Island hop

Books

Roughing It on a trans-Pacific Island hop

Across the South Pacific Island-Hopping from Santiago to Sydney. By lain Finlay and Trish Sheppard. Published by Angus & Robertson Pub lishers, Sydney. 1981. xxi, 245 pp. Hardback 5A15.95. ISBN 0 207 14824 4.

When trained observers such as lain Finlay and Trish Sheppard attempt to cover the islands of the South Pacific in four months and 245 pages, the result is not the superficial travelogue it might well have turned out. In deft strokes and spare prose, Finlay and Shep pard have somehow managed to evoke the essence of the islands they and their two children visited. They suggest without insisting. Compressed knobs of information are casually inter woven into the tale of a family trek across the Pacific.

Both authors are long-time journalists, and both are novel ists. In addition lain who served as foreign correspondent in Southeast Asia in the ’7os is widely known in Australia as reporter and host on current affairs radio and TV.

In Across the South Pacific Sheppard’s and Finlay’s view points are interspersed. Finlay’s comments are printed in bold, sans-serif type. This device was used in their earlier travel books, Africa Overland and South America Overland. ‘Travel is something of a drug .. . and both of us are equally addicted’, they admit. To be part of it, not apart from it’ was their philosophy as they made their way across 20 000 kilo metres of ocean by plane and copra boat, from Easter Island to New Caledonia with stops in Tahiti, Rangiroa, Moorea, Borabora, Huahine, Raiatea, Rarotonga, Mitiaro, Aitutaki, Manihiki, Rakahanga, Upolu, Tutuila, Tongatapu, Viti Levu, Vanua Levu, Taveuni, Ovalau and Efate. Those of us who have travelled among the Islands will

delight in the couple’s ability to depict a scene and way of life through a few brief anecdotes, a smattering of characterisations and the minimum of descriptive passages.

The Finlays’ voyage was lim ited by the restrictions of public transport. They were frequently forced to cut short their stay because of the imminent de parture of the only plane or boat for weeks or months. A family cruise on a yacht would have suited them better. But their 4000-kilometre passage through the northern Cooks and on to Western Samoa as deck passen gers on the MV Mataora the name means ‘happiness’ stocked up with vast quantities of seasick tablets, sardines and cabin biscuits, perhaps cured them of that dream for good.

Though the Finlay family had to watch their pennies, though they went through bad moments when they realised how low their funds had ebbed, they always make sure they get their money’s worth. In tropical downpours they take off their shoes and go on barefoot explo rations; or they snorkel in the rain to watch with open eyes the raindrops piercing the water.

The two children take part in their parents’ good-humoured rambles, and little by little their personalities are revealed.

As for Trish, she says, T tend to go off my brain when let loose in the tropics. My movements slow, my limbs loosen, yet I also feel super-charged, larger than life’. She tells us she was ‘born with a void instead of a soul’.

But she is able to share with us a double rainbow on Christmas morning, and the sun penetrat ing the forest ‘in fine shafts, smooth and strong enough for a fairy to slide down’. We end up with a kaleidoscope of colour, sound, sensation, smell and taste, a feeling for the vastness of the Pacific, and a better understanding of the complex

story of its peoples.

Jane

DeRidder.