Status Updates From Return to Paradise: Stories

What I Learned

“They seem to have forgotten that only a few years ago the Jap(anese) kicked all the whites out of Rabaul.”

“(T)he Jap(anese) had a great time in Rabaul. They started by serving the Chinese leaders a sumptuous banquet and then shooting them. They executed a few natives to scare the rest. The Germans who had stayed behind to welcome them were tossed into jail, and the Jap(anese) built themselves an impregnable base which was never taken by the Allies.”

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Rabaul

“I enjoyed being back in New Guinea. You know what I mean. That great hot blast. The heavy smell of jungle.”

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The Fossickers

New Guinea

The Jungle

“The Australian loves freedom… When Captain Bligh of the Bounty was sent out to knock some discipline into the local lads, they proved too tough for him. They told him to go on back home, and he did so.”

“The Australian… primarily Irish and English. His ancestors were petty convicts… sent to Australia after the American Revolution had ended the traffic to Pennsylvania and Georgia.”

Australia

Until They Sail

New Zealand

The Good Life

Slavery tricks in Australia… as late as 1901… 35 years after the U.S. War Between the States…

Espiritu Santo

The Story

“(O)n the topmost point of Mono (Island) we stumbled into a filthy, unpleasant village bearing one of the loveliest names I’d ever heard: Bali-ha’i… Years later, Rodgers and Hammerstein were to think the same.”

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Guadalcanal

The Mynah Birds

“Here were islands strategically situated, rich on copra, in fruit, in commercial possibilities… lands destined to become the key of the South Pacific. And their king could not give them away.”

Turned down by Queen Victoria, not answered by the Americans, declined by the Germans. Queen Victoria finally accepted in 1874.

“Less than a hundred years ago… Fiji… Cannibalism had become a mania, w/ rules governing the murder & baking of enemies. Religion required that shipwrecked sailors be cooked & eaten the day caught… In the worst areas compounds were built where prisoners were fattened, tied into living bundles & roasted. In many parts of the islands choice bodies were salted away & dragged out for princely feasts.” 🤢

Fiji

Povenaaa’s Daughter

“Polynesians themselves are mixed… Indian, Malayan, Javan, Fijian.”

“(W)ithout Melville’s stay in Tahiti, there never would have been a Moby Dick.”

“With a frangipani behind her right ear (looking for a fellow; left ear, got one, not in the market)…”

“The real beauties are apt to be Chinese-Tahitian, the next… French-Tahitian.”

“(N)othing on Tahiti is so majestic as what faces it across the bay, for there lies the island of Moorea.”

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