Beyond the Coral Sea: Travels in the Old Empires of the South-West Pacific. Michael Moran
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towards the islands like hunting water spiders. The sun beat down.
‘Good morning!’ I was the picture of bonhomie.
‘Good morning, my son. Are you visiting Alotau? We don’t get many of your sort, oh no.’
I thought this was an extraordinary way to greet a stranger. He had an Irish accent and mottled complexion. All ‘whiteskins’ who have lived in the tropics for years have this wan appearance. We stood side by side rocking on our heels in a foolish colonial manner, looking at the colourful activity, glancing from time to time at the oil slick and coconut husks floating in the water below the wharf.
‘I’m the Catholic priest in Alotau … oh yes … the Catholic priest.’ He volunteered in answer to my quizzical look.
‘Ah! How long have you been here, Father?’
‘Oh yes … must be getting on for thirty years now, thirty years since I left Ireland. I’ve stopped counting, I have that.’
‘I suppose there have been a lot of changes in your time.’
‘Oh yes … murders and break-ins are increasing all the time, they’re always about, they are that. That’s right. A boat from Lae brought in a whole criminal element, it did. It’s gone now, thank goodness, together with the murdering, thieving boyos we hope … oh yes … we do hope that.’
‘I heard about that boat.’
‘Did you now. You must have your ear to the ground. Oh yes … they know where you are all the time … they’re watching all the time … oh yes … now he locks his door … yes … now he’s gone out … yes … yes … now he’s come back. He’s gone inside and locked the door … He’s turning on his light. Now he’s having a shower. They know it all and see in the dark … oh yes … they see in the dark, they can do that.’
‘Has your health stood up over the years, Father?’
‘Well, to tell you God’s truth, I’ve had the fever recently … and it laid me desperate low but I seem to be all right now … oh yes. Age creeping on now.’
More shuffling and gazing.
‘I’ve read that sorcerers and magic are still about.’
‘Oh yes … the magic and the witchcraft are strong, strong. They might be Christian but that old black magic is still there in them … it’s a terrible ting, terrible ting, terrible, terrible … Propitiate the spirits of the departed now … it’s a dark existence out here to be sure. It certainly is that.’
The St Joseph, freshly painted in yellow ochre, finally tied up at the wharf. The priest waved to some village women dressed in Victorian cotton smocks.
‘That’s my lot there … oh yes … I’ll have to leave you now. God be with you on your travels … yes … God be with you,’ and he wandered over to his flock.
The bread had arrived while I was chatting and the banana boat prepared to leave. This powerful vessel had twin seventy-five horsepower outboard motors and two plastic garden chairs. We powered out of the harbour and the cool wind brushed our faces and lifted our spirits. The rusting Taiwanese trawlers were soon left far behind as we sped along the south coast of Milne Bay towards East Cape. A young village girl carrying some shopping sat in the seat beside me. She prattled on in Pidgin to the two boys piloting the boat but they said nothing at all to me. I put my feet up – one on a carton containing an electric lawn mower and the other on a carton of several hundred tins of baked beans. The dinghy began to buck as we headed towards the open ocean and I noticed there were no life jackets. Later I was to learn that this omission is quite normal practice. I would have felt decidedly wimpish to have mentioned this in such a ‘masculine’ society. Be a man and drown or laugh as you are taken by a shark. My panama began to whip around my legs as I held it down out of the wind.
We followed the coast east for only a short time, sailing parallel to the road I had travelled only a couple of days before. The sea became rougher as we turned south towards Samarai and the Coral Sea. I felt a tremendous sense of exhilaration, my face dashed with spray, slicing through the azure water, the dark-green jungle defending the mountainous interior coming up on the right. Coconut palms, transparent green water fringing crystalline beaches, a swirl of smoke from the occasional bush hut. Young, brown, white-breasted sea eagles soared on the up-draughts, their wingspans majestically spread against the vegetation. Fragile outrigger canoes weathering the sea swell were cheered on by the boys.
The currents in China Strait are treacherous. The pattern on the surface of the water changes from seahorses whipped by the wind to smooth powerful eddies of deep blue streaming up from the abyss. The pastel outlines of numerous small islands appeared, jagged peaks lifting from valleys shaped like cauldrons. The sun broke through gunmetal clouds and burnished the sea, biblical rays that appeared to be guiding us to salvation. I realised with surprise I was soaked to the skin.
Captain John Moresby landed on Samarai from HMS Basilisk in April 1873 hoping to evade the unwelcome attentions of his ‘savage friends’. He settled down to dinner with his officers but they were followed by a hundred fighting men, who squatted quietly on the beach beside the blue water and watched the proceedings with close interest. Moresby offered them a stew made of preserved soup and potatoes, salt pork, curlew and pigeon, which, not altogether surprisingly, disgusted the warriors. The sailors unsuccessfully tried paddling canoes which resulted in capsizals, hilarious moments for all concerned. The warriors opened the officers’ shirts and stroked the white skin of their chests in wonderment and appreciation. Captain Moresby wryly named the place Dinner Islet to mark this unusually human and peaceful encounter. The local name of Samarai soon replaced the cannibalistic associations of the former.
The island appeared a deserted ghost town at first sight. The former provincial headquarters, which is an older settlement than Port Moresby, had clearly seen better days. I climbed up onto the Orsiri trading wharf to take my bearings. Ruined warehouses lined the neglected International Wharves site, warehouses gaping like skulls set on a rack, the empty interiors propped up by partitions of broken bone. Planks and beams jutted out like shattered teeth. Clumps of resentful youths were loitering around the general store and glared at me without a smile, but the women and children greeted me with friendly waves.
‘Apinun!’1
‘Apinun!’
The mown grass and coral streets (there is only one rarely used motor vehicle on Samarai) seemed like sections of an abandoned filmset. I walked between the abandoned shells of two buildings in which some boys were shouting and playing football. I hoped I was heading towards the Kinanale Guesthouse, run by Wallace Andrew, the grandson of a cannibal. Some attractive colonial houses were ranged around the perimeter of a waterlogged football field. In the sultry heat I leant exhausted against an electricity pole near a memorial obelisk before heading for a small beach in the distance. Rain trees and old flamboyants offered cooling shade.
‘Hello there!’ The voice came from a porch at the top of a flight of steps to my left. ‘Come up and have a drink!’
A tall, smiling ‘whiteskin’ wearing shorts, his legs covered in the ubiquitous small plasters, beckoned me in.
‘I’m looking for the guesthouse run by Wallace Andrew. Do you know where it is, by any chance?’
‘It’s just there!’ and he pointed to a large house partly covered in old wooden scaffolding. I had thought this structure was an abandoned building project.
‘Wallace is about somewhere, but come up for a minute.’ He disappeared inside.
I went into the sitting room and collapsed into a chair while he brought some iced water from the fridge. Furniture was clearly hard to come by on Samarai and the room had the feel of a temporary arrangement that had drifted out of control into permanence. For no good reason I imagined I could see mosquitoes everywhere. Probably the beginnings of tropical madness.
‘Hi,