The Years Have Brought Many Changes

Some Reminiscences of an Islands Skipper

By Captain W. J. Buckley

MY first sight of the Santa Cruz Islands, of which I was to see a good deal in later years, was from the deck of the schooner Lindsay , ten days out of Sydney, with only a glimpse of the Mellish Reef en route.

Vanikoro was in sight by the 10th evening and the following morning we anchored in Pau Harbour.

The history books tell us how Quiros first discovered these Islands, of how he made attempts to settle at Graciosa Bay, Ndendi Island, of how his crew mutinied, of the abandonment of his settle ment and the return to Peru; and of how, a 100 years later, La Perouse and his men perished there.

The passage through the reefs that La Perouse is believed to have taken is what is now known as Blind Passage, though then it was evidently navigable. There in Pau Harbour he repaired his ships with the excellent kauri timber which is now exploited commercially, but there, too, the ships ended their days, evidently blown ashore.

Looking down from the hills of Vanikoro on a clear sunny day, one can see the coral bottom in the Passage. In one place the growing coral forms the shape of a ship.

During my many years in the Santa Cruz, I often came across relics of the old navigators. In a village on Ndendi I saw a native cracking coconuts with a bronze sword hilt. He had owned it for a number of years; it had been handed down to him from his father. It was obviously the hilt of a Spanish sword.

At Vanikoro there was a large sheet of beaten copper in a tambu house, which had been there lor countless years. It was looked upon by the old natives as sacred but the younger generation knew noth ing of its origin. A friend of mine acquired it for a few sticks of to bacco and had it fashioned into a large dinner gong. It no doubt

belonged to the La Perouse ships.

Silver coins have been found dating back to Charles I of Spain.

According to Captain Dillon’s re port of his search for traces of the La Perouse expedition, the islands of the Santa Cruz Group were then densely populated. On my first visit in 1909, the population was estimated to be about 20,000 and was a great hunting ground for labour recruits.

But in 1932, when I helped to take a census of the Group, there were only 48 natives living on Vanikoro, and they had not been born on the island. The Vanikoro natives had completely died out through tribal wars, European-introduced diseases, and black-birding.

On Ndendi, the largest island, there were 1,600 people in 1932, where in 1908 there had been be tween 5,000 and 6,000. On one re cruiting trip in 1912 I obtained a full ship and the people asked me to take more. Returning some time later to that village I found that they had all died in a dysentery out break. I believe that in a few years the Sana Cruz natives will be extinct.

Quite the reverse is the case in another Solomon Island. In 1932, on my last visit to Tikopia, 90 miles south-east of Vanikoro, the popula tion there was 16,000 and the people had strict laws to control the further increase in population on the crowded island. The word of the three chiefs was law. Only one son of a family could marry.

A man caught in adultery was put in a canoe with no paddles, given a few coconuts, and set adrift. If the canoe were blown back, well and good, but it rarely was. On my way to the Solomons in my schooner I once picked up such a castaway 100 miles from Tikopia and in a very bad way, having drifted for days.

He was returned to his homeland some months later, but his relatives had to pay the chief before he was allowed to remain.

There was once a populated island about 40 miles to the north of the Duff Islands, from where canoes used to come visiting. About 1880, at the same time as the volcanic island of Tinakula appeared, this other island disappeared, complete with population, when a seismic wave swept the area. To-day there is about 7 fathoms of water in that area.

Thirty years ago the people in the Shortland Islands, Solomons, had some strange customs. One was known as Ha-a-ariro, or the leading

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away of ghosts. When a person died the body was usually painted with a red clay called moamoa in order to lessen the odour. Then on suc cessive nights the body was taken to the houses of various relatives, before finally being taken to the burial ground and covered with coconut fronds for the night. By next day the ghosts had departed, the body was embalmed and buried.

On Malaita in those days the only ways a young man could win an attractive girl were either by being a skilled dancer, or by possessing a trophy of one or more human skulls as a token of personal bravery. fl Mr. C. J. Hammett, Acting Puisne Judge, Fiji, returned with his family to the colony from leave in the UK in December.