Cruising

For about ten years now I've been invited to lecture on various cruise ships that come through PNG, and Melanesia more generally, and this has been my secret vice, the little paid holiday I take once or twice a year. There was a period when I was cruising with a big international vessel whose 'Expedition Leader' gleefully, mercilessly bullied all Guest Lecturers (yes we have a title) into shivvering submission because, as an undereducated gay Afrikaans, he basically resented everyone else in the world. BUT I met some interesting characters on those rides, and they have been part of an accumulated 'academy' of associates in my professional life. Anyway, it has all distilled to a lovely small Australia vessel with youngish owners who take interested and repeat customers on trips through PNG and Melanesia with me and a slap-happy naturalist from Cairns named Damon Ramsey. We are the GLs, and come along with a dive master, Dennis, and Exp Leader, Jamie, all driftwood and buccaneers from way back. Anyway, I just came back from a two week cruise from Noumea through New Caledonia to Vanuatu, then the southern Solomon Islands, and then into the nether reaches of Milne Bay in PNG. I can'r believe that I can be paid to travel to some of the most interesting and inaccessible islands of the world---where no path has really been beaten yet. It is one of the brilliant ironies of a global age that, with shipping costs mandating  container transport, these islands are today far more remote and off the map than they have ever been, and combined with the bad press of land-based tourism in PNG, and the proximity of Australia, it is now possible and affordable (not to say lucrative) to run a small cruise boat into these tiny harbours across the Pacific, where 60 or less passengers, mostly well-heeled retirees, can walk through villages as traditional and as isolated as they might have imagined half a century ago---and, precisely because they are well-heeled rather than young backpackers, they can 'read' the gerontocratic cultures and even organise assistance to schools, aid posts and other defunct infrastructure wherever they go. They are not there to oggle, to take commercial photos or even seduce defenseless islanders, and they're far less likely to strip down to a thong on the shoreline of a traditional and village (although this was always an issue with the big European cruise ship---as was having to explain to villagers why seventyfive year old German women think topless sunbathing is universally acceptable).

And so, without further ado, some shots. Of Tanna Island and nagol land divers on Pentecost Island.