When I first visited this country back in 1982 we flew across the Pacific Ocean in daylight and from my window seat I got a birds eye view of … not very much. Lots of flat blue uninterrupted sea, not even so much a rusty tramp steamer to break the monotony. No wonder they usually do this leg in the dark, I thought.
Once I got here I understood that there was a lot going on down there on many tiny speckled islands and atolls – and the richness of the Pacific and its relationship to New Zealand was just one of the reasons why I’m still here all these years later – but now the creeping specter of global warming is transforming the Pacific into the pristine environment I thought I saw all those years ago – unsullied by coral, sand, taro or people.
This process is already well under way as Briar March’s astounding documentary There Once was an Island illustrates. In 2006 Ms. March and a tiny crew spent several months on Takuu, a remote atoll overseen by the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG), serviced and supported by a rare and irregular shipping service and short wave radio. Even then the waves were lapping at the edge of peoples’ homes and the ABG offer of a haven among the mainland sugar plantations effectively meant asking 4000 people to say goodbye to their entire way of life.