Up Front

with the Editor

Despite a certain air of finality in Patricia Matheson’s report on p 5, I’m hopeful that Captain Alejandro Malaspina’s bottle may yet be re covered from that tiny islet in Vavau’s superb harbour. No buried treasure story ought to be blown out so quickly, and especially one that has taken 168 years to get attention.

Malaspina, last of the great Spanish navigators, buried his bottle on the unnamed islet in 1793 after planting the Spanish flag that annexed Vavau to Spain. The captain and his two ships, Descubierta and Atrevida, then sailed out of history, to be ignored for the next 50 years, until an edited version of some of Mala spina’s travels was published, in Spanish.

Believe it or not, but the first ac count in English of Malaspina’s Vavau exploits, including the bottle burying episode, appeared in PIM in February, 1962. It was written by Robert Langdon, now executive officer of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Australian National Uni versity, but then PlM’s assistant editor. Bob is fluent in Spanish in addition to being a bull terrier at Pacific research. Bob learned that the bottle had been buried on the islet beneath a tent the Spaniards used as an observatory.

There were no precise details in the available Malaspina documents to indicate just where the unnamed islet was, but we were entitled to assume it was in the area of Port Refuge, named by Malaspina’s colleague, Maurelle, who had discovered Vavau for the white world 12 years earlier.

Malaspina was in fact consolidating Maurelle’s work.

Just before PlM’s story was pub lished in 1962, Bob and I showed a copy of the typescript to the Hon Ve’ehala, then secretary of the Tongan Tradition Committee and now Governor of Haapai, who hap pened to be in Sydney on a visit with the late Queen Salote. We gave Ve’ehala a sketch of where we thought the islet was, and suggested

an official Tongan expedition be mounted to search and dig for this bit of history.

Ve’ehala was fascinated, Queen Salote was amused (“We can’t have Spain claiming our northern islands,” she said jokingly), but Tonga de cided not to take the matter any further. I don’t know who made the decision, or whether it was simply that other things in Tonga were more urgent at the time.

We here on PIM had a hankering over the next few years to go and search for that bottle, especially after I stumbled on a drawing of the treasure spot. I happened to be look ing through part of a collection of drawings held by the National Library of Australia in Canberra (in those days the library had no grand building as it has now, and the material was stored in a tin shed), and 1 identified a contemporary drawing of Malaspina’s two ships in Port Refuge, with what had to be THE island nearby, showing the very tent under which we knew the bottle to be buried. The library was almost as pleased as we were at having the Malaspina drawing identified and pre sented PIM with a large copy of it, from which our reproduction on p 5 was made.

In June this year I was in Tonga, with my wife Jo, and thought I might try to identify the island. I took copies of the Malaspina draw ing with me, and recounted the Mala spina story to King Taufa’ahau in a pleasant audience he gave us.

King Taufa’ahau is deservedly noted for his wide range of interests, and his enthusiasm, and he was not only willing for me to “scratch around a bit”, he was prepared to do some treasure hunting of his own when he visited Vavau to open the Agricultural Show in September, and to actually dig for the bottle once the site was identified. You can’t get more help than that!

So Jo and I visited that glorious harbour of Vavau which Malaspina “annexed” in 1793, and there we saw

ny old friend Patricia Matheson, in ler lovely waterside house that over lows with books and good conversa ion. The whole world comes to Pat hrough a continuous supply of )ooks, and letters from her many fiends. As luck had it, also in the larbour was the 70 ft White Squall I, with Ross and Minene Norgrove, vhom 1 had last met in Tahiti. So vith the generous help, on the first lay, of one of the Port of Refuge iotel’s fast speedboats, and, on the iecond day, of White Squall, we sur veyed the outer bays until we decided mr bottle island had to be one of wo high coral outcrops, each within i boat’s length of the shore on one ide, but with deep water on the ither.

Pat and I climbed them both. We till have coral scratches to prove it.

Ve decided that the second of the wo islets showed faint signs of laving at some distant time received pedal attention. The top was over sown with scrub, small trees and r ines, but it seemed that at one time t may have been roughly levelled vith picks to make room for the tents —just as Malaspina’s islet had been.

Ve also thought we found the site if Malaspina’s forge which was mown to be on the islet.

The thrill came when we took Vhite Squall up the coast and re raced Malaspina’s entry to Vavau, ising a spoken translation of his □urnal which had laboriously been iut on tape the previous evening by he enthusiastic, Spanish - speaking dinene. Following Malaspina’s own [irections, White Squall dropped nchor just where Malaspina’s flagship ad anchored, and found the same lepth to the same sandy bottom! by studying our copy of the fawing, there was no doubt now hat we were in Port Refuge and we ad correctly identified Bottle Island.

We contentedly left the next moves 3 the king, after I reported our xperiences to him.

As Pat reports in her story on p 5, he king expended his efforts in Sepaltering his show schedule and lead the treasure hunt. Although he bottle was not found, there were igns, I believe, that identify the tent ite, and the bottle might yet be un overed. The search party included, esides Pat, lan Mclntyre, general lanager of Pacific Resorts, owners f the Port of Refuge Hotel, who lappens to be a first-rate photo rapher. lan went along at the king’s ivitation to keep a pictorial record, nd he tells me that on one side of le islet a group of diggers un overed, in the coral, five holes laced in a square, with another irger hole in the centre. The holes

were filled with small stones, and they didn’t dig them all out. Ian’s view is that the central hole probably held a flag pole, and that the five outside holes held the stays which kept it up, but I think it is far more likely that this was the site of the main tent, and that the tent pole went into that centre hole. I hope some more work is done on this possibility.

But meanwhile, as Pat says in her report, thanks to the king Tongans have discovered another aspect of their history, and identified another historic landmark. What was just a coral outcrop that nobody noticed, now has a place in the history of Tongan exploration. It is accessible to visitors, who can tread the very spot the Spaniards trod, and enjoy the same scene, unspoiled to this day.

THAT report about Norfolk Island affairs on p 13 looks like a com plicated commercial wrangle, but it has a simple base. The island was once a “distinct and separate settle ment”; the islanders don’t really be lieve it is anything else today, and they are defiant at any move, from any direction, to impose authority on them without what they consider to be proper consultation. Constitu tionally, Norfolk Island is neither fish nor fowl, and until the Australian Government announces clearly, un equivocally what real responsibility the islanders have, if any, Australia will continue to have Norfolk Island in revolt over some issue or other.

Oapua New Guinea, On The

* other hand, is getting too much attention from Australia—most of it destructively critical. It’s almost as if, after decades of Australian ad ministration, Australians have sud denly dismissed Papua New Guinea as “something nothing”; a land of savages whose future is chaos. To read Australian newspapers, to view television commentaries, to listen to radio broadcasts of parliament, a visitor could believe New Guineans are about to embark on civil war, throw out the whites and take over commerce, and that the only “goody” in the country, Michael Somare, is powerless against the forces of evil.

Ratbag nonsense! There will be nothing the matter with New Guinea’s team of leaders and its people during the forthcoming moves to indepen dence that can’t be smoothed by the support of a genuine vote of confi dence, friendship and understanding from Australian commerce, politi cians, writers and the man-in-the street. Do all these people want to see New Guinea fall on its face?

Stuart Inder