able to say that, but the truth is that it all came about by accident â literally. In the autumn of 1990 I was taking a termâs sabbatical leave and had arranged to spend part of it at the University of Washington in Seattle and the rest in Melbourne, Australia. This meant crossing the Pacific and, since I had never seen a tropical island before, I scheduled stop-overs in Hawaii and in a place called Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. I had never heard of Rarotonga, and only very vaguely of the Cook Islands for that matter, but it fitted into the flight schedules more conveniently than the better-known alternatives of Tahiti or Fiji.
It also had more by way of contrast to offer. Hawaii is certainly tropical and very beautiful, but at least around the capital, Honolulu, on Oahu there is no doubt at all that you are still very much in America with high-rise, pizza and pet cemeteries. Landing in Rarotonga is a very different cultural experience altogether. There are no luggage carousels: you just pick up your bags from a pile. A man with a guitar is singing a welcoming song as if he means it, which is impressive at four oâclock in the morning. And then there was Malcolm. Cheery and ruddy-faced, Malcolm Laxton-Blinkhorn is English, but nowhere near as grand as his name suggests. He has had what might be called a varied career â marine commando, sheep farmer, actor, television producerâ¦and now hotelier in Rarotonga, having married a local girl. Although his hotel was on the beach at the other side of the island, Rarotonga being only 26 miles round it didnât take us long to get there. It was still dark, but who could resist going down to the waterâs edge and just sitting? Slowly I become aware that it is not as quiet as it should be. There is a distant but persistent low roar, like a busy motorway a mile or two off. But there are virtually no cars on the island and certainly no motorways. The sound I hear is the ocean. As the light grows I can make out a thin white line near the horizon. This is where the swell of the ocean, even on calm days like today, pounds into the coral reef that surrounds and protects the island.
My plan was to spend just a few days on Rarotonga before going on to Melbourne and carrying on with my work. Like most visitors I hired a small motorcycle, took my driving test, which consisted of riding 50 yards up the road and back to the police station, got my driving licence and set off. Straight into a palm tree. I broke my shoulder. I couldnât leave the island until it had set. Several weeks, I was told. So I settled in for a long stay.
Rarotonga is the main island of the Southern Cooks, a widely scattered archipelago seven hundred miles to the west of Tahiti. The islands get their name from Captain James Cook, the eighteenth-century English navigator, whose portrait (and it always seems to be the same one) is everywhere on the island, even fixing you with his inscrutable gaze as you down a bottle of Cook Islands lager. Though Cook explored many of the islands in the group he inexplicably failed to sight Rarotonga, though it is the largest of the Cooks and rises to 650 metres. The honour of being the first Europeans to land on Rarotonga went to the mutineers of HMS Bounty , who in 1789 stopped on their way to the even more remote Pitcairn Island in their search for a refuge far away from the long arm of the British navy. Today the Cook Islands are internally self-governing, allied with New Zealand in foreign affairs and defence; but they were once a British protectorate and are still a member of the Commonwealth. Even though I doubt whether one in a hundred English people have ever heard of the Cook Islands, the islanders still retain some of the customs of their former colonial patrons. With a lot of time on my hands, and my arm in a sling, I went along to hear a debate in the Cook Islands parliament. The parliament building may only have been a set of corrugated iron
It also had more by way of contrast to offer. Hawaii is certainly tropical and very beautiful, but at least around the capital, Honolulu, on Oahu there is no doubt at all that you are still very much in America with high-rise, pizza and pet cemeteries. Landing in Rarotonga is a very different cultural experience altogether. There are no luggage carousels: you just pick up your bags from a pile. A man with a guitar is singing a welcoming song as if he means it, which is impressive at four oâclock in the morning. And then there was Malcolm. Cheery and ruddy-faced, Malcolm Laxton-Blinkhorn is English, but nowhere near as grand as his name suggests. He has had what might be called a varied career â marine commando, sheep farmer, actor, television producerâ¦and now hotelier in Rarotonga, having married a local girl. Although his hotel was on the beach at the other side of the island, Rarotonga being only 26 miles round it didnât take us long to get there. It was still dark, but who could resist going down to the waterâs edge and just sitting? Slowly I become aware that it is not as quiet as it should be. There is a distant but persistent low roar, like a busy motorway a mile or two off. But there are virtually no cars on the island and certainly no motorways. The sound I hear is the ocean. As the light grows I can make out a thin white line near the horizon. This is where the swell of the ocean, even on calm days like today, pounds into the coral reef that surrounds and protects the island.
My plan was to spend just a few days on Rarotonga before going on to Melbourne and carrying on with my work. Like most visitors I hired a small motorcycle, took my driving test, which consisted of riding 50 yards up the road and back to the police station, got my driving licence and set off. Straight into a palm tree. I broke my shoulder. I couldnât leave the island until it had set. Several weeks, I was told. So I settled in for a long stay.
Rarotonga is the main island of the Southern Cooks, a widely scattered archipelago seven hundred miles to the west of Tahiti. The islands get their name from Captain James Cook, the eighteenth-century English navigator, whose portrait (and it always seems to be the same one) is everywhere on the island, even fixing you with his inscrutable gaze as you down a bottle of Cook Islands lager. Though Cook explored many of the islands in the group he inexplicably failed to sight Rarotonga, though it is the largest of the Cooks and rises to 650 metres. The honour of being the first Europeans to land on Rarotonga went to the mutineers of HMS Bounty , who in 1789 stopped on their way to the even more remote Pitcairn Island in their search for a refuge far away from the long arm of the British navy. Today the Cook Islands are internally self-governing, allied with New Zealand in foreign affairs and defence; but they were once a British protectorate and are still a member of the Commonwealth. Even though I doubt whether one in a hundred English people have ever heard of the Cook Islands, the islanders still retain some of the customs of their former colonial patrons. With a lot of time on my hands, and my arm in a sling, I went along to hear a debate in the Cook Islands parliament. The parliament building may only have been a set of corrugated iron
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