I'm afraid I haven't really been around for the past few days, and I missed AnnaS' original post.

As any glance at a map of the Micronesian region of the Pacific will tell you, Tuvalu is a few atolls spread out north/south with a trend from the south-east to the north-west. It was part of the Gilbert and Ellice Island group (the Gilberts) prior to "independence" from the nominal suzerainty of Australia via Britain. It had been a British colony since about the 1880s, but don't quote me on the decade. May have been the 1890s.

The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were "ruled", if that is an appropriate word, from Ocean Island (Banaba) by a Commissioner for several decades, and mostly the British and Gilbertese/Ellice Islanders rubbed along pretty well. The colony prison was on Ocean Island, and many a wife or husband who wanted a holiday from his/her family committed some offence precisely calculated to guarantee a sentence from the District Officer which coincided, length-wise, with the length of time the offender wished to be away.

The main economic export in the early years was guano. Ocean Island and Nauru were literally covered in it, and the New Zealand and Australian phosphate ships literally carted the islands away. Australia has paid reparations and done some restoration work on Nauru, but I'm not sure about Ocean Island. That stopped less than 30 years ago - I still remember the phosphate ships from Nauru arriving at Dunedin. The other economic mainstay is copra, and the market for that is, shall we say, not overheated. They also, as Max pointed out, sell anything they can which the world wants. If it's .tv, then .tv can go!

Most Americans and Japanese will have heard of Tarawa, which is the main island in the Gilberts (Kiribati). And Christmas Island, of course, was used as a nuclear test site. No doubt the fact that the atolls are sinking is blamed by some on that.

If you want to know what it's like on the islands now, look at the websites. If you want to know what it was like at the turn of the 20th century, read "A Pattern of Islands" by Arthur Grimble. Grimble was a District Officer in the G&Es for years and eventually became the Commissioner. He loved the place and the people, and I think the feeling was pretty much reciprocated. He wrote two books about the G&Es, the second being "Return to the Islands".

The islands are nominally independent, but as Max has hinted, that independence is propped up pretty much by New Zealand and Australia, which mostly try to be good Pacific citizens to our island neighbours. Especially if it means they don't emigrate to South Auckland. However, it's a sad fact that there are more Cook Islanders (next door to Kiribas and Tuvalu) in Auckland that there are in the Cooks. Same for Niue. Pretty much getting that way for Samoa. And now it looks like Tuvalu will pack up lock stock and barrel and head Aucklandwards. It'll probably work out cheaper for NZ than supporting them in the islands.

Being posted to Tarawa for a New Zealand diplomat has much the same connotations as for someone in the American military being posted to Alaska ... you wonder who you offended. There's nothing to do, and nowhere to do even that nothing. I think it's the only place in the world where the NZ High Commissioner's main vehicle is an outboard dinghy. The kids there still play in the wreckage of tanks and landing craft, and the place is pretty much a tip. Yuck.

But it's peaceful and the beaches away from the main islands are great. Unpolluted. Well, except for plastic bottles and fishing floats, I suppose.


The idiot also known as Capfka ...