Takuu transport trials continue unabated

Well it is Monday the 29th and here we are in the Island paradise of Buka. The sun is shining, exotic birds are singing', happy young couples are walking hand in hand through the coconut groves and along the white sand beaches. There is power here so we are enjoying cocktails freshly made at the bar on the beach and the condensation on the frosty glasses sparkles like translucent pearls in the rich tropical sunlight.....

Actually no :-(

We are still on Nukutoa.... a storm has been raging for a few days meaning we are out of solar power and have had to borrow a generator while we wait for the Sankamap to return from Tasman Island where it has been since about last Wednesday or Thursday. First the boat stayed a night at Tasman as it always does and should have left the next day, then there was a party so they stayed another night (most of the crew are from Tasman), then they developed engine trouble and stayed another night then the engine trouble mysteriously went away much like those mysterious headaches one gets after consuming lots of alcoholic beverages. Then it was raining so they couldn't load the cargo. Now finally they're ready go the next day except now the storm is upon them.

Yesterday (Sunday) they tried to load the ship but must’ve failed due to the weather. Overnight they lost all three of the ship’s anchors so now the boat can't keep in position for people to board. Apparently it has to leave the choppy Tasman lagoon and go into the ocean where it will wait for the passengers to come out over the reef in small boats and board the ship in the gentler ocean swells. Going over the reef is no small feat. According to Richard you stand in waist deep water beside your boat on the lagoon side of the reef then when the boat driver feels there is a gap in the breakers everyone clambers in and you head full speed through the waves to the Pacific Ocean beyond.

If this happens successfully today at Tasman the ship will begin the 24 hour trip to Takuu (that's traveling at 6 knots in fair conditions - it will probably be longer with the weather). If the lagoon is calm when it arrives in Takuu, the ship will come through the channel from the ocean and, unable to moor due to lack of anchors, it will steam slowly round the lagoon while we chase it in small fibreglass boats and attempt to board it while still moving....That's plan A.

Plan B (The B is for Ballsy): If the lagoon is choppy we will have to brave the reef as outlined above. Sponsors need have no fear though, because all the gear is insured....right Lyn??? (Ed’s note – yes, of course, absolutely).

Luckily my will is up to date. My sister Renee will do very well in the event of a reef crossing calamity, however I fear my wishes for my ashes may go unfulfilled ;-). I'm afraid Briar's next blog may have to be the bequeathing of her worldly possessions.

Meanwhile on Nukutoa Briar is making use of extra time here to get more of our footage translated (although I think our translator Sio is hiding from her) and we will have the chance tomorrow to film the kids back at school, which reopened today after the holidays. At the moment I'm being slowly asphyxiated as I type beside the smokey generator while keeping one eye on my lunch to make sure Briar's rat doesn't eat it.

After lunch Briar has organised to interview Apava, both the oldest and scariest man in the village; he's kind of a cross between Grandpa Sinpson and Hannibal Lector.

Anyway as this is probably my last blog ever and sometime either tomorrow or the next day my body will be dashed to a bloody pulp against the razor sharp coral lying beneath the monster waves that crash upon Takuu's outer reef (affectionately known as 'The Widowmaker'), I have to say to any rich, attractive girls reading who have unspoken desires for me, this may be your last chance to express your true feelings.... Well I'm not really expecting a huge response there, but it's worth a shot.

That is all for now....And perhaps forever..DUMMM DUMMM DUMMMMM (that's my dramatic music outro)

Zane out.


"The Widowmaker" and the wreck of the last ship that tried what we will attempt.

Testing

We appear to be experiencing technical difficulties adding new blog entries...please bear with us...

Briar and the Rat! And an update on the technical side of things..

Madness sets in on the Island!

Saturday week before last was the day of the big canoe launch. Satty (Sar-tea), one of our characters, has been rebuilding his family's ocean-going Vaka for some months and Saturday was the big day when all the men gathered to help him attach the new outrigger to the hull and then put it in the water for the first time. It was blowing a real gale and neither Briar nor I were feeling top notch after bad sleeps and, I suspect, a little dodgy food. We covered events as well as we could and then headed back to our house to get out of the approaching storm.

It was obvious the rest of the day was a write off for shooting as the rain began, so it was decided just to try and relax. This was all good for me as my feet were in their usual mess of grazes, cuts, bites and some time off them sounded great in terms of getting some healing done so I promptly curled up and went to sleep with the relaxing sound of a tropical rain pouring on our thatch roof.

"GO AWAY!" I'm jerked from a wonderful dream (something about eating ice-cream while having a cool breeze blowing in my face and an ice cold drink to sip....mmmmm ice) to find Briar at our desk quivering. She had been writing her upcoming novel when a rat had decided to check if we had left our usual smorgasboard of leftover breakfast tidbids for him. Briar needless to say wasn't in the right frame of mind for enquiring as to what our rodent friend wished to dine on this fine afternoon.

Once I worked out that Briar wasn't been dragged off for an arranged marriage or some bizarre Takuuan ritualistic ceremony I nodded off back to sleep, only to be woken half an hour later by another shriek of "GO AWAY!" Yanked again from sweet, sweet dreams I didn't bother to enquire as to the issue this time and nodded off only to be awoken again and again for the rest of the day by the growing conflict at the desk between girl and beast. It came to a head when I was awoken by a scream and an almost tearful young doco director telling me how the rat, (obviously realising the subtle foraging technique was going nowhere), had leapt onto the table and pounced right at her.

Outraged at this attempt of rodent assault I immediately took action...

and went back to sleep.

Meanwhile the rest of the village had to wonder what was happening in Zane and Briar's house with her regularly yelling "Go away!" and the terrified screaming. Richard the anthropologist and our next door neighbour enquired casually about it the next day and I explained the whole giant rat versus tiny girl battle that had raged through the day. He seemed relieved and mentioned he thought perhaps we were having a domestic dispute... I dread to think how many others came to this conclusion.

Richard's advice was that when working at the desk Briar should hold a big block of wood in her spare hand and be ready to smash the rat at the first sign of its whiskery snout appearing. It'll be messy but fix the problem he cheerfully explained.


Other news on the Island...All the gear so generously loaned for this trip continues to work faultlessly:


Above you can see Peter Fullerton's purpose made wonderbox at work helping convert the island's sunshine into much needed DC current.



Solar panel city, ours on the left Richard's on the right. The house in the background belongs to Avo the Paramount Chief of the Island.



The HVR-V1 at work filming another exciting event on Nukutoa


Setting up for a shot...Our house is in the background.

The brand spanking new Sony HVR-V1 HDV camera, which I believe is the first Sony HDV camera to offer 25 fps progressive shooting as an option (making it the perfect solution for a 35mm blow-up on a tight budget and for dealing with difficult shooting conditions) continues to crank through the footage. To date we have shot over eighty hours of tape with no complaints from the camera which we've grown to truly love. The design seems really well thought out and the quality of the build is wonderful - everyday the camera is exposed to lashings of coral sand, salt water and wind (but loving cleaned every night David and Shane!) however the snugness with which all its parts fit together makes it seemingly impervious to invasion by these foreign abrasives. The pictures look incredible on the monitors we have here and I can't wait to see them on the big screen in the grading suite at Images.

Working alongside the HVR-V1 in a grand display of intercorperation intergration is the Panasonic DVX-102B DV camera and the CF-29 Toughbook laptop. The DVX supplied by Oxfam is our back up camera for the HVR but is seeing use when we need two cameras as well as acting as a recorder and playback unit for our interpreter to play back footage that needs
translating. The camera continues to make me believe that this is probably the best handheld DV camera ever made and it will be interesting to see how the standard def pictures intercut with the high def ones being caught by the HVR.

Me at work on the Toughbook inside our house.

The Toughbook on which I'm typing this blog entry continues to live up to its name. It soldiers on heroically in conditions where other laptops would just curl up and die in fits of salt encrusted digital agony, and in conditions where every part of your body gushes sweat the idea of a splashproof keyboard is very reassuring! The computer handles all our email requirements once we connect it to our (or rather Richard's) satellite phone and we connect to the web at the screamingly fast rate of 10Kb/s... sorry a hint or sarcasm there I can't really complain as it is rather incredible to think we can send and recieve email from this location especially when you look how little gear is needed to do it! The Toughbook has also been used to do some editing - we made a three minute music vid using footage we have shot and played it back on the village TV for everyone to watch. It's slightly bizarre watching people sitting in the middle of a thatched house street under a starry sky watching a sequence you've cut to the tune of an old beach boys track... Bizarre but nice. The locals seemed to like it...although next time they insist we use local artists for the music! The Toughbook is also acting as a backup for our digital photos and is been used for translation; we captured source tapes in then taught our translator Sio how to use the video software and he sits with the laptop and the freedom of non-linear editing and works his way though the tapes translating sentence by sentence... After all that, if I'm bored I turn on the Toughbooks’s GPS and just check the Island hasn't moved! ;-)

Okay nearly ten pm must go for my shower under the stars and then get to bed...

Z

Tales from the toilets and other things part 2

From Zane

The question that has befuddled man throughout the ages: "Does a bear shit in the woods?". The answer seems obvious, "Yes" making the question purely rhetorical. However I can reveal from the island of Nukutoa, four degrees off the equator, that here the answer is "No!". Who does then? Well... Zane does! along with the two hundred or so other men on the Island.

What am I on about? Well most people I discussed the trip with seemed quite curious about what the toilet arrangements would be. Basically while the women go in the channel between Nukutoa and the island to the north (all the Islands on the atoll can be walked to as the water is only thigh high at low tide) the men have our own toilet island. If you look at the googleearth shot you will see on the Eastern extremity of the Island a group of trees joined to the Island by a narrow causeway that is submerged at high tide.



Whenever the urge strikes (I enjoy it about 6.30am) I stroll down to the woods on the point (toilet paper discretely in bum bag, no pun intended), find a nice group of trees and a nice view out to sea and then hoist up my lap lap..... sweet sweet relief. My only objection is the highly efficient squatting position makes the joyful experience all too quick. Then overnight the combination of heat, rain, bugs, wind and sun break down whatever is deposited and my favourite spot is generally fresh for more action the next morning.

Ahhh the island life.

Anyway here we are after nearly three weeks on the Island, Briar and I are now officially married in Island terms; it seems all you need to do here is for the guy to spend a few nights in the woman's hut and voila! We are however confusing the locals with our flexible gender roles....I don't think the men were impressed today to see me doing Briar's laundry!

Week one was all about trying to cover the rush of ceremonies and local events while trying to deal with the climate and about a million different things happening to my poor skin... cut feet, sunburn, heat rash, chaffing, prickly heat, mountains of sweat (which makes operating a camera very uncomfortable!) and just to really make me happy some jelly fish stings up my legs and arms...sigh, 'twas expected but still rough. However that all sounds dreary when most of the first week was actually amazing. We were given a veritable palace to call home complete with western style beds (i.e. not on the floor) and a lockable closet for the gear. We are on the western coast of the Island and five big steps from the back door would get you in the water at high tide (11 at low tide). The food has been incredible and plentiful and the couple Sio and Sini who have given up their house for our stay are really lovely and always keep an eye out for us. Every night when we arrive home from shooting a hot dinner is on the table (fried turtle and steamed sweet potato tonight and as usual enough to feed six people) and our kerosene lamp is lit. It gets dark here by six and if we're not home a search party usually goes out!

The effects of the rising sea level here are immediately obvious and quite severe and claims that the Island was a metre above sea level I now see were slightly exaggerated. The Island is about 90cm above high water by my reckoning. I have attached a couple of photos for this blog entry. This first one shows the high tide very close to going into the island's schoolgrounds - the building with the tin roof is one of the classrooms. The land level you can see is pretty much as high as the rest of the Island...With the right winds the water has flowed through here in the past.



These next two photos show the island's west coast in the 1970's and now.





Now the present day shot is at high tide while the archive may not be, so it is not necessarily a fair comparison. I will, however, try and get a shot at low tide soon that will show that, regardless of the water level, the damage by the sea levels is immense. The white sand beach along the coast in the 70's is no longer here - instead the underlying jagged coral is now exposed in its place.

People here put the issue largely to the back of their minds and while they are happy we are here making a film the attitude is generally that they'll deal with the crisis when it reaches crisis point....I find nothing too peculiar about this as I think all societies act this way, especially ours, in that no one really deals with problems no matter how serious until the problem encroaches enough to make ignoring it not an option. For the moment people here can ignore the issue as it's not quite a day-to-day hindrance to them in any way (although a few times a year it becomes an issue). For now they sit and hope that someone with the knowledge and resources will come and guide them through.

Power is running low so I'm going to cut this short for the sake of charging our camera batteries. Next update I'll talk a little about the gear and how it is holding up. I'll end this one by saying a big thank you to Pete Fullerton who helped me wire up the electrics before I left and so far it's been working a treat... more thank-yous to come in future entries.

Mum I'm still alive and will call soon by sat phone.

Happy New Year to all.

Zane gets tricky with technology

Zane writes:

Experimenting here with sending some small photos.

One is of Briar and the ladies next door celebrating their identical
laplaps, the house they're in front of is Richard's pad. These ladies also
play a part in making our food.



The other photo is of two of our favourite people; Manoni and his aunty
Rose. Rose is one of of our main caregivers and a wonderful chef. Manoni is
our shadow about the village and has the habit of singing to himself at high
volume.



The photo was taken at sunset about 10 metres from the backdoor of our
house. We usually go for an unwind swim at this time of day.

More later..