Makira

Last edited: February 06, 2002   (C)  Under construction  The Santa Ana page

A lovely station, laid out almost like a park, with a huge collection tropical trees from around the world, like an aboretum, which it could have been.  Here you see the office and court house and various appendages.. The beach was slight and stony, a small bight, with no wharf, but also no coral, so the vessels anchored off and had to run for shelter if there was a storm.  I was posted here from Tulagi, under the lord high mighty suzerainty of D.C. Central, then occupied by a man with the highly significant name of Crass. It was here that Betty joined me for my last year, and it was from here that the Masinga Rule movement touched me on Ulawa, then within my territory,  although it was geographically close to Malaita. And it was from here, via Honiara, that I left to become, what? An anthropologist.

Chinese quarters

and the river

George, my highly regarded cook, SSEM adherent who read his bible with glasses on upside down, was with me right from the beginning and we knew each other's ways. Alas at some festival Betty found him boiling the hen with all its innards inside and lost her cool, which required some patience to fix.  The laundry man from Ontong Java, a nice fellow, also fell out and in tears handed in his resignation - doing things the Missus' way was not in hic book of instructions.  Frank, whom I did not know really well, was a friend of George who took the place.

It was not by any means all a sedentary life with pink gins and stuff. One trek across the island  was as we used to do in the ranges in New Zealand -- up rivers and down them, cross them and recross them. I found Makira far less difficult to cross than was Santa Ysabel, and Betty managed to get in one trek.

When we eventually leave there is a feast gathering.  The tonal music of the drum orchestra was accompanied by the principal drummer miming an invasion of ants up his body as he performed - a riotous gig.  I had acquired a goat for milk, and gave it to a nearby village for the same purpose.  I'll bet it was slaughtered for meat the moment I left.....  Too bad the negative is so dark.

It happens to be my wife Betty, who arrived just months before we left,  in the canoe, as we depart on village visits.

Bringing a slit gong to the station.

The Chinese quarters on the station.

The Catholic missionaries at Wainoni bid us farewell

Ka Tesi, a nurse, on the Veronica, one of the vessels occasionally at my disposal.

A view of Makira from the mission steamer Southern Cross