Tall Ships leave Hobart. Which tall ship first saw a French Polynesian island?

When you fly into any large city airport, and look back at where you came from, often you see a line of planes at set distances and at different heights on their approach to landing behind you. I saw a clear resemblance between that situation and with the line up of the tall ships today as they motored towards the Tasman Bridge; each craft keeping a distance in front of them to allow the ship ahead to elegantly approach the bridge and run up various sails, then turn in a leisurely arc amidst a flurry of water traffic out for sightseeing, before heading back past the regatta stand in all their glory. From time to time various marine horns sounded and their booms bounced around the air. The whistling steam boat added an extra dimension to the festival atmosphere. Many different craft from ferries to kayaks to motor boats to water skis and an assortment of yachts tacked and tacked and tacked again to follow the ships with their long white water streams along the Derwent Harbor. The Mercury newspaper snapped this great shot: My Sydney friend Liz tells me these tall ships are due to make a spectacle in the Sydney Harbour on October 2nd, and having watched the 'speed' of the departure of these tall ships I can understand the trip north won't break any Hobart-Sydney records. But what a wonderful adventure for those new passengers who are on board just for that trip. All of this made me wonder which tall ship first visited Tahiti. There is debate about which explorer and therefore which tall ships first reached some part of what is now French Polynesia. One theory is that navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, serving the Spanish Crown in an expedition to Terra Australis, was perhaps the first European to set eyes on the island of Tahiti. His 3 ships were the San Pedro y San Pablo (150 tons), San Pedro (120 tons) and the tender (or launch) Los Tres Reyes. Apparently he sighted an inhabited island on 10 February 1606. However, whether the island that he saw was actually Tahiti or not has not been fully ascertained. According to other authors the real discoverer of Tahiti was Spanish explorer Juan Fernández in his expedition of 1576–1577. Apparently Juan Fernandez set sail from Valaparaiso (regrettably, I cannot find the name of his ship/s. After heading west for one month along the 40th parallel south, in the spring of 1576 they arrived in an island described as "mountainous, fertile, with strong-flowing rivers, inhabited by white peoples, and with all the fruits necessary to live". I think this may be some of the Marquesas Islands. Alternatively, explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira took four ships, San Gerónimo (the Capitana), the Santa Ysabel (the Almiranta), the smaller frigate Santa Catalina and the galiot San Felipe and left Callao, South America on 9 April 1595. On 21 July 1595 the ships reached the Marquesas Islands. So many canvases may have been billowing off Tahiti and/or the Marquesas for over 400 years.

Tall Ships

Yesterday a dozen or so 'tall ships' arrived in Hobart from around the world, for a week long 'festival'. These are sailing ships from the past. There is the Dutch 'Oosterschelde', the Danish 'Soren Larsen', the Dutch 'Europa', and the 'Tecla' from the Netherlands. In addition the 'Young Endeavour', the 'Windeward Bound', the 'Lord Nelson' and the 'Lady Nelson' are all here. And local more modern wooden sailing boats are also joining the party. As I travelled to work yesterday, there were some coming up the Derwent Harbour with their many sails full of wind. What a wonderful spectacle. After work, I walked down to the wharves and had a look at each of them berthed for the occasion. It seems miles of rigging swing up there in the air high above us. Many stout tall trees have lost their lives to get a new 'life' as the many masts on these vessels. I imagine these tall ships are many times the size of Wendy Windblows, the ketch in which I will sail around the Marquesas Islands. These tall ships gave me a reality check about what size I might expect. But already I can imagine feeling the breeze in my hair, seeing the sparkle on the waves and smelling the salt spray on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

A slight connection from Captain Joshua Slocum

You know how I look for connections between my life and my forthcoming visit to French Polynesia - well one was handed to me on a plate. One of my managers, an enthusiast of boats, was excited when I explained I would be sailing around the Marquesas Islands for a great adventure on a ketch which I wasn't familiar with. He loaned me a copy of a book titled Captain Joshua Slocum The adventures of America's Best Known Sailor - written by son Victor Slocum. It is an extraordinary book telling the life and challenges faced by Slocum across the seas in the 19th century. Around 1895 he built a ketch (The Spray), and became the first person to sail around the world alone - and the boat was only 36 feet long! Pretty impressive. I was particularly alert when in late May 1896 Slocum remarked that he passed without stopping 'the high and beautiful island of Nukuhiva'. I look forward to seeing this island from the sea within the next three weeks. I will touch down at the Nuku Hiva airport en route to the island Hiva Oa, Saturday week, but eventually I will sail back to Nuku Hiva to finish my glorious adventure. Then I loved the fact that Slocum, after passing the Marquesas continued on via Samoa to Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia. I enjoyed a number of wonderful working sojourns in Newcastle and it was the place I was married amidst lots of very happy friends. But I wonder what Slocum was seeing there in spring 1896 - I wonder what the city/town looked like then. From Newcastle, Slocum continued south towards Melbourne and then on 25 January 1897 he crossed Bass Strait and stayed awhile at Beauty Point on Tasmania's north east. From there he sailed west to Devonport where, as he was leaving on the 16 April 1897, he remarked 'Tasmania is the fruit garden of the world'. Even when I lived in Devonport in the early 1970s, many of the surrounding small towns were focused on apple growing and other fruit orchards. Regrettably over the years, as the world's need for fruit changed, orchards were plowed under. Now there is a revival of interest and a great deal of fruit is grown again in the district. Slocum was based in Devonport for 3 or so months and Devonport's Joshua Slocum Park remains today as a recognition of his great feat (he was really only half way around the world when he was near my home town). Will have a look at the Park with different eyes next time I am up there for the opera.

Herman Melville and Typee

After many weeks of reading a few pages on the bus to and from work, I have now finished this novel. And what an interesting read it has been. Who was Herman Melville you may ask, and what is Typee? Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American writer best known for the novel Moby-Dick. His first three books gained much contemporary attention (the first, Typee, became a bestseller), but after a fast-blooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime. This is an image of Melville about 1846 ish just after Typee was published . It is clear that Melville, on January 3, 1841, sailed from Fairhaven, Massachusetts on the whaler Acushnet, which was bound for the Pacific Ocean. He was later to comment that his life began that day. The vessel sailed around Cape Horn and travelled to the South Pacific. Melville left little direct accounts of the events of this 18-month voyage, although his whaling romance, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, probably describes many aspects of life on board the Acushnet. Melville deserted the Acushnet in the Marquesas Islands in July 1842. For three weeks he lived among the Typee natives, who were called cannibals by the two other tribal groups on the island—though they treated Melville very well. Typee, Melville's first novel, describes a brief love affair with a beautiful native girl, Fayaway, who generally "wore the garb of Eden" and came to epitomize the guileless noble savage in the popular imagination. Melville did not seem to be concerned about consequences of leaving the Acushnet. He boarded an Australian whale ship, the Lucy Ann, bound for Tahiti. So the author allegedly lived on the Marquesas Islands with the Typees, one group of residents on the island of Nukuhiva. But reading his novel, creates a completely real and detailed world. Did he experience even a percentage of that world, or is it all or partly a fiction? The hero's adventures with the Typee seem sufficiently authentic, but at the same time I find it difficult to believe and wonder if Melville wasn't being a commercial writer and simply pandering to the tastes of people who had specific expectations of what non-europeans did and how they lived. This is a most extraordinary book, is downloadable for free because it is out of copyright, and should be something everyone examines in order to consider how we view people who are different from ourselves. Underpinning the novel are assumptions about how the world is and how it ought to be. Over 150 years on, I find it fascinating that a person could describe a situation and its people as savage, when nothing of the sort has been shown - a historical blimp. Yes, captivity in such a place makes a paradise a prison, however to see every practice as an example of savagery is very much of those times and not ours (I would hope).

The Lessons of Easter Island

I am in the middle of participating in a three-day training workshop giving me skills to be a trainer in relation to sustainability thinking and processes. We have been focusing not just on sustainability in relation to the environment but also on social and economic sustainability. An extraordinary activity which we completed yesterday focused on Easter Island. I cannot locate an electronic copy of the document we read, but the ideas in http://www.mnforsustain.org/ponting_c_the_lessons_of_easter_island.htm are similar. Further reading of http://suite101.com/article/environmental-sustainability-have-we-learnt-from-easter-island-a309320 is also relevant and interesting. If our earth is simply a larger version of Easter Island, what does this say about you and me and what we are doing currently? Would there have been people on Easter Island foreseeing the consequences of the destruction they made, just as there are people currently pointing out the consequences we are making to the whole globe as we clear forests? The changes we need are profound. I wonder what was the tipping point on Easter Island. What was that point of no return? And therefore, what is the point of no return for the Earth? Have we passed it? As usual, everything I write about must have a connection to French Polynesia which I will be visiting later this year. So where does Easter Island fit in this story? Has the concept of sustainability reached French Polynesia? In my research about the places I might visit in the Marquesas Islands, I came across reference to tiki which apparently have aspects in common with the great stone statues on Easter Island This is a moai from Easter Island. One website assures me that "six of the inhabited Marquesas Islands offer vast examples of tikis". "Tikis are believed to represent deified ancestors." On the island of Fatu Hiva, "one of these rocks which the villagers call Tana, looks identical to an Easter Island moai figure." Here is an example from http://www.barracudamagazine.com This is a tiki from Marquesas Islands. So there you have a connection - cultural similarities in terms of the artefacts both peoples made, despite the thousands of miles separating each. In addition, some websites tell me that the Marquesan people settled Easter Island. More research is still required. Are there any knowledgeable experts reading this who can tell the facts? As for the question about sustainability and French Polynesia, I am pleased to see Earth Check is looking at the situation (refer http://www.earthcheck.org/news/french-polynesia%E2%80%99s-environmental-sustainability-is-in-good-hands.aspx) in relation to environmental aspects and tourism. But of course, any action will impact on the social and economic situation. The three prongs of environment, social and economy are inseparable because any change to one has consequences for one or both of the other. There are many other sites that address sustainability and the future of various aspects of French Polynesia, such as in association with the pearling and clam fishing industries. Hmmm. Well I have heard how Americans love their clam chowder. I wonder how clams are cooked/eaten in different parts of French Polynesia. I look forward to finding out.

1888 - Robert Louis Stevenson and the Marquesas Islands. Where was Gauguin?

I love the fact that so many of the world's renowned people have visited the remote French Polynesian islands, and gained a great deal from the experience. It seems everyone starts at Tahiti and then moves onto other islands. Even my trip will start there before I travel those 1000 odd miles north to the Marquesas - I have no choice because all international flights arrive and depart from Tahiti - but what reason do ships and their sailors have for always starting with Tahiti? We know Robert Louis Stevenson spent some months in Tahiti, before visiting the Marquesas in 1888. He wrote about his experiences and impressions there, in a 1900 book called ‘In the South Seas, Being an Account of Experiences and Observations in the Marquesas, Paumotur and Gilbert Islands in the Course of Two Cruises, on the Yacht Casco (1888) and the Schooner Equator. 1900. You can read his words at http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/rlsteven/southseas.pdf. Robert Louis Stevenson's first landfall on his voyage was at Hatiheu, on the north side of Nuku Hiva, in 1888. Meanwhile half a world away, in the second half of 1888, Paul Gauguin joined Vincent van Gogh in Arles, but the two quickly parted ways. Gauguin left France in 1891 and settled in Tahiti. He returned briefly to France but abandoned Europe permanently in 1895, having failed to sell many of the works from his first Tahitian excursion. He moved to the Marquesas Islands around 1898 and died on Hiva Oa in 1903. There is no record of Robert Louis Stevenson ever travelling to Hiva Oa. And there is no record of Paul Gauguin ever travelling to Nuku Hiva. I wonder if their personal and professional worlds ever allowed for them to know of each other?

Did Robert Louis Stevenson spend time in Tahiti?

I have been asked if Robert Louis Stevenson, author famed for ‘Treasure Island’ amongst many other novels and short stories, really lived on a Pacific island and was it Tahiti or some other island in the French Polynesia group. An answer comes from http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/life: “Weir of Hermiston, Stevenson's very Scottish romance, was written when Stevenson was far away on the other side of the world. His decision to sail around the Pacific in 1888, living on various islands for short periods, then setting off again (all the time collecting material for an anthropological and historical work on the South Seas which was never fully completed), was another turning point in his life. In 1889 he and his extended family arrived at the port of Apia in the Samoan islands and they decided to build a house and settle. This choice brought him health, distance from the distractions of literary circles, and went towards the creation of his mature literary persona: the traveller, the exile, very aware of the harsh sides of life but also celebrating the joy in his own skill as a weaver of words and teller of tales. It also acted as a new stimulus to his imagination. He wrote about the Pacific islands in several of his later works.” By contrast, ‘Treasure Island’ was written because: “Another fortuitous turning-point in Stevenson’s life had occurred when on holiday in Scotland in the summer of 1881. The cold rainy weather forced the family to amuse themselves indoors, and one day Stevenson and his twelve-year-old stepson, Lloyd, drew, coloured and annotated the map of an imaginary "Treasure Island". The map stimulated Stevenson’s imagination and, "On a chill September morning, by the cheek of a brisk fire" he began to write a story based on it as an entertainment for the rest of the family. Treasure Island (published in book form in 1883) marks the beginning of his popularity and his career as a profitable writer, it was his first volume-length fictional narrative, and the first of his writings "for children"(or rather, the first of writings manipulating the genres associated with children).” But did Stevenson get to Tahiti. Yes he did and more. On June 27th 1888, in San Francisco, Stevenson joined the ship Casco which departed for a cruise of the Pacific islands, including the Marquesas, the Paumotus and Tahiti. The cruise lasted until 24 January 1889 when it finished in Honolulu. The year before he sailed, Stevenson had his portrait painted by Singer Sargent: Stevenson travelled with his wife Fanny. The following photo includes both with two islanders on Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas.

Did Bougainville experience the Marquesas Islands?

He did. Yes he did! "On the 3rd of May, Bougainville bore down towards a new land, which he had just discovered, and was not long in finding others on the same day. The coasts of the largest one were steep; in point of fact, it was simply a mountain covered with trees to its summit, with neither valley nor sea coast. Some fires were seen there, cabins built under the shade of the cocoanut-trees, and some thirty men running on the shore. In the evening, several pirogues approached the vessels, and after a little natural hesitation, exchanges commenced. The natives demanded pieces of red cloth in exchange for cocoa-nuts, yams, and far less beautiful stuffs than those of the Tahitans; they disdainfully refused iron, nails, and earrings, which had been so appreciated elsewhere in the Bourbon Archipelago, as Bougainville had named the Tahitan group. The natives had their breasts and thighs painted dark blue; they wore no beards; their hair was drawn into tufts on the top of their heads."

My travel arrangements are cast in concrete and as flexible as ...

You already knew my flights to and from Papeete were booked. Since then I have booked myself into the hotel airport (across the road from the small airport) for two nights. On Sunday I hope to get a ride around the island and see all I want to see - Captain Cook and Charles Darwin's Point of Venus, and the local Gauguin museum. If I am really lucky I might even pass some of the small villages in which the artist lived. My guide on the Marquesas Islands tells me that nothing happens on a Sunday (well it didn't when he was last on Tahiti 17 years ago)and that my plans might come to naught. But I am positive that something will happen. When I return to Papeete around midday before flying back to Oz, I will have the rest of the daylight to see some things I might miss on that 1st Sunday. Whatever I will see will be seen. Nothing more nothing less. Then early Monday morning I have booked a long flight via Nuku Hiva the main Marquesas Island to the island Hiva Oa. This is the island where Gauguin died, so I will charge up the hill to the cemetery and look at his plaque. Somewhere around all of this, I will meet Philip Beardmore who will guide me across the seas and the land for 10 nights and 9 days. He offered and I accepted to sail in his ketch around as many islands as we can in the time. Eventually we will end up at Nuku Hiva and I will fly away. Sailing alone with a stranger is a calculated risk but I believe I will have a magical time. What I love in anticipation of travelling with a local who speaks English is that I will have real conversations about real things that are local so I gain a much deeper understanding of the place and its people, and will meet real people in a way that I would not have as an independent traveller not attached to anyone. I may get to see things that my research has never mentioned and I may miss some things that seem important now. But the thrill of rocking and rolling on seas because there are apparently no calm lagoons around the islands, of having my meals cooked for me, and of the pleasure of regularity of days and nights at sea interspersed with on-land discoveries- all of this amounts to a spectacular possible wonder. Being there and doing it will be different from my dreams but I have no doubt it will be memorable.

Why do I care about Gauguin?

Last June at The Hermitage art museum in St Petersburg Russia, I had a revelation. For certain, I had looked at a room or two of Gauguin's paintings in Moscow and been bowled over by the sheer volume of art works by single artists in each place. But it was one room in the Hermitage which stopped me in my tracks, and made me think about what I was seeing. This was the room of paintings which Paul Gauguin had produced in French Polynesia. Back last June, in my ignorance, I remembered from my art teacher days how I had him working only in Tahiti. I didn't know Gauguin spent time on the island of Tahiti before moving to the northern most group of French Polynesian islands - the Marquesas Islands. Unfortunately now, I do not know which paintings at The Hermitage are from which locations. They might all have been from Tahiti, all from the Marquesas or any mix of the two. I may find, when I reach French Polynesia, that Gauguin lived on and/or visited other islands around about. That room in St Petersburg was unusual to my eye. All the pictures which had been painted in a lush tropical environment were lacking a pulsating richness of colour which art historians have described as a key aspect of Gauguin's work. For example, "His bold, colorful and design oriented paintings ...", "Gauguin increasingly abandoned imitative art for expressiveness through colour" and "Gauguin discovered primitive art, with its flat forms and the violent colors belonging to an untamed nature." In St Petersburg, I did see bold and design-oriented paintings with flat forms. But I did not see intensely colourful or expressively colourful paintings nor did I see violent colours. I saw a strange sort of gloomy dullness. And as I sat on the window ledge at the Hermitage occasionally looking out to see if the torrential rain had stopped, I mused on why what I was looking at differed so much from what the art history books had to say (and I realised with embarrassment that I had taught countless classes of students the line the historians had taken, and I could see they were wrong and therefore I had been wrong.) Then in a flash I had an alternative way of understanding those pictures. An American woman sat down next to me and I loaded the idea to her. She, like me, found it plausible and at least worth further consideration. I have lived in and travelled through tropical Australia for many years (not to forget other tropical environments around the world). My recollections of the effect of tropical vegetation canopies is that colours are distorted beneath. Further, colours lose their clarity and brightness. I wondered whether this could explain Gauguin's use of colour and the overall effect of his pictures. I looked closely at the Hermitage pictures, and determined they were not in need of conservation cleaning. Therefore, it was not as if years of filth had clouded their purity. Rather, I felt ... and now I want to find out ... that Gauguin deliberately chose to paint his colours realistically based on what he saw out of direct sunlight. If you go to http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/08/hm88_0_2_69.html, this is the Gauguin Room at the Hermitage and as the virtual tour swivels around you can see the curtained windows. I sat on the ledge of the left one - the curtains had been raised because the day was not very bright outside. It is interesting looking at the paintings on this website because the photographed and well-lit images seem so much brighter than they did on the day when I was there. I remember, from the days when I was working at the Australian National Gallery, that works of art once reproduced as a photograph always appeared crisper, cleaner and brighter - the effect of 'professional' lighting.

And Paul Gauguin?

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist (mostly painter). He was born in June 7, 1848 in Paris and died in May 8, 1903 in Atuona (which is in the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia - on the island of Hiva Oa. I will be able to go to the cemetery where he is buried and see his gravestone.) which used to be the capital of the Marquesas.

What can one do? What should one do in French Polynesia?

Hours of Googling, and thorough reading of the information presented by the Lonely Planet and the Trip Advisor websites, demonstrate there will be some challenges. Clearly the cost will be a consideration at every turn. Nothing is cheap. Not accommodation, not food, not internal travel on any island, and not travel between islands. Perhaps if my time wasn't tight, I could wait until I could bum a ride on a fisherman's boat or a lazily wandering yachtee. To fly to and from the Marquesas and between the Marquesas islands will be a constant and large money drain. And I must make the decision soon as to where I will go, so that I can book accommodation. Already I am resigned to being in accommodation that won't suit me in some ways, but I cannot fork out $1000 a night - even if those over-the water-personal-bures are so fabulous in concept, privacy and look. Unless... my lottery ticket tonight comes up trumps. What to do - well ... there are archeological sites, there are extraordinary panoramas which can be walked to or reached by 4WD along tortuous mountain tracks, volcanic amphitheatres, there are sites devoted to local and regional history, there are some local food specialities, traditional villages where traditional crafts are still practiced for everyday living, long dropping waterfalls, islands where few tourists visit, helicopter rides to the inaccessible (few roads,)the water everywhere, and the opportunity to scuba dive and snorkel, and then there are sites associated with Gauguin. And on the Marquesas Islands, I have discovered there are guides I can access - so more research required about them. And then I need to research to see if the same opportunity exists back on the island of Tahiti, and nearby Moorea. Internet access is limited. So maybe less of my story can be blogged regularly. But it seems like the story will be rich and complex.