Finally settled in Melbourne

We have been up all night watching the football on TV and are looking forward to another England game tonight at 2am. It is odd sitting up in a quiet and darkened house watching the games but I wouldn't miss it for the world. The World Cup is simply amazing. Both Ellen and I have caught colds and so we're looking after ourselves with porridge and soup and fruit. I will be in bed by 6pm this evening! Work is so easy it is no problem to arrive there after being up all night, as long as I go to bed as soon as I get home at 4pm and sleep until 12am. It's only for another two weeks and then the Cup is over. I am earning quite well and really hope to save some up for a rainy day, I must stop just saying so and start doing it, but so far it's been too tempting to enjoy Melbourne's great restaurants and bars!

We are living in a big house next to a park in a leafy suburb just north of the central business district. It's a four month let which is perfect to get settled in and then move in somewhere else more permanent, but if we are asked to stay we probably will - it is lovely here. I get a tram or a train into town every morning to work at the Justice Department of the Goverment of Victoria. It's very basic stuff indeed and I am already doing more than is expected of me. The rules say I can only stay in one job for three months on my current visa, so I will be moving around a lot, and that's both a good and a bad thing I suppose.

Healsville Wildlife Sanctuary

The week we arrived in Melbourne our new housemate Liz was kind enough to drive us to a nearby wildlife preserve to see some of Australia's unique marsupial animals and amazing birdlife. The land which is now the State of Victoria has a lot of marsh and wetland, and it suffers cold winters and hot summers, which is reflected in the range and types of creatures found here. Ofcourse much of their habitat is now farmland and so preserves like this are vital to their survival. The preserve also has an excellent animal hospital where we saw live operations taking place.

A Wallaby and a POM

A buzzard using a stone to break a dummy Emu egg.
Apparently this is an instinctive behaviour.

A pair of Kookaburra

This guy needs no introduction!
Koala's are related to the dreaded 'ninja drop-bears'.

A Tasmanian Devil, no less.
Apparently once common on mainland Oz too.
Their name comes from the screaching noise they make when upset.

Wombats are excitable little things. This guy was running all over the pen and even trying to climb out.

Dingoes arrived with Austronesian traders around 3000BC.
They are descended from the Indian Wolf and are not marsupial.

A weekend with the Protect Kaho'olawe Ohana

entry three

Today, the hale hale pouhaku had to be moved from the kai to the site of the hale. Craig, the man in charge of building, placed a kapu aloha on all negative talk and distraction, so that the work would be done well and the pouhaku (stones) granted mana. We cleansed ourselves in the ocean as the sun came up before eating a good breakfast. From there we made a line on the beach, stretching from the foreshore, to pass rocks along between us hand to hand.

Ellen stayed at home and started to make a gift to give to the builders of the hale. She felt full of allergy and her eyes hurt to open. Living naturally so close to the earth and sky is not all wonder and excitement. She ate breakfast at home and only just made it out to lunch.

The line didn't quite stretch the whole way to the hale and so after an hour's work we moved the the line and ferried those same rocks the last hundred yards. There was a lot of good concentration and the mana flowed well between us, even when the people were throwing and not simply passing the stones. After lunch we worked again. Uncle Maka and Craig raised poles and braced them in the ground with our pouhaku. We made a surprisingly small dent in the need for rocks.

This afternoon the men and women separated to do their own things, as per Hawai'ian custom, and to talk story to each other. We continued to carry rocks for an hour or so, just the men, and then Kawai showed us a game called Hakoko - a type of Hawai'ian wrestling. The two men slap hands before the referee shouts "O - O - O'ie", they use open hands to grapple and unbalance their opponent. Only the soles of the feet must touch the ground and no head holds are allowed. There is a limiting perimeter with a diameter of only a man's height, and so bouts are over quickly, one way or another. Some of us were a little nervous to start but soon realised it was a very fun game. Everybody wrestled in a round-robin, starting with the low weights and the winner staying on. The game is about strength, balance and technique. I won one round and lost three. The purpose of all this appeared to be to prepare us for a fight, to sort out the pecking order, and to bond us together. We all felt happier and more like brothers after the game.

The group of us also had the opportunity to talk a little about culture. John shared with us the idea of what is pono and what is not pono, what is right to do in life and what is not. He also explained how the Kaho'olawe project is connected to the effort to promote Hawai'ian values and lifestyles alongside the American culture. John explained the process using sand on the beach to show the difference between linear western-style progression in life, and his conception of concentric circular learning in a traditional Hawai'ian way.

After our man-time we went to the hale and helped build by filling in cracks with ili'ili, little round stones to wedge between the larger ones. Each pou (pole) sits on top of a kumupouhaku to let the rain run off, and fish and leaves are placed around on which the base rocks sit. It was a good deal of effort to get the pou in line and straight whilst placing the rocks. Patience is the key!

I went bathing with the kua after that and jumped off a rock into high surf. It felt like being in a washing machine, but strangely I was comforted by the sea, held up by it. It was hardest getting out, where the wave brought you up to a rock and the idea was you just stepped up on to it. In the end Kawai literally plucked me out of the ocean to safety. Being there was a thrill and an honour, amongst these men so at ease with the land and sea.

Each evening of the trip we had spoken together after dinner and on this last night we talked about how we felt and about what we had learned on the trip. To hear the shared love and the enjoyment in people's words was a joy, and reassuring, if only to give thanks to the people whom had brought us to the island. We had developed a sense of family, although one of the biggest lessons I had learned was the value of knowing where your home is and gathering knowledge about it, as opposed to going elsewhere to discover or to study places overseas. I know both these processes have their place, and they have both certainly shaped Kaho'olawe and its people, for better or worse.

A weekend with the Protect Kaho'olawe Ohana

entry two

Going to bed early the first night meant I had missed an important getting-to-know-you opportunity with the group. It also meant I got more sleep than everybody else. Waking up there on the island came with a magical feeling of excitement and enchantment, which carried us, dreamlike, to the gathering place at the sound of the pu. These instruments cried to us, from across the camp, calling us to come, to get up and to get ready. There were two or three, conches you might call them, but here they are pu, and sound like flutes or miniature bugles. Certainly enough to wake you, but perhaps my enjoyment of the dawn and the sound of the pu had more to do with my straight eight hours than anything else. Certainly there were others less enchanted than I.


Before dawn we gathered to greet the sun:

E ala e!
Ka la i ka hikina
i ka moana
ka moana hohonu
Pi'i ka lewa
ka lewa nu'u
i ka hikina
aia a ka la!
E ala e!

Arise
The sun in the east!
in the ocean
the deep dark ocean
Climb into the sky
the highest level of the sky
in the east
there is the sun
Arise!

We leave then, for our full day's hike. The ground is bruised and cracked; damaged by erosion after over-grazing by domestic animals and intensive bombing by the military. Scrub lies close to the ground and in clumps, holding the earth together here and there. Kiawe trees grow in the shallow valleys on either side of us and below the ridge we climb, taking just over an hour, to the top. From here it is all downhill to pua'iwi and the bell stone where we process barefoot in accordance with ritual, meditating, and hear from the Kua about the gods and the people of the land. It is 9am. On this promontory overlooking a wide ocean and Maui to the North, sat the navigators who learned to travel by sea to neighbouring islands and to Tahiti. Here also worshipped the people speaking to the land using the bell stone which resonates when struck, a sort of a drum that would murmur on the wind.


The group splits up and I go with the onward party to the adze quarry. Strolling through the desert land in the sun, and looking left and right at the warning signs of "UXO" - unexploded ordnance, that's bombs to you and me, I think to myself. After one of the Kua trained on the ordnance safety falls ill, there is debate over whether to proceed. In the end we do go on to the quarry. This site was hard to gain a feel for, being largely eroded, though you could plainly see adze lying around everywhere. Shaped pieces do turn up occasionally, discarded by their makers as broken or inferior, but obviously quite valuable to today's Hawai'ians. Many have been taken from the site by visitors. Our guide to the quarry, Uncle Maka, wants to see the quarry returned to its original use. Currently the authorities claim it to be too dangerous. Our walk home was by a longer route to include the shrines on the North Eastern edge of the island. From the top here I saw Big Island, Maui, Moloka'i and Lana'i. It is breathtaking here, a feeling of being embraced and sheltered by the islands; a country of itself inward looking and whole. Later I recognised that feeling as lacking from Honolulu where the horizon is outward, I feel on an island there.

the erosion is shocking

That evening John took me to a special place and gave me opihi - shellfish he kicked free from the rocks and gouged from their shells, washed in the sea, and ate - saying Ellen and I were representing cousins from Aotearoa New Zealand, and what's theirs is ours. The opihi tasted wonderful.

A weekend with the Protect Kaho'olawe Ohana

entry one

Here's my account of our wonderful trip to the island of Koho’olawe. I was honoured to be included in this access and I am extremely grateful for the generosity shown by the Protect Koho’olawe Ohana (PKO), and for the many new friends I’ve made. This web-log entry is the most difficult one I’ve written so far; I will struggle for words to describe how I felt and what I saw, and I haven’t the ability to bring it to life for you properly. I hope the pictures and the diary excerpts will help to illustrate the journey. I am extremely happy to be able to share this with you!

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We are waiting on the Southern edge of Maui for our ride with the PKO – waiting to meet the Kua who will be guiding us on our trip. The weather is dark and stormy and so tomorrow’s boat ride will be choppy, if not cancelled.

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Awake at 4am on Uncle Bobby’s front lawn. Much anticipation in the party as the first boat leaves at 5am with the Kua and all the supplies. We wait and watch the sun come up on Kaho’olawe across the water; our bags are packed inside two large plastic bags sealed with duct tape. No one knows what to expect and we are anxious to be underway. We share jokes, we are watching turtles and eels swim by in the clear water at the end of Uncle Bobby’s garden. Kaho’olawe is dark red and green in the daybreak

The boat arrives! All the bags are carried, floating, into the water. We swim out to the waiting boat and form a human chain, treading-water, and pass items one to another into the arms of the boatmen above us.

Kaho’olawe nestles in the waters off Maui. Look on a map and find it, you will see it there on the South of Maui, and notice how its position is central to the chain. You can see more islands from here than from any other place in the State, and the trained eye can see ocean currents called Kealakahiki, which would set a canoe on its way to Tahiti. Our crossing to the island, on a boat belonging to a local fisherman (Uncle Bobby), was fine after all:

We see a dolphin beyond our prow! We have to sing a chant to be received nonto the island and we do this urgently when the ridged inflatable boat arrives to meet the fishing boat, the job of getting ashore is at hand.

He haki nu’anu’a nei kai
'O awa ana’i uka
Pehea hiki aku ai
'O ka leo
Mai pa’a o ka leo

Here the sea is rough and crashing
Echoing into the uplands
Where shall we come to you on the shore?
Don’t lose voice
Please don’t lose the voice

We disembarked the second boat about forty metres offshore and all the bags were thrown into the water. Again we ferried them by hand to the beach; it was harder this time because of the strong surf and rocky seabed. The island is barren and after a while spent rigging the kitchen area we come together to get oriented. Somebody passes around a folder containing photographic examples of some of the unexploded ordnance still on the island.

The PKO who hosted us on this access have battled to secure access to this island since The State of Hawai’i ceded it to exclusive US military control in the Fifties. The navy proceeded to use the land as a bombing range to test the gamut of world military hardware. Brave souls occupied the island whilst bombardment continued in the seventies, and lives were lost in the struggle. Now the land is broken, the water lens cracked, meaning that serious erosion occurs constantly, and no fresh water collects in aquifers now brackish since the bombings. Hawai’ian buildings were used as targets and now lie in pieces. It is hard to overstate the insensitivity and outrageousness of the use of Kaho’olawe by Europeans and Americans.

Amazingly, after a good lunch of noodle stir fry we get up and work hard on the garden. We clear around the hale and the hula pa, extending the pathways and the edge of the camp. This is an energetic, enthusiastic, ecstatic afternoon.
John takes us on a walk to bathe in the sea. The surf is high and we play. A girl gets a Portuguese Man-o-War wrapped around her body, so some of us get out of the water.


Our visit was organised through the School of Architecture, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, with Ellen arranging for me to join the group. There were about fifty including those from other University departments, many of whom had been before, most of us were students, many were Hawai’ian, more were not. On the first evening I wandered to bed straight after dinner which meant I missed the group introduction and Ellen had to speak for me. Whatever she said, it was good, and better than anything I could have said. I struggled to find a reason why I had come here, and it was a question which came to be important, but on that first night I had a very strong feeling that I ought to be at home, looking after the rest of my own family, and not here in this land across the oceans.

Arrival in Melbourne

I have found a bunk bed in a hostel in Richmond here. The area is a busy suburb full of factory outlet stores, designer clothes and the like, markets and bars. Melbourne has a striking European feel to it, it's a huge contrast to Honolulu, with street trams, cafe-culture and leafy boulevards. The downtown area reminds me of London: crowds of pedestrians in business suits, news stands, tourists.

My flight passed swiftly and I achieved eight hours sleep. Our last weeks in Hawai'i were exhausting and exhilirating. I still need to make an important post here on the blog, describing our recent trip to the island of Koho'olawe.