Story and photos by Ian MacNeill
I have been taking holidays in the Solomons for 20 years. I am very fond of the place — the warm, interested people, the sea, the almost laughable perfection of the south sea idyll it presents. One looks around, crossing a lagoon in a canoe, and feels like a con man who has somehow blundered into a paradise to which the inhabiting angels have become inured. It's a guilty kind of incredulous laugh.
But I felt I had to stop now — there were other places in the world to visit, and perhaps I had seen what was for me the best of it. Honiara, the capital, now has a French restaurant (La Perouse — the remains of the explorer's expedition were found in the Solomons) for which one has to book, and two new luxury hotels were opening.
This is not to say Honiara is sophisticated. It is an ugly town which has never transcended its origins as a US army base. But it has a certain dusty, busy, salty, frangipannied, hopeless charm which is eventually deeply moving. Yet a certain calculating awareness is becoming evident. This is understandable and heart breaking, necessary and infinitely regrettable.
I had been staying in Tara, tiny capital of roadless Choiseul Province. The government rest house in which I had kindly been allowed to stay was at the furthest remove from the few admin prefabs and the hospital, past a village around which refugees from nearby (under 10 kilometres) Bougainville congregated.
I had met some on the beach. We'd talked, and I'd been lectured on the nefariousness of the Australian government's supplying of arms and especially the Iroquois helicopters used by PNG troops against the Bougainville rebels. I had done my best to assure them that there was support for their cause in Australia. We parted a little unhappily, for they wanted to berate me some more.
I woke the next morning to find several of them outside the rest house, which I had to myself. They wanted water — a reasonable request under the circumstances, as it was the end of the Dry and the rest house tanks were not as low as others. Though I had no reasonable cause for alarm, I did feel some relief at the thought my plane was due the next day.
There had been a certain atmosphere. My arrival on Tara's grassy lagoon-side airstrip had been greeted by a Solomons soldier, rifle slung across back. A patrol boat (presented to the Solomons by Australia) had called at the wharf. And the Bougainville men had been just slightly belligerent.
The next day the Bougainvilleans were there again. They came into the house. I told them I was leaving and regretted doing so because I had spent time cleaning the place and feared they would trash it while it was unoccupied.
The walk to Tara airfield, hot though it was and encumbered though I was by my backpack, was made light by my sense of escape. A Solomons soldier saluted me with characteristic gentleness as we picked our opposite ways through the burry grass of the trail.
I sat about the airfield waving to people going about their business. A lot of time passed. I sought out the radio operator, ears pricked for that distant hum. No plane. Flight cancelled.
I trudged back uneasily to the rest house and spent probably the most sublime afternoon of my life drifting with the tide through the lagoon which surrounds Tara. An adolescent reef shark swam up to have a good look at me. Where have I seen that look before? A pair of goggly eyes which suddenly surfaced in the mangroves proved not to be a salt-water crocodile but a man diving for shellfish.
Bougainville shimmered in the distance. I was part of nature.
The sense of isolation which had been growing in me sprung to the fore at night under the influence of hunger. I slept uneasily.
The next day I surprised some of the Bougainville men at the tank. "But you left yesterday!", one exclaimed.
"No plane."
They were sympathetic.
This time it did come. I mounted its steps with winged heels, only to feel a deep pang of regret as the wonderful lagoon which I would probably never experience again passed below me.
The next night in Honiara, I had dinner with two friends and one of their friends. One, a Solomons Telekom engineer, wants further training in Australia. His wife had recently left him for another man because he was away from home so much installing radiotelephone dishes. He'd asked his Australian boss what he should do. "Have you got a gun?", was the response. We pondered this.
The other Solomons man has political ambitions. He had invited the man I didn't know, a PNG consultant in overseas aid. It is not difficult to pick such PNG experts in the Solomons — they have a glance somewhat keener than the reef shark had.
I listened as he sketched a proposal for a tractor which I suspect my friend wanted principally to enhance his prestige in his local community. "Economic development", "of benefit to the whole community", "cooperative", "environmentally sustainable": this guy had the jargon down to the level of cliché. I wondered if it worked. By his own account, he was in demand all over the Pacific.
That morning at breakfast in my hotel, I had been pointedly ignored by a trio of what were obviously overseas experts — engineers had been my summation. Something brutal in the aura. They had that overestimation of their own authority which so many short term OEs gather about themselves.
Waiting for the taxi I'd booked to take me to Henderson Airfield for the 2.10am to Brisbane, I was approached by one, jittering. His lift had not transpired. How was he to get to the airport now? He had to get home. Could he come with me?
We talked in the cab, driven by a man I'd encountered before, a new breed — the Solomons Shark, ravenous for cash. His accent suggested the engineer was raised in Ireland. He asked me where I lived in Australia. I answered and returned the question. He was insultingly vague. For a moment I toyed with the idea of having Jack Shark stop the cab and throwing him onto his resources on Honiara's highway, not ever very busy after 7pm and often deserted till five the next morning.
My passenger, sensing something, began to blarney me with his work in the Solomons: survey.
"Sure", I said. He was no doubt yet another mining engineer who thought he was onto something. Something Really Big.
There is gold in the Guadalcanal hills. Getting it out at a profit is another matter.
Remember Bougainville. And watch it over the next two years. It's drooled over. The two giant consortiums which recently began operating in tandem won't be hanging back.
I couldn't help wondering about uranium.
My passenger was very jittery.
I abandoned him at the airport to the mercies of Jack the Shark, who was insisting that taxis in the Solomons charge per passenger.
The 2.10am to Brisbane had been delayed. Some of us sought relief from the discomfort of the terminal in the simple darkness of the deserted night. Irritation and anxiety were lulled into more philosophical stances as we gazed up at the sky suffused with its spilt gold powder of constellations, gemmed with rose gold individuals blurring through the salty humidity.
Suddenly the thick air was filled with a whining scream. The runway was picked out in glowing violet lights, and a small superb white jet rushed in, dashed to a halt and subsided into a hum. It was a cargo plane loading fresh tuna for the Tokyo markets.
Our plane arrived much later. I mounted its steps gratefully, but memory keeps whispering me back to the Solomons.
I have to walk the 50 kilometres to that traditional village on the weather coast of Guadalcanal. Before the seepage from some tailings dam makes it uninhabitable.