukutoa Island on the Takuu Atoll. It's been great living here and as long as you don't mind the odd bug on your face in the night, ceaseless chicken noise or communal toilet areas I definitely recommend anyone try it, god knows the Island needs the tourist dollars.

I think I can safely say that I have eaten the entire cast of Finding Nemo while we've been here (yes even the cute sea turtles) the final addition being shark which we had the other night. Briar and I have probably become fish addicts for life as one of the greatest pleasures here is coming home after a long day in the heat and finding dinner on the table. Dinner usually comprises of two whole fish and two bowls of white rice. The first few weeks we did our best and picked through the fish...Now we just massacre them, any semblence of western ettiquitte is gone as we tear the fishes with our bare hands spitting out bones and scales (well Briar actually chews and swallows her bones for the calcium) as we go.

We have made some good friends here. Among my favourites are Telo our hardcase gardening expert, Rosetta who helps care for us (and will be leaving with us on the boat as she lives in Rabaul and is only here for the holidays), and also Satty a 28 year old local who dreams of bigger things and has seen every movie known to man (well except for all the movies Briar likes :-P). I hope to keep in touch with these guys somehow and Briar and I have decided we would like to do our best to help Rose who lost both her parents in the last few years, wasn't able to complete high school due to the volcano in Rabaul blowing up, has lost her faith in christianity and now dreams of becoming a nurse and being able to travel. We'll see what we can do, first step is we've agreed to take the few photos she has of her parents away to be cleaned up and enlarged (any suggestions on good people to do this would be apreciated).

All that said I'm begining to fantasize about my first cold drink in nearly six weeks. This will hopefully happen on the Sankamap which (despite being the rustbucket it is) will hopefully be back here on Saturday to pick us up and deliver us to Buka for the next stage of our journey....I can already smell the cool dewy drops of condensation on the cans of fizzy drink in the ship's fridge.

Rose has just carried in lunch so I shall adjourn briefly.....

Here is a pic of Rose having lunch with us. At this particular moment she is captivated by Briar discussing the benefits of tea

Back, lunch was baked sweet potato and fish in tomato sauce (herring or mackeral). Yesterday we filmed Satty and his band singing a song he had written, hopefully we can make it into some kind of music video to send back to them and maybe even send it to Papau New Guinea TV and see if they're keen. For anyone geeky enough to be interested, the playback medium of choice in Nukutoa is Video CD I'm guessing Buka probably uses it too. Not sure why it's so popular here since I can't imagine it to be cheaper than DVD, but maybe VHS players are no good here due to the humidity etc... and maybe video CD took over before DVD came along. I know how interested you all are so I'll try and find the answers to these intriguing questions in Buka.

All our gear is still working a treat with no major...in fact with no real problems at all. Cinestuff's lights have proven to be a very useful asset here. While we have done little night shooting we have ended up using the lights to light our workbench and office at nights. The kerosene lamp, while it has a kind of old world charm, is not very good when trying to get gear prepared for the next day's shoot or to find a screw dropped on the coral sand floor. Meanwhile the case given to us by Rocket is our only airtight humidity haven in which our tapes and electronics hide, kept snugly dry by the dessicants given by Caterina De Nave. Fiona Samuel's 12V battery charger is our main source of power for our HDV camera. So to each and every supporter who has given us gear (even the ones I'm forgetting right now) thank you and rest assured your contribution has been invaluable because there is nothing here we could do without. Special thanks to mum and dad for the stuff they gave - clothes, tools and bags have all been put to good use (although I've basically given up on western clothes till I see tar seal again!). John the mosquito net has proven to be an oasis of peace and tranquility on the nights when the wind blows the hordes of mosquitos from the Taro swamps on Takuu Island over to our Island. TM - congratulations on the big movie role, I hope you enjoyed working with Luc!

Nick (Braxton at Oxfam) I never did write a sentence each day to remind myself of the trip but I figure between these blogs and the 100+ tapes we have now shot I'm in no danger of forgetting things. However it is the unrecorded moments I will cherish the most, like last night after sunset sitting in waist deep water just off the nothern point of the Island letting myself unwind by watching distant lightning storms and moving between the warm currents coming from the lagoon and the refreshing ones coming from the ocean which were only metres apart. All this under a cresent moon that sent shafts of moonlight through the scattered silver clouds...This place definitely has its moments. Then I walked home and went to go to sleep to the sounds of Briar singing along to her ipod. I like to think our gift to the Island is the concept of irony ;-)

That's me about done for this entry, will log onto the internet in a moment (using our PanasonicToughbook computer and Rocom satellite conection) and depending what Lyn sends us of your feedback I may send another before we leave, otherwise my next update will be from Buka just north of everyone's favourite wartorn province...Bougainville!
Z

Testing

2007-01-24T15:20:00.000+13:00

We appear to be experiencing technical difficulties adding new blog entries...please bear with us...

Briar and the Rat! And an update on the technical side of things..

2007-01-24T14:41:00.003+13:00

Madness sets in on the Island!

Saturday week before last was the day of the big canoe launch. Satty (Sar-tea), one of our characters, has been rebuilding his family's ocean-going Vaka for some months and Saturday was the big day when all the men gathered to help him attach the new outrigger to the hull and then put it in the water for the first time. It was blowing a real gale and neither Briar nor I were feeling top notch after bad sleeps and, I suspect, a little dodgy food. We covered events as well as we could and then headed back to our house to get out of the approaching storm.

It was obvious the rest of the day was a write off for shooting as the rain began, so it was decided just to try and relax. This was all good for me as my feet were in their usual mess of grazes, cuts, bites and some time off them sounded great in terms of getting some healing done so I promptly curled up and went to sleep with the relaxing sound of a tropical rain pouring on our thatch roof.

"GO AWAY!" I'm jerked from a wonderful dream (something about eating ice-cream while having a cool breeze blowing in my face and an ice cold drink to sip....mmmmm ice) to find Briar at our desk quivering. She had been writing her upcoming novel when a rat had decided to check if we had left our usual smorgasboard of leftover breakfast tidbids for him. Briar needless to say wasn't in the right frame of mind for enquiring as to what our rodent friend wished to dine on this fine afternoon.

Once I worked out that Briar wasn't been dragged off for an arranged marriage or some bizarre Takuuan ritualistic ceremony I nodded off back to sleep, only to be woken half an hour later by another shriek of "GO AWAY!" Yanked again from sweet, sweet dreams I didn't bother to enquire as to the issue this time and nodded off only to be awoken again and again for the rest of the day by the growing conflict at the desk between girl and beast. It came to a head when I was awoken by a scream and an almost tearful young doco director telling me how the rat, (obviously realising the subtle foraging technique was going nowhere), had leapt onto the table and pounced right at her.

Outraged at this attempt of rodent assault I immediately took action...

and went back to sleep.

Meanwhile the rest of the village had to wonder what was happening in Zane and Briar's house with her regularly yelling "Go away!" and the terrified screaming. Richard the anthropologist and our next door neighbour enquired casually about it the next day and I explained the whole giant rat versus tiny girl battle that had raged through the day. He seemed relieved and mentioned he thought perhaps we were having a domestic dispute... I dread to think how many others came to this conclusion.

Richard's advice was that when working at the desk Briar should hold a big block of wood in her spare hand and be ready to smash the rat at the first sign of its whiskery snout appearing. It'll be messy but fix the problem he cheerfully explained.

Other news on the Island...All the gear so generously loaned for this trip continues to work faultlessly:

Above you can see Peter Fullerton's purpose made wonderbox at work helping convert the island's sunshine into much needed DC current.

Solar panel city, ours on the left Richard's on the right. The house in the background belongs to Avo the Paramount Chief of the Island.

The HVR-V1 at work filming another exciting event on Nukutoa

Setting up for a shot...Our house is in the background.

The brand spanking new Sony HVR-V1 HDV camera, which I believe is the first Sony HDV camera to offer 25 fps progressive shooting as an option (making it the perfect solution for a 35mm blow-up on a tight budget and for dealing with difficult shooting conditions) continues to crank through the footage. To date we have shot over eighty hours of tape with no complaints from the camera which we've grown to truly love. The design seems really well thought out and the quality of the build is wonderful - everyday the camera is exposed to lashings of coral sand, salt water and wind (but loving cleaned every night David and Shane!) however the snugness with which all its parts fit together makes it seemingly impervious to invasion by these foreign abrasives. The pictures look incredible on the monitors we have here and I can't wait to see them on the big screen in the grading suite at Images.

Working alongside the HVR-V1 in a grand display of intercorperation intergration is the Panasonic DVX-102B DV camera and the CF-29 Toughbook laptop. The DVX supplied by Oxfam is our back up camera for the HVR but is seeing use when we need two cameras as well as acting as a recorder and playback unit for our interpreter to play back footage that needs
translating. The camera continues to make me believe that this is probably the best handheld DV camera ever made and it will be interesting to see how the standard def pictures intercut with the high def ones being caught by the HVR.

Me at work on the Toughbook inside our house.

The Toughbook on which I'm typing this blog entry continues to live up to its name. It soldiers on heroically in conditions where other laptops would just curl up and die in fits of salt encrusted digital agony, and in conditions where every part of your body gushes sweat the idea of a splashproof keyboard is very reassuring! The computer handles all our email requirements once we connect it to our (or rather Richard's) satellite phone and we connect to the web at the screamingly fast rate of 10Kb/s... sorry a hint or sarcasm there I can't really complain as it is rather incredible to think we can send and recieve email from this location especially when you look how little gear is needed to do it! The Toughbook has also been used to do some editing - we made a three minute music vid using footage we have shot and played it back on the village TV for everyone to watch. It's slightly bizarre watching people sitting in the middle of a thatched house street under a starry sky watching a sequence you've cut to the tune of an old beach boys track... Bizarre but nice. The locals seemed to like it...although next time they insist we use local artists for the music! The Toughbook is also acting as a backup for our digital photos and is been used for translation; we captured source tapes in then taught our translator Sio how to use the video software and he sits with the laptop and the freedom of non-linear editing and works his way though the tapes translating sentence by sentence... After all that, if I'm bored I turn on the Toughbooks’s GPS and just check the Island hasn't moved! ;-)

Okay nearly ten pm must go for my shower under the stars and then get to bed...

Z

More media coming up

2007-01-21T14:54:00.000+13:00

On Wednesday this week Briar did a pre-recorded interview with National Radio, which is going to air on Checkpoint (from 5-7pm, Monday to Friday). The day when it's going to be broadcast hasn't been confirmed. For more information you can check Radio New Zealand's programming page here .

I did an interview with the lovely Greg Meylan at the Sunday Star Times on Thursday but it looks like it's been held over till next week. Keep an eye out for that as well.

A post from Zane will be coming tomorrow and some photos, so swing by on your lunch break....

Sweet!

Tell us all about it!

2007-01-18T17:46:00.000+13:00

From Lyn -

Something I've mentioned before (but that you might not be aware of) is that I post Briar and Zane's blog entries after they send them through to me via email. We do it this way because their internet connection on the island is via satellite phone and it's too slow to support the blogger web interface. This means they can't read comments left on the blog, so to remedy the communication situation I’ve just had a big round up of comments on previous posts and will email it to them. I know they’ll be delighted – and may be able to include messages back to comment-ers in future blog entries.

As you may have gathered from the last post, things aren’t as fun as they might initially have seemed on Takuu. I therefore want to extend an invitation to post an entertaining or sustaining message to the intrepid two. I’ve changed the comments setting so that anyone, even if they’re not a blogger member, can post, or you can just email them through.

Finally - thanks to everyone in the blogosphere who's stopped by and to all our friends, relations and colleagues and their friends, relations and colleagues. Pass it on, add a link to your blog, tell all your friends, write to your nearest television channel and say that you want to see the film when it comes out, give us money. As previous posts have shown, we’re shameless - but if we weren’t, none of this would be happening….

Not all beer and skittles

2007-01-16T12:45:00.000+13:00

Briar and Zane hard at work. Photo / Richard Moyle

This email is to remind you of how nice modern living can be. Since most of our posts have been about how much fun we are having, I thought I would take a moment to remind you all that this journey isn't always that comfortable….

After being here now for over a month I am starting to miss a few things about New Zealand and my lifestyle back home. For instance, as I write this, my feet are stinging from hundreds of mosquito bites. The mosquitoes here are different to the ones we get in New Zealand. They are silent and their bite stings. What’s worse is they can bite right through thick clothing. The last time we went to Takuu (ie the big island in the atoll group) I wore tights under my shorts to try and cover my skin up as much as I could from them and I even put insect repellant over my clothing but when I got back my entire legs were covered in bites, even after having two layers of fabric protecting me... Because I was filming I had to stay very still and let the horrible mosquitoes bite me all over. So each day we have to deal with these unpleasant bites and infections all over our ankles and legs.

The next thing which is really annoying is the dust (coming from termites in the roof) that falls all over our beds and our faces while we are sleeping. Each day I have to shake my mattress and sheets out to get rid of it. I can't even imagine how much of it I’m breathing in while I sleep. And sleeping in general is something I should talk about. I have very rarely had one solid sleep without waking up since we got here. There are so many things that can wake you. The most constant is the roosters crowing on our roof but other times it is a storm with loud thunder and rain. Our beds have pretty simple 1 inch thick mattresses so we can only dream about the nice beds we sleep on back home.

I hate the rats and mice that are continually pestering me and trying to run across the table when I work. Zane particularly hates all the flys that attack his weeping insect bites. We have a chicken who likes to nest her eggs in the corner of our house, so this means that we constantly have birds running through and living in our house...and they never stop making noise and fighting one another!

After a while the noise of babies and children crying can get on your nerves.

There are no greens here, we eat here mostly fish, rice, taro, instant noodles, canned beef, crackers and bananas. I do miss summer salads!

The other thing which is hard to get used to is the lack of space. Sometimes Zane and I talk about how nice it is to be able to travel large distances in New Zealand. We both miss this, it is quite scary thinking “where else can we go aside from here..?”

It looks like we will be on Takuu for another two weeks. This is really good for the project as we need the time to complete all the filming we need to do. I am, however, looking forward to coming back and enjoying some of the pleasures of modern living.

I wonder how long I could last here. I think I could stay here for up to a year but the only thing that would make me go insane is the lack of space. Zane tells me he could last three weeks, well Zane you better be ready for the boat to turn up late...!

In which Takuu's older women embarrass Briar

2007-01-15T14:49:00.000+13:00

A few days ago I was walking to the northern point of the island. There I saw a large group of women sitting together under what is known as a drinking house. It was a windy day and they had plastic stuck up on the side of the shelter facing the sea. They were huddled together drinking tea and smoking spear cigarettes, which are literally raw tobacco, with no filters. This was the first time I had seen the women having a good time. It was like they had secretly planned to meet here, away from the men, to be silly and do what they wanted for once. Yes, they were being very silly.

I stood some distance away, just enjoying the music and the atmosphere, when one woman summoned me over. It was quite a scene and everyone was watching this lady and myself. When I got closer she grabbed me and started hugging and kissing me. I was really surprised. I had not experienced this kind of thing before and to be quite honest I had not been sure whether the older women liked or approved of me at all. In response to this woman's generosity I gave her a vai songi which is the same as a hongi. After this the woman was even more excited. She lifted up her lap lap bearing her thighs and underpants, and then paraded her legs for me to see. She wanted me to see her tattoos. They were around both legs and had simply drawn pictures of fish and flowers and words over them. I remembered that Geraldine (see last post) had told me that once all women on Takuu had these kinds of tattoos, but her generation was the last to repeat this tradition and now the custom has died out.

I was quite taken back by this unexpected event and was not sure how to respond. I let the woman know that I thought her tattoos were very pretty and sat back down. Then all the woman in the group wanted to show me their tattoos. Soon everyone had stripped down to their underpants and continued to sing their traditional music and dance their traditional song with their bare legs and flopping tummies showing... Then the woman who had first summoned me over commanded me to join in.. I was game enough to go up and start dancing, but no this was not enough. They were pointing at my lap lap and signaling me to strip. So, well, I had to. There I was at the point of the island surrounded by old Takuu women in my underpants trying to follow their dance moves to a very strange and foreign sounding song. All the women thought it was hilarious - and I was so embarrassed. Hopefully now I have gained their respect... I think I have.

The life of a Mortlock lady

2007-01-12T14:46:00.000+13:00

One of our characters (who I will call Geraldine) has come over to Takuu for the holidays to look after her sick father. She is an expatriate and is married to a PNG man living in Port Moresby. Inside the shade of her house I met her father. He is in his late 80s and was lying on a grass mat. His body was incredibly frail, his head had a crown of thick white hair and his legs, on the mat, were like broken pencils. He was talking the way a baby might and would throw his hands in the air trying to grab things. Geraldine explained that sometimes he could get quite violent and angry. Most of the time he would moan about food. Sometimes he calls her and her sisters his wife and other times he appears delirious, telling them that the house is on fire. I asked her what was wrong with him and she didn't know, just saying “he's old”.

Geraldine is bound to her house. She has to look after her father all day and all night, taking breaks when her sisters come by. At night she lies next to him and because he is so active, always pulling her hair and crying for food, she never sleeps. This is the first time she has seen her father in three years. Her life in Port Moresby is very different to here, but she sees it as her obligation to come back and help take some of the pressure off her sisters who both have to care for her father in this way throughout the year.

There is no help for people like Geraldine and her family. Many people on Takuu complain about the lack of support they receive from the government. Here, there are very few medical supplies and what is available is usually passed its use by date or does not have adequate labeling. There is no doctor or nurse and if somebody does get sick, getting them to mainland will be the cost of chartering a boat and money must be paid up front by the family. This doesn't always mean they will get a boat to come, as they rely on one ship, which may already be engaged. For many of the traditional people on Takuu it is very important to die here. So for Geraldine's father there would be no question about taking him off the island. This is because if you die out of Takkuu you cannot be buried there. It would be considered very bad luck and breaking custom. For those that do die on Takuu, they get the chance to have a proper funeral and will be buried in the cemetery on Takuu.

Unfortunately for Geraldine her brother died in London. He was a young film student at the time and had hoped to make movies and documentaries about his culture and indigenous issues within PNG. He had won a scholarship, and happened to be staying in a hotel that was the target of an IRA bombing. Her sister’s husband died of alcohol consumption on the island so her family appears to have less help or support from fit and strong men. Her father likes fresh fish but there aren't many hands free to get fish since this is usually a men's task.

As I was sitting talking with Geraldine a young child walked past, popping her head through the door. The girl looked to be about eight and was holding a baby at her waist. Geraldine explained that the young baby is her father's great-great-grandchild. The baby was crying, being scared of the old man.

The next day I brought Geraldine a packet of panadol, which she was incredibly grateful for. In my visits since then I have noticed people pop by asking for some of her panadol.

Life on the island for women is generally much harder than that of the men. They are always working. Most get up around four or five. They first go down to the water to wash their pots and pans, they then sweep the streets, spreading the coral evenly over the ground and back into their houses. Then they make breakfast. This involves getting dried wood and coconut husks and burning them under open fires in their cook houses. I am sure some of them by this time are also making lunch. They bake fresh bread in the hot gravel heated by their fires, and also fish, wrapped up in taro leaves. The women might then wash their clothes in buckets of water, which they have to continually refill at the nearest water tank. Their days continue on like this until the sun sets and then you might see one or two sitting with their families, but always minding the children at the same time.

In contrast to this the men are sitting around all day. They park their plastic chairs in a nice location near to the sea, they drink cups of tea and study the weather. They will go out fishing, or maybe gardening giant taro, they might fix a canoe or a knotted net.. but generally their workload is much less (from what I can see).

Endangered species and endangered Briar!

2007-01-11T14:19:00.000+13:00

Just before New Year we went to the furtherest islands of the twelve islands in the atoll. This island is called Nukurekia and is the wildlife reserve. Access is only permitted in daylight hours and overnight stays are punishable by a fine. To quote Richard Moyle " The ban on killing edible seabirds, which nest there in very large numbers, is periodically lifted by the Ariki, and an annual school picnic to the island allows children a chance to visit this remote location". Most of the edible seabirds are lakeha (the black bird I have already mentioned in an earlier post).

The first thing Zane asked me when we arrived was whether I had watched the Hitchcock film The Birds. Well no I haven't Zane, but of course I knew what he was getting at. There were birds in the thousands (and again I am not exaggerating about this) circling en mass above us. For the first twenty minutes my mouth was just open in astonishment and then I thought, "hey I better close it because I am looking up all the time and there is a very good probability that bird poo could land directly inside my mouth - if I am not careful".

Because I love birds, and because I have grown up with a father who knows every bird call in the forest, this place was pretty impressive. When standing underneath the shade of the coconut trees and other vegetation you are deafened by the heavy chorus of Lakeha squawking. Standing on the edge of the sandy spit you can watch the birds fly out onto the lagoon, diving and weaving through one another's flight paths. The larger birds, such as the Kanapu (gannets), show off among the smaller birds flying lower across the water.

In the very glaring fierce sun we worked solidly for about 3-4 hours filming the birds, while the family that accompanied us lay in the shade and took intermittent swims. I have already decided that if I ever get married perhaps this is where I would go for my honey moon. At one point I did think to myself, “If only we weren't working and we too were relaxing in this paradise... “ but in some way what we are doing is even more fun... I tried to remind Zane of this as he was looking pretty hot and tired.

Around mid day, we and our host family clambered into the unstable boat, following the edge of the reef back to Nukutoa. The reason for this route was because Sio was looking for turtles (unameia). It was the one time of the year when the people on Nuketoa are allowed to catch turtles around the wild life sanctuary. We spotted one and to attract its attention all the kids started tapping the boat (obviously this makes them come near). Then Sio jumped into the water, grabbing the turtle. After lifting it out of the water and inspecting its head and the markings on its back he said to us "this one we don't eat". I asked why and he briefly replied "its custom". I persisted further eager to understand why it was custom, thinking, perhaps this turtle is an endangered one and these people are helping to preserve it through their own customs.. but Sio didn't know why. I then asked him to wait before he let the turtle go.. Grabbing a snorkle and mask I jumped off the boat in all my clothes (but this is no big deal as I have to swim in my clothes anyway - people here don't wear swim costumes) and I looked at the turtle under the water. Sio let go of his grip and the beautiful turtle flapped its arms, swimming off into the deeper part of the reef. I still have the picture in my mind watching the turtle go further into the deep part of the sea, beautiful coral beneath me and again the water that aqua blue colour you get in the tropics. It was such an amazing sight although I know it sounds very cheesy the way I am describing it.

On the way back to the island I was overwhelmed with a sense of joy and peace after seeing that turtle. I just couldn't believe how beautiful the sea, the island and the people were. It made me feel emotional again, which is typical of me - making every beautiful thing or sad thing into some kind of melodrama or film scene in my head. I was so elated and energized that I stridently told our host family that I would hop off the boat and swim back to the island all by myself. We were about twenty or thirty meters away and I thought this would be a reasonable swim but not too far. Rose insisted I jump out closer
but I was like "no no its ok". So any way I jump out to realise swimming is much harder when you have a loose lap lap dragging at your body weighing you down and also, swimming is much harder when the current is going out. Meanwhile the boat had zoomed off and everyone had already forgotten about me, no one was looking back. I struggled to get in and had to remind myself not to panic. That was a lesson for being over zealous and a bit of an attention seeker or a clown...

The shoreline isn't the only thing Takuu is losing...

2007-01-10T12:44:00.000+13:00

Just after Christmas a large fishing boat appeared in the reef. Obviously this created a lot of discussion and the men in the village called a meeting to plan how they would approach the boat. It is illegal for fishing boats of this size to be on the reef, whether or not the boat got there by an accident. This situation really annoyed the people of Mortlock. Fishing boats are often seen close to the reef, impacting the fish population and more than two becoming wrecks. I was told it was the second of its kind to come this year.

After an animated meeting the men prepared to meet the boat, getting enough fuel and supplies for their very unstable fiber glass banana boats. I decided I wanted to film the encounter and asked to go with the men. It took us about twenty minutes with an outboard motor to get to the ship. When we arrived the men confidently got up on the boat and, like a pirate battle, climbed up on to the ship, taking food and cigarettes. Then, in a more “civilized” fashion, they asked to see the ship's license and tried to communicate with them, requesting them to come back to the island. The men on the ship refused but after about two hours of negotiation it was agreed they would give the community 1000 fish and have a boat come to remove the ship by about 3.00pm the following day.

Meanwhile I filmed the ship continually dragging in net after net of skipjack tuna. I couldn't believe my eyes to see how much fish was pillaged from the sea that afternoon, and although this fish was "supposedly" caught further out from the reef than where the ship was stuck (in the legal place to fish) it is very questionable. “How did they get this close to the reef anyway?” said many of the men, "they have GPS systems and we have seen this kind of thing so many times now". It made me think twice about eating seafood when I saw how much fish was taken. The boys and myself guessed the amount of fish caught could have fed the Takuu community for over one and half years. Just think how many more hours and time it would have taken the fisherman of Takuu to get this much fish, and compare it to one day’s work for this boat .. the thought is quite mind-blowing really.

When the fish was given to the men of Takuu we loaded it in the flotilla of boats. Being incredibly hungry by this stage the men on my boat cut open some of the fish then and there in the middle of the sea. Raw tuna splashed in sea salt and then eaten with crunchy coconut is one of the most beautiful things I've had since being here. It has the quality and freshness of the most expensive sashimi but it is even more desirable being in large chunks freshly slivered from the side of a fish and then rinsed in the salt of the Pacific Ocean.

When we got back, every kid on Nukutoa appeared to be waiting for our arrival and were eager to grab the fish from our boat, putting it directly outside Te Ariki's house (harre) in a neat pile. After some trips back and forth from the boat, over 1000 tuna was piled up in one heap. The sight was amazing and the whole community gathered around, women holding baskets, while a few men distributed a number of fish to each family. This was a careful procedure, ensuring that each person was equally treated given the amount of people in their household. This was a great example of the community's egalitarian nature, and for that reason Zane and I filmed the scene. Zane told me that each of the 1000 tuna would have been worth around $60.00 at the Avondale markets and extra large tuna, some ranging around two meters long would have sold for several hundred. It's an irony that these people have little money and they have just been given back some of their own stolen fish valued in the tens of thousands!

The Tukumai

2007-01-09T15:54:00.000+13:00

From Briar:

The second day after we arrived, the Tukumai ceremony started. This is a ceremony in which people honour the deceased that have died during the last six months. It is conveniently arranged around the time of the boat’s arrival so that people coming back to the island can attend. The event begins by harvesting the taro (kano kano) on the larger island of Takuu.

At the break of dawn I took the camera across to Takuu traveling in a small vaka (outrigger). The vaka was hand carved by our interpreter Sio's father using traditional tools. The wood is made from big logs that drift onto the beach and the vakas are only made when a log gets washed up.

Takuu is the largest island and, I was told, is very mysterious. There are some parts that people don't, and are forbidden to, go to. The other thing about Takuu is the mosquitoes - thousands upon thousands swarming around you. Once upon a time (te Henua e noho) the Mortlock people lived on Takuu but no one knows how they managed the mosquitoes, nor how they built the large taro gardens. The women cut off the top of the taro leaves and then planted them back into the soil, while at the same time digging up the roots of those ready to be eaten. I could sense that the island was a very spiritual place as I slushed through the thick smelly mud. It really felt like a wild jungle complete with a chorus of bird calls, humming crickets and ancient towering coconut trees.

Walking closer to one garden I could see that the women there were singing together and I asked them to repeat their song for the purpose of recording it. The women were quite excited by this and instead of continuing about their work they got up (as if on stage) and started performing for the camera. Seeing them singing while all covered in mud was something – but what made the whole experience even more equally surreal was the song they sung. It was a European Christian song that I had learned at Sunday school. It goes, "Love, Love Love in my heart this wonderful wonderful love in my heart, Peace Peace Peace in my heart this wonderful wonderful peace in my heart". Then the women continued to go about their work with crackling laughs. That is when I met the most impressive lady, Barbara. We have an interesting connection. Despite the language barrier I think there is a unique rapport between us. She explained to me in her limited English "I'm a clown.. I am the clown here". She then laughed at herself. I tell her "I'm a clown too". When ever I see Barbara I give her a hug and we laugh. Barbara has no children of her own but only one adopted son and one front tooth. She is around 50 or something and was married once but is now alone.

The Vakas and banana boats returned to Nukutoa in a slow migration with the women carrying their te kete (basket) full of taro (kano kano). Once back on
the island they divided the taro into equal piles for each person involved in the ceremony. There was some fighting about the evenness of each pile. Inside the Ariki's house the people standing closest to the dead were waiting to speak with the dead spirit. They are called spirit mediums. It takes some time but after a while these people will enter a trance-like state and communicate with the dead person. This is an example of the traditional religion that is still practiced here, and arguably only practiced here, with most Polynesian cultures having converted to Christianity. I was expecting to feel something - perhaps the presence of this spirit - but I felt nothing. I can't say whether I would have felt different if I wasn't so focused on filming. When I am behind the camera some of the magic of purely experiencing things is sadly taken away.

Later that day the village had a number of parties. I am guessing this is usually a time when people can fellowship together after communicating with the deceased. Perhaps it is a time to move on, but also to sing newly composed songs about the person who has died. Here I got to see the traditional Takuu music and dancing. I also had a go at dancing myself. Of course Barbara got me to do this and much laughing was involved.

On this occasion many people were drinking Karave (which is fermented coconut juice and a very strong alcohol). People make this by attaching plastic milk cartons to the coconut's young shoots, which drip juice into the bottles. This juice then ferments. The result is incredibly strong and sour tasting, a bit like vinegar and coconut juice mixed together. Many people got drunk after the Tukumai.

Tales from the toilets and other things part 2

2007-01-09T15:20:00.000+13:00

From Zane

The question that has befuddled man throughout the ages: "Does a bear shit in the woods?". The answer seems obvious, "Yes" making the question purely rhetorical. However I can reveal from the island of Nukutoa, four degrees off the equator, that here the answer is "No!". Who does then? Well... Zane does! along with the two hundred or so other men on the Island.

What am I on about? Well most people I discussed the trip with seemed quite curious about what the toilet arrangements would be. Basically while the women go in the channel between Nukutoa and the island to the north (all the Islands on the atoll can be walked to as the water is only thigh high at low tide) the men have our own toilet island. If you look at the googleearth shot you will see on the Eastern extremity of the Island a group of trees joined to the Island by a narrow causeway that is submerged at high tide.

Whenever the urge strikes (I enjoy it about 6.30am) I stroll down to the woods on the point (toilet paper discretely in bum bag, no pun intended), find a nice group of trees and a nice view out to sea and then hoist up my lap lap..... sweet sweet relief. My only objection is the highly efficient squatting position makes the joyful experience all too quick. Then overnight the combination of heat, rain, bugs, wind and sun break down whatever is deposited and my favourite spot is generally fresh for more action the next morning.

Ahhh the island life.

Anyway here we are after nearly three weeks on the Island, Briar and I are now officially married in Island terms; it seems all you need to do here is for the guy to spend a few nights in the woman's hut and voila! We are however confusing the locals with our flexible gender roles....I don't think the men were impressed today to see me doing Briar's laundry!

Week one was all about trying to cover the rush of ceremonies and local events while trying to deal with the climate and about a million different things happening to my poor skin... cut feet, sunburn, heat rash, chaffing, prickly heat, mountains of sweat (which makes operating a camera very uncomfortable!) and just to really make me happy some jelly fish stings up my legs and arms...sigh, 'twas expected but still rough. However that all sounds dreary when most of the first week was actually amazing. We were given a veritable palace to call home complete with western style beds (i.e. not on the floor) and a lockable closet for the gear. We are on the western coast of the Island and five big steps from the back door would get you in the water at high tide (11 at low tide). The food has been incredible and plentiful and the couple Sio and Sini who have given up their house for our stay are really lovely and always keep an eye out for us. Every night when we arrive home from shooting a hot dinner is on the table (fried turtle and steamed sweet potato tonight and as usual enough to feed six people) and our kerosene lamp is lit. It gets dark here by six and if we're not home a search party usually goes out!

The effects of the rising sea level here are immediately obvious and quite severe and claims that the Island was a metre above sea level I now see were slightly exaggerated. The Island is about 90cm above high water by my reckoning. I have attached a couple of photos for this blog entry. This first one shows the high tide very close to going into the island's schoolgrounds - the building with the tin roof is one of the classrooms. The land level you can see is pretty much as high as the rest of the Island...With the right winds the water has flowed through here in the past.

These next two photos show the island's west coast in the 1970's and now.

Now the present day shot is at high tide while the archive may not be, so it is not necessarily a fair comparison. I will, however, try and get a shot at low tide soon that will show that, regardless of the water level, the damage by the sea levels is immense. The white sand beach along the coast in the 70's is no longer here - instead the underlying jagged coral is now exposed in its place.

People here put the issue largely to the back of their minds and while they are happy we are here making a film the attitude is generally that they'll deal with the crisis when it reaches crisis point....I find nothing too peculiar about this as I think all societies act this way, especially ours, in that no one really deals with problems no matter how serious until the problem encroaches enough to make ignoring it not an option. For the moment people here can ignore the issue as it's not quite a day-to-day hindrance to them in any way (although a few times a year it becomes an issue). For now they sit and hope that someone with the knowledge and resources will come and guide them through.

Power is running low so I'm going to cut this short for the sake of charging our camera batteries. Next update I'll talk a little about the gear and how it is holding up. I'll end this one by saying a big thank you to Pete Fullerton who helped me wire up the electrics before I left and so far it's been working a treat... more thank-yous to come in future entries.

Mum I'm still alive and will call soon by sat phone.

Happy New Year to all.

One for the ladies....!

2007-01-08T12:26:00.000+13:00

From Briar:

On the first day I arrived I didn't really know what to do with myself. Zane was left on the boat to look after the luggage and I had the privilege of getting to land first and meeting the people. Sini gave me a lap lap to wear and took me to our house. She explained that I could go have a wash (kau kau) and instructed me on how to wear the lap lap. I stood in our house feeling awkward and confused. I wasn't sure what to do. I think it must have been culture shock. The house had open windows and a modest sheet for a door. Wind was flapping the sheet open so any one could look in and see me changing. In a very awkward - probably comical - attempt, I wrapped the lap lap around me while peeling off my sweaty clothing underneath. I then walked down to the place where the women wash and toilet and just stood in the water. The water was about the same temperature as the air but the wetness on my skin was refreshing. I then had the first experience of wet lap lap clinging to my skin, something I find very annoying.

On the way back I tried to ask my host what women do when they get their period as inconveniently this had arrived at the same time as arriving on the island. She looked at me slightly confused and then said she would get her friend. Her friend came into my house, she appeared to have better English and was the same age as me. I asked her the same question and she told me that woman here used rags but she, she used "stay free". I asked where did the items go once used .. she said "just wash them out" or throw them away in the sea. Hmm, I am supposed to be making an environmental film here (I think to myself). Later I learn that the woman who told me this is not from here so I don't know if her information is correct and whether I am misquoting her through a misunderstanding. I will mention however, people do tend to throw anything and everything in the sea (but more about that later).

The boy reading over my shoulder is Berth. He appears to understand everything I am writing and has just said he is going to tell the whole village I use rags!

Tales from the toilets and other things part 1

2007-01-08T12:04:00.000+13:00

From Briar:

We have been on Takuu for over one week, but it feels more like one month. You couldn't possibly compare the last seven days here to a normal week back home. Today is Monday, Christmas day and the first time I've felt able to take a break. Finding space from people in this over-populated place is just as challenging. I've walked to one point in the triangular shaped island. This is near where the men go toilet, but not exactly. I plant myself down in a nice possie where I can see the reef and the larger island of Takuu in the distance, to realise that I am sitting right next to somebody else's shit! This must have been from a lazy man who couldn't be bothered going all the way to the proper place in the middle of the night or something. Then I notice another pile of faeces to the right of me and a swarm of flies approaching. So I get up and walk to the other side of the point making sure I'm an extra few meters further away from the toilet location than before. Then I notice that the mentally ill boy who I've been warned to stay clear of is walking about two yards behind me. When I stop, he stops. So I walk to the waters edge and attempt to wash my sandals and laplap and then try sitting down again. Thankfully the boy has lost interest. It feels slightly wrong that I've been in this beautiful place for over a week and I haven't had a chance to properly take it all in. Since we arrived we have been filming non-stop, mostly because it is the time in the year where there is much festivities and customs. We've been trying to capture it all as we know its our only chance. My mind has been focused on the film and I haven't had much time to actually enjoy the place to the degree I know I could.

To explain what it is like to be here is to perhaps compare it to a life camping. For those of you who enjoy camping (the way we do these days in tent cities which are clustered around beaches up and down the country) then you would love this place. Just like my memories of camping I wake up feeling hot, sticky and have sand in my hair. The heat and glaring light
from the sun wakes you up around five am each day. It reminds me of the feeling of sleeping in a small tent in the middle of the day. The air is stale and you wake with an awful lethargic feeling and sometimes a head ache from dehydration. I may as well liken it to a hang over. That is pretty much how it feels waking up here (but each day is getting easier). In the night you can hear people coughing, spitting, laughing and quietly talking to one another. Just like camping the walls between the houses are paper thin - well they are only basic woven mats attached to a wooden frame. Lighting is provided by Kerosene lamps, small bugs and silent mosquitoes swarm around them as if the lamps have a fuzzy halo.

Just like camping one feels incredibly connected with the environment. Here the land and sea is a food source, a matter of survival, a spiritual place and an identity. The stars have names and map the fishing roots away from and back to the island. The many little islets surrounding Nukukoa (wherethe community lives) have specific roles. One is for growing taros, another holds wild pigs, and the last to the far west is a wild life reserve.

At this place there are many beautiful birds, my favourite are called Kina Kina (pronouced the same as the Kina Kina sea egg in Maori) and look like white doves. There are also many dark-coloured birds which include Lakeha (meduim sized black bird with white markings on face), Kapana (frigate birds) Kanapu (ganets) and Te Kivi which looks a bit like a pipin, it has a long beak for digging into the sand, about 15 cm tall and flies.

On the topic of the wild life I might as well mention the crabs and other walking sea shells. These cute little creatures crawl into our house at night. In the morning when I'm going to the maru (toliet) there are hundreds of them creeping around the rocks. They have tiny beady eyes darting about. Inside our house are giant geckos that make noises similar to canary's chirping. It is a very pleasant sound. Zane can't complain about one getting stuck in his underpants yesterday, because the geckos help keep our house insect free.

Running madly through the streets, sometimes through our house, and waking us up in the early hours of the morning are the roosters and chickens. They like to live on our roof and crow on our roof too! There are so many of them there might be one to every three people living here. The owners of the birds are determined by a cut in their feet. I looked at a chicken's foot today and noticed that half of it's two talons were cut off. I asked a man how the cutting system worked as I figured there wouldn't be that many options for a group of 400 people owning this many free range birds. The man said only the women knew and that he himself was mystified. The poultry is sometimes eaten on special occasions but they are also used to scare the rats and mice away. At night you will see wild cats creeping through the streets but they are never there in the day and I guess the cats also manage the rat and mice problem.

The days are controlled by the tides. So far, in the mornings the tide has been rapidly going out and this works conveniently for the women as it is also the time most of them flock to the toilet. On the opposite point to where the men go the the maru the women wade out in the fast moving current and squat in the water. Just with a lap lap strung around my body I do the same. This is now a morning ritual. I sit facing the sunrise over the east while other women around me gather in little clusters gossiping and chatting. It must be true that everywhere in the world women like to hang out in bathrooms and toilets. It is almost one of these spaces women have claimed for themselves, and here it happens to be in a lagoon. If I am brave enough to turn around I might see my excretions floating merrily away against a pristine aqua blue water.

As I write this two boys are sitting next to me. One boy is voluntarily holding my diary so that I can write easily on my lap and the other older boy is reading over my shoulder. Where ever I go the kids like to follow me. I almost attract a gang of children as I walk down the streets. The girls especially like to hold my hand or stroke my hair. I have made some great friends with some of them. For a child living on the island life must be so wonderful. You have hundreds of kids to play with, big sisters and brothers, aunties and uncles to take care of you and endless swims in the sea. One of my favourite children is a boy called Manonie. We met him pretty early on as on the first day of arriving his little head kept peeping through our fish net window. Peering into our house with hungry curiosity he would just stare at us. After a while of doing this we soon found him inside our house, and I even had to cope with him watching me get changed. In the end I gave up caring. I have learnt a little of the language here but unfortunately he now thinks that I can understand every word he says and he repeats sentences to me earnestly hoping I might reply to him. I just love Manonie, he is constantly happy and singing on the top of his voice. In fact, I think this boy is the epitome of youth. Carefree and always laughing, softening adults where ever he goes with his sweet pleas and funny little games. I only worry that perhaps the attention he gets from me and others is a little too much for his ego, but it doesn't appear to be affecting him this way so far (he is also the youngest in the family so I guess it is hard to escape this kind of thing).

One night I joined a men's drinking party. They had a generator set up playing disco music and even mid night oil and ACDC. It was great fun drinking Kareve (fermented coconut a bit like Kava) and dancing around in the sand. I couldn't believe that there were no women there. I kept asking the men why, and they explained that firstly the women were busy with the children and secondly they didn't like to drink as most were strong Christians. I could talk more about this but it is another story I'll leave till later. I had a fabulous time with the men and I have to admit it was quite nice being the only women to dance with. Every boy at the party asked to dance with me, and well I did enjoy the attention (he he). Later that evening I had a long conversation with one man in particular. I found that he liked the same music to me and so I brought out my ipod and we listened to Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, Dave Dobbin, Katchafire and Bob Marley. I was impressed at his wide knowledge about the world and music. This is impressive since he doesn't even have his own stereo here, just a guitar. Most people like himself however, have spent some time away from the island and so for many Mortlock people they are very aware of the world around them and the things going on outside their little paradise.

I have often been asked if I am married. Here people get married in their early twenties. Marriages are arranged too and usually will be within their own clans (there are five different clans in the island). All the nice men around my age, whom perhaps I could fancy are sadly taken and usually already have one if not two children!

Zane and I are staying in the house opposite the Ariki and we are being looked after by his family. I think we are getting first class service. Both of us have been given beds (instead of grass mats). Our meals are huge and people are always thinking of us. One time we had a visitor for dinner and Sini (the women who serves our meals) immediately brought in an extra chair and bowl of food.

The big catch up begins!

2007-01-06T17:52:00.000+13:00

I’m blogging retrospectively to give you an idea of what things have been like for us since we left New Zealand. This is the first of six posts to give you all the details. I’ve been writing all the time but haven’t emailed this to Lyn until now because of the difficulty of getting the email connection to work.

The week before we left to Takuu was a mad rush and the very last few days before we departed molded into one long day with no sleep. I felt very stressed. I remember driving back to Bethells in the early hours of the morning. We had been packing all night, by the time I got home I only had one hour of sleep before I would need to leave for the airport. I didn't even manage to sleep and just lay awake in a kind of surreal dream state. My body and mind knew that it was about to undergo a dramatic change in scenery and life style and I was filled with anticipation, nervousness, exhaustion and excitement. In those moments even my familiar surroundings felt new and different. It made me think of other times before I have left New Zealand or the few days after coming home.

At four am in the darkness of the morning we stumbled out of our car and carried our carefully weighed luggage to the airport. The bags were jammed packed and had been pre-packed about four times, each time we had taken something out that was at the bottom of our list in order of necessity. Now we were down to the bare essentials.

The sun was slowly rising as we walked onto the plane. It was then a three hour ride to Brisbane in which I got quite distracted watching an American family film. Zane was narrating the entire story to me, with details about what each character was thinking doing and saying to one another. It was a funny exercise to not wear the head phones and watch how the film was constructed on a purely visual sense.

Brisbane was very warm and dry and I could see why people liked to live there. It looked barren however and lacking in colour. We had already had enough dramas getting out of the country so when I couldn't get the requested $25,000 Kina arranged for me to pick up from the money exchange place I figured that my trip would probably only get harder. It took us about two hours to solve the problem and we soon learnt that the credit cards I had to pay the money with, had a limit of $7,000.00. Using a combination of our own credit cards we managed to buy it all. Lucky for that as it was our only chance to get Kina before we were due on the boat.

After this we discovered that the plane had been broken. Air Nuigini airways has this happen a lot we hear people say. We waited in Brisbane another two hours, sleeping intermittently and eating the poor range of food and drinking our eight dollar water.

Brisbane to Port Moresby was another three hour plane ride. We flew over the great barrier reef which was beautiful. Arriving in Port Moresby we were over come by a wave of heat. This was when I started feeling nervous as the foreign surroundings made me feel much closer to our destination. We stayed at a five star hotel

(Airways Hotel Port Moresby)

with high walled gates for security purposes. The service at the hotel was amazing (asides from the fact the next day I was woken at 5.00am when my wake up call was scheduled for 8.00am - I've had no sleep for two days by this point!). The first evening on arrival we met with Sione (an expat from Takuu who runs Association Na Takuu) and Jim Robins (a man who helped get our visa's working at the PNG research institute). The hotel had a wonderful atmosphere - the eating place was partly outside over looking the airport runway and surrounded by dramatic hills and small mountains. Tropical smells and sounds along with refreshing fruits and a sea-food smorgeous board made it even better.

In the next morning we travelled to Buka. This involved overcoming the next nerve-wracking hurdle of getting all our luggage through the check in. We had expected to pay excess or even worse not end up getting the luggage put on the plane at all, but we ended up getting away without paying anything and getting everything across!

The plane landed in Buka in a tiny air strip in the middle of a field. The airport is a small building about the size of a family house. About hundred very black faces were standing at the strip waiting for the plane to arrive. Our luggage was loaded immediately off the plane and groups of people huddled around looking for their belongings. The NZ police were waiting for us. They had a sturdy jeep and appeared very organised, already with a plan of action as to how they would get all our luggage to the boat in the short space of time we had. The boat was scheduled to leave in about thirty mins from the time that the plane arrived and we learned later that it had been specifically waiting for us! We finally knew we would make it to the island and be able to shoot the film.

Zane gets tricky with technology

2007-01-02T09:58:00.000+13:00

Zane writes:

Experimenting here with sending some small photos.

One is of Briar and the ladies next door celebrating their identical
laplaps, the house they're in front of is Richard's pad. These ladies also
play a part in making our food.

The other photo is of two of our favourite people; Manoni and his aunty
Rose. Rose is one of of our main caregivers and a wonderful chef. Manoni is
our shadow about the village and has the habit of singing to himself at high
volume.

The photo was taken at sunset about 10 metres from the backdoor of our
house. We usually go for an unwind swim at this time of day.

More later..

From the horse's mouth....

2006-12-31T15:51:00.000+13:00

Ok – a lull on the updates but Christmas and a wedding (not mine) at this end have absorbed time. I’m writing this from Dunedin and I’m sparing a thought for Zane and Briar at the moment, though, because they’ve been shooting non-stop since arriving on the island, and Briar has already had to deal with a case of the sniffles but nothing more serious, thank god.

Briar writes:

Since we arrived we have hardly had the chance to sit down and enjoy the scenery. It has been pretty hectic.

It is pretty hot as you could imagine but both Zane and I have mostly acclimatised now. We are putting heaps of sun block on and the mosquitoes are no way near as bad as Bethells (Beach, where I’m from). They don't buzz in your ears and drive you crazy at night so I think things are pretty good really.

In terms of story we were lucky to meet this man called Sam on the boat. He had come from the ABG (Autonomous Bougainville Government) to talk to Nukumanu (Tasman Islands) and Takuu about the possibility of relocating. He had a really positive meeting at Nukumanu but only spent one day in Takuu. I was a bit sad about the missed opportunity. However I am surprised at how open people are to talk about the island's situation. Especially the sinking - people know about it - they are seeing the changes and they are happy to talk about it. They are also really good speakers, which is great.

We have had lots of chances to film observational material. On the second day of the Tukumai during the 12 hour singing sesson that goes into the night, a man literally dropped out of his chair and fell down dead. This was a shock to the whole village and for the next four days from now we are expecting the funeral to be held. This is something we can't film but it will be a good chance for us to take a break and get involved in the village life activities.

Friday: I went to the funeral today - it was very intense and rather upsetting. Just like what you would expect everyone is very open and expressive with their grief and for quite some time people were wailing and weeping over the dead body. They took the body to Takuu. The vaka with the body must arrive there first and this is followed by a flotilla of boats. It was quite a sight seeing this in the early morning.

Tomorrow Zane and I plan to go around the whole village and take fun snap-shot-y film clips of people and then edit this together into a quick five minute piece. We will then screen this as a way of showing people the camera what it does and what we do. Hopefully it will be away of getting to know people and getting people behind our project.

Then the next few days following that I hope to do some field research basically just finding our characters.

I’ll try and write again soon.

How about a fish in the face??

2006-12-21T18:11:00.000+13:00

Communications with the island are sporadic at the moment and all the information I've got is coming from Richard's family, since he's been a bit freer with his satellite phone calls than Briar and Zane right now. I'm expecting a call from Briar on Saturday this week, but she sounds busy, so we'll have to see.

Reports so far suggest that both Briar and Zane have been warmly welcomed. The fishing has been great this week and Zane is about to join in or has in fact already been on a deep-sea fishing trip beyond the reef. This is a pretty exciting proposition since the boats have to be taken through the breakers at the edge of the reef and there's lots of white water and an ever-present possibility of ending up in the ocean. Once the fisherman get going I'm told there's a good chance of Zane being hit in the face with a fish because they get pulled off the line and tossed in the boat without much warning. It sounds like the tuna are running at the moment, so that's got to be a good-sized fish across face. Interesting aside: women on Takuu don't go fishing, so Zane will probably be the only one of the crew who gets to go.

Briar, as expected, has found it easy making friends and has already been or is about to go on a trip with some of the women of Takuu, from the smaller island where they live to the larger island in the atoll, known as Takuu. She's going to be shooting there, but exactly what I don't know. The trip to the larger island may relate to a recent death of one of the islanders (although it equally may not). Tekaso, the man who is working with Richard on Richard's Takuu Dictionary project has recently lost his sister which is really sad.

I'm sure that more has happened since the last contact, but that's all I know for now. When I know it you'll know it.

In last post we forgot to mention the tireless efforts of Adnan Bharmal at Signature Travel who managed to get us connecting flights at the last minute without having to charge the earth and Sione Paasia who somehow found us domestic flights from Moresby to Buka despite the Christmas rush. Without their timely interventions no one would have made it to Takuu.

Actually I'm still recovering from the strain of pre-production. Dealing with PNG is a lesson in patience, which is not always rewarded. I was on the phone to Moresby all day every day for three days last week. The story went like this:

After hearing four different departure dates for the boat I got a call from Richard (who was in the Coromandel with his family) to say that Sue, the missionary from Takuu, had been trying to get hold of him on behalf of the shipping office in Buka (where the crew were due to depart for the island from). Turns out we had only a few days to finish preparations because the boat was going to leave for the atolls on Saturday, rather than Tuesday the following week, which meant a Friday departure. The panic! The crew visas weren't yet in the country and weren't even approved yet. All of the plane flights were booked to connect with the boat going 3 days later. The Christmas rush meant that not only were all earlier available flights inside PNG booked up, but luggage and passengers were being put off without warning. Adnan warned me that Briar and Zane should prepare themselves to make do with carry-on luggage only. We knew the connection to the boat was going to be made with minutes to spare and if any luggage was put off, there would be no way of recovering it before the boat's departure. At this point Zane was entrusted with finding portable solar panels to take on-board and I instructed he and Briar that they would have to carry at least one camera, charger and set of batteries between them onto the plane. Visions of spending thousands of dollars of Screen Innovation/Robbers Dog money to get them to the island only to have no way of making the movie leapt into my head and the general effect wasn't pretty.

However things could only get worse. Adnan was initially unable to even get Briar, Zane and Richard waitlisted onto a flight between Moresby and Buka before the boat's departure. He kept trying and finally got us onto the bottom of a long list for a flight on Saturday morning. If nothing was delayed and provided they could get seats on the flight, Briar and Zane would be able to make the boat with about an hour to spare (yeah – sweet). The waitlist was long and we weren't confident. After a nasty afternoon trying to get a charter flight organised (charters were so booked up I couldn't even get a quote) Briar realised that Sione Paasia, a member of the Association Na Takuu who she had spoken to about the film, worked for Air New Guinea, and he might be able to help us. After a panicked phone call from us both he must have managed to figure out what was required and how to get it because a day later, three days before the final departure date, he had somehow managed to swing the tickets we needed.

By this time Adnan had discovered it was going to cost us $3000.00 to change the dates on the tickets between Brisbane and Moresby. More panic. Not in the budget, not even in the ballpark. I started begging Zane and Briar for money but couldn't get hold of Richard. What to do. Then sweet (albeit temporary) relief - Adnan managed to find seats that didn't require such a high fee. Back in business.

In the mean time I contacted the New Zealand Police stationed in Buka and (exercising a steely control over my now hyper-active adrenal glands) begged them to shop for the bulky equipment we had planned to buy in port before Zane and Briar got on the boat - not standard duty for them. I emailed through a shopping list and they agreed to go to it, provided they got word that Zane and Briar had made the flight from Moresby on Saturday morning.

With flights secured I was turning my attention to the visa situation - still no sign - when Richard phoned with the heart-stopping news that the boat was being ordered to leave port for the atolls on Friday - a day early - by the MP for Atolls. There was no way we could make it by then - no visas, no earlier flights inside PNG, no hope. However further phone calls revealed that it would probably be possible for the boat to wait. Probably.

Thursday arrived - one day to go - and despite calls to Moresby the visas still hadn't shown up. Finally Jim Robins discovered that all our paperwork had been lost in the bowels of PNG's immigration department and walked over with copies of everything, and stood watching to make sure it was faxed. In Wellington there was still no sign. I couldn't get hold of Jim again - did I mention phone service to PNG is sporadic?? - and the staff in Wellington were getting annoyed by all the calls. Finally at about 3.30pm I got word that permission for Briar and Zane to enter PNG as non-profit filmmakers had arrived. But then discovered that the person responsible for signing the visas off had left the office, possibly for the rest of the day. The visa clerk hadn't told him before he left that the visa permissions had arrived. Now almost beside myself I got Briar to ring the High Commission and ask what had happened. An administrator thought that the person who would be signing the visas off was only having a smoke (never have I been more grateful to Marlborough). I called at 4.10pm and the visas were signed and sealed. Pace couriers were immediately dispatched and a twitching call at 4.50pm revealed the visas had been picked up. By 9.30pm I was signing for them outside our office in Auckland still unable to believe they had finally been delivered and the trip was actually going to go ahead. Six hours before everyone was due to leave for the airport.

More dramas ensued when Briar couldn't process our entire currency purchase in Brisbane (thanks BNZ for not warning me about the daily purchase limit on the visa) and Zane had to weigh in with his credit cards. Then the flight was delayed. Gak. But it didn’t really matter – everyone made it to Moresby by the evening and got to the airport the following day in good time for the connecting flight. The boat DID wait till Saturday (specially for us I think) and the only other hairy moment arose on Saturday morning when I couldn’t call the police station in Buka to say that the crew were on their way – damn phones were down again. But the shopping was done (except for the chairs). Thank god for email (and Jim, Adnan, Sione and the lovely New Zealand police)!

And really, you know the rest....

More later

The eagle has landed!

2006-12-20T16:56:00.000+13:00

Briar and Zane along with Richard Moyle made the boat to Takuu on Saturday, after a series of incidents in which everything that could go wrong did go wrong and at the worst possible moment.

The crew managed to make the flight from New Zealand on Friday, carrying new portable solar panels delivered at the airport with a full 20 minutes to spare and newly-minted visas that arrived a nail-biting seven hours before departure. Despite the 2 hour delay in Brisbane (the plane broke), the connecting flight through to Buka was caught, and so the half-day delay that the good ship Sankamap had agreed to so that the crew could make the sailing wasn’t wasted. Weather for the boat-trip was great and there were dolphins and flying fish on the journey, which bodes well for the whole project.

Thanks to Chris Edwards for technical and communications assistance in late pre-production, Jim Robins at the National Research Institute, Port Moresby, for taking it upon himself to force PNG’s lumbering bureaucracy to yield the visas in time, the New Zealand Police stationed in Buka for shopping for us since Briar and Zane didn’t have time and for answering all questions no matter how random, and to UPS for letting us in at their airport terminal at 5.30am to get the solar panels that had just arrived from America. Thanks also to anyone else including parents and friends who packed for us, shopped for us and otherwise gave up their time and resources. We couldn’t have done it without you….

Zane and Briar about to depart:

OOps! Rocket Rentals!

2006-12-06T23:00:00.000+13:00

In the last post we made we completely forgot to mention on of our most important sponsors - the lovely Rocket Rentals, who are supplying (amongst other things) cameras and filters, sound equipment, a back-up petrol generator and their vast experience with road cases. Rocket were one of the first places we approached. They came on board early, and are proving to be the glue that holds the whole technical plan for how to do such a complex project together. Thanks guys!

Better and better!

2006-11-30T12:05:00.000+13:00

We’ve been frantically working towards getting gear together for the big trip and doing publicity, trying to get as much support for the project as possible. Consequently we haven’t updated this as often as we would have hoped. Here’s a big catch-up and we’ll try and keep blogging and keep you up with the play on a more regular basis from now on.

First up we’d like to welcome Sarah Lawrence to the crew. Sarah has trained in documentary directing and is currently interning at an NGO here in Auckland, but she has kindly offered her time and considerable smarts to the project, which is most appreciated.

Our itinerary has changed once again, as the boat that services the atolls, including Takuu, is one is now going early in December and then again later in the month. Rather than trying to press our departure date a bit earlier we’re currently expecting to go around December 20th. This leaves us more time to properly prepare our equipment and for Zane and Briar to finish getting shots for things like cholera, and get their lives in Auckland tidied up in preparation for a two month absence. A later travel date is also a good thing because of the unpredictability in processing time when getting a visa to enter Papua New Guinea. Having applied for the wrong kind of visa we had to start the process again, and we need to wait till Port Moresby gets in contact to give us the go ahead. All rather nerve-wracking.

Despite the volume and complexity of preparations and the difficulties of learning exactly what needs to be done going into somewhere like PNG as we go, we’ve been really pleased to be able to share the story of Takuu more widely with readers of the Aucklander, nzherald.co.nz, and the Sunday Star-Times and with the listeners of the Larry Williams Show on Newstalk ZB and Nine to Noon on National Radio. Briar and Richard Moyle, possibly the world’s most patient anthropologist, are doing an interview on TV1’s Breakfast show at 7.40am tomorrow (Friday December 1), so you might want to tune in for that. Amber Older at Auckland University has been generously organising additional publicity and making sure we have all our outreach bases covered. You can find information about Takuu and our film on the Auckland University website.

We’ve been presented with so much support from so many companies, organizations and individuals it’s really very humbling. Panasonic are lending a DVX100 camera and Toughbook laptop as well as plenty of batteries – they’ve also come to the party with an offer of new tape stock, as have the wonderful people at Next Technology. Flying Fish are giving us backup stock for translation and transcribing (thanks Ems), and CineStuff are supplying us with a lighting kit free of charge.

Oxfam have been amazing, lending us a second camera, and generously giving us the benefit of their experience on the ground in the region. The VSA have supplied contacts and information. Ecoinnovation in New Plymouth and AA Solar here in Auckland have given us a good rate on solar panels, and Ecoinnovation has also given us the benefit of very informed advice on trickle charging batteries and other power-related issues.

Private individuals who have donated money include Thierry Jutel, Noeline Gannaway, Rowan Wernham, Donna Te Kanawa, artist Cellulite Rose and Vanessa Moon. Documentary filmmakers Susan Potter and Claudia Pond Eyley have offered us tape stock.

Some family members and friends of the crew have been particularly generous with their support and interest in the film, especially when it comes to developing the story or getting publicity. A special big thanks to Liz March (the director’s mother) who came up with a wonderful suggestion for the title of the film. She is lending one of her stills cameras for the trip and has made sure the crew have the appropriate vitamin and mineral supplements - what would we do without Mums! We would also like to mention Jane Gardiner’s enthusiasm for the story, and Anna Bates useful contacts in PNG.

The New Zealand Police stationed in Buka, Bougainville have been very welcoming via email and have offered a secure lockup for all the generously donated gear we’re taking, and we’ve even had advice on survival from a dude from New Zealand Defence Force.

I’ve heard it said that it takes a village to raise a child, but I reckon it takes the whole world to save a village. Thanks so much to everyone who’s contributed to the trip so far. Every single little bit makes a difference.

DOP and funding found!

2006-11-16T14:54:00.000+13:00

We're delighted to announce that Zane Holmes, producer and director on such luminastic NZ television shows as Maddigan’s Quest, Secret Agent Men, P.E.T Detectives and Being Eve has decided to bring his contacts, his technical expertise and his shoot-to-edit eye to Takuu in order to be our Director of Photography. The search has been pretty extensive and we're really happy to have a filmmaker as flexible and enthusiastic as Zane onboard.

Zane

We're equally delighted to announce that production company Robbers Dog has given us the NZ$8,000 that we needed to guarantee a safe shoot. Robbers Dog are also being very supportive in the nuts and bolts of managing the project, and in looking for sponsorship. They join Occasional Productions and the Screen Innovation Production Fund in helping us get the film in the can.

 
Enormous generosity has been shown to Takuu film, but we can always use more funding - every dollar will make a difference to what ends up on screen, and we still need decent camera and sound equipment, solar panels and a petrol generator, as well as miniDV stock, both used and blank. If you're wanting to contribute to the project please get in touch.

Seeking sponsorship and camera skills!

2006-11-07T01:18:00.002+13:00

We need further funding and some additional skills to get this film in the can.

In December we're sending a two-person crew (consisting of Briar and a director of photography) to document the story of a sinking island in the Pacific.

Our DOP has had to pull out due to other committments and we're recruiting a replacement at the moment. If you're interested, email us using the link provided, or call Lyn on + 64 27 282 9593.

We've got much appreciated Screen Innovation Production funding (from a New Zealand government scheme) for the project. However the extreme remoteness of the island means a very challenging shoot and to do a good job we really need more resources than this grant can provide. We're looking for sponsorship in exchange for a screen credit and we'd be very happy to accept any donations of money or offers of equipment. Being able to borrow or be given:

a 3 chip mini-DV PAL video camera
extra and larger-size camera batteries and chargers
mini-DV stock (including old tapes that have already been used, for translation purposes)
solar panels (there's no electricity on the island)
a pc laptop or
a video deck

would be incredibly helpful, and any donations, big or small, would be extremely gratefully received.

For further information about the film check out our previous post and to find out more about the island of Takuu try the sidebar links on this page.

A short description to get you started

2006-11-03T18:55:00.000+13:00

Our film is about a sinking island, Takuu, a polynesian outlier (250km Northeast of Bougainville) where the people still practice traditional polynesian religion and cosmology. We aim to document the particular challenges they face at the moment in a poetic, reflexive way. The film is being directed by Briar March (Allie Eagle and Me) produced by Lyn Collie and supervised by Annie Goldson.

Tectonic activity is combining with on-going climate change to put more pressure on the island than is being experienced in other parts of the pacific at the moment. It is sinking at a rate of 20cm/year. The elders are refusing to leave the island in the event that it sinks completely - and this is quickly becoming a possibility as king tides this year went right over the top of it. Rising sea-levels have knock-on effects for gardening which is becoming precarious. As the salt-water table rises, the taro rots in the ground, leaving people with just fish to eat.

Takuu's particular culture is changing. With missionaries and religious schooling for teenagers living off the island, the local religion is facing competition. This is the last place in the Pacific where traditional polynesian religion is practiced.

Unlike Tuvalu, also sinking, Takuu is part of PNG and the people on the island don't have the option of emigration to a stable Western country like New Zealand when the inevitable happens. They will most likely be relocated to Buka, part of Bougainville, which has a history of political instability and is also malarial. Richard Moyle, an anthropologist who has worked with the community for the last 14 years, is convinced a move to Bougainville will have a big impact of the health of the Takuu population, particularly the elders. And moving from their island will place even more pressure on the local religion which is fully integrated with Takuu's particular geography and night sky.