Life

by Tim Flannery

  After two hours standing in the rain, Diifaka takes the sop of leaves and brushes the bodies of everyone at the ceremony. He then takes a bush knife and divides a betel nut, giving me half. We both chew our portions. We are two halves of a whole—our tribes have had a violent history—but we are now chewing one betel nut as friends. The ancestral spirits now recognise us. Kwaio and Australian can continue as friends, as partners.

  I follow Waneagea downslope. A rough sapling I’m holding to steady myself rips into the palm of my hand, leaving a diagonal gash. Waneagea abruptly turns upslope and onto another path. Behind me, Diifaka tosses the living piglet into the great sinkhole. I hear nothing, but visions of the tiny thing haunt me for days.

  Morning brings mud and rain that never seems to end, but at midday we get a brief break and I see Waneagea and a second man standing before our hut, holding a long string of shell money on a stick. David MacLaren, Tyrone Lavery and I line up opposite them, and each of us is handed a piglet. The spirits of the Kwaio warriors hanged in 1927 need to be directly acknowledged: this exchange will conciliate them. A senior man named Laete’esafi, naked except for his cane belt, stands opposite me. As instructed, I say to him: ‘I give this pig for the ‘Ai’eda clan, and Basiana.’ After days in his spiritual presence, I find it hard to say the name. David gives his pig for the Furi’ilia clan, Tyrone for the Ngudu YY clan.

  Waneagea steps forward with the shell money. ‘I give you this for Mr Bell,’ he says in Kwaio. Another senior man, Agumae, gives symbolic recompense to David ‘for Mr Lillies’. As he speaks, a cold, hard rain pelts down, and we run for shelter. We return to a hut where speeches are made, the last by a man who swings a club as he orates. All eyes are riveted on him, and as he finishes there’s a huge release of energy: a young man plays the pipes while men, women and children clap, dance and make celebratory speeches.

  The following morning we head back to the coast. After a few hours we come to a clearing, where an old man sits, waiting for us. He explains that he never married, has no children, and will die soon. ‘No matter,’ he says, as he gives David and me the most valuable of his shells. Then something incredible happens: a Sanford’s sea eagle, a rare bird I’ve seldom seen, soars overhead, circles us, then flies in the direction we are about to take. The bird is the totem of Malaita: every eye is on it as it vanishes into the haze.

  A day later, over breakfast in the provincial capital of Auki, David tells me that our contingent of ‘security guards’ was made up of the worst criminals in Kwaio. Their leader was the man who had beheaded the Australian missionary in 2003. Back then, Basiana had come to him in a dream, confirming that hostility between Australia and Kwaio remained. The reconciliation ceremony changed this in an instant. The man was also the one who gave that final speech, banging his club into his hand: ‘The time of blood is over.’

  The ceremony was a catalyst. Kwaio leaders now actively discuss reconciliation with leaders across Malaita, including the north Malaitans. Even tribes within the Kwaio harbouring old enmities are now reconciling. Could this be a model to address historical enmities and right historical wrongs, both within Solomon Islands and beyond?

  ENDNOTES

  THE EXTRAORDINARY WATKIN TENCH

  1 Fitzhardinge, L. F. (ed.), Sydney’s First Four Years, By Captain Watkin Tench, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1979.

  2 Australia’s other four foundation books are: Collins, David, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, from its first settlement in January 1788, to August 1801, (1804); Hunter, John, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, (1793); Phillip, Arthur, The Voyage of Governor Philip to Botany Bay With an Account of the Establishment of the Colonies of Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, (1789); White, John, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, with sixty-five plates of nondescript animals, birds, lizards, serpents, curious cones of trees and other natural productions, (1790).

  3 Fitzhardinge, L. F. (ed.), Sydney’s First Four Years, By Captain Watkin Tench, op. cit.

  JOHN NICOL, MARINER

  1 Simmons, J. J. (III), ‘Those Vulgar Tubes’, Studies in Nautical Archaeology, No. 1, Department of Archaeology, Texas University, 1991.

  2 Nicol, John, The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner, with a foreword and afterword by Alexander Laing, Cassell & Company, London, 1937, p. 27.

  3 Ibid, p. 26.

  4 Ibid, p. 28.

  5 Ibid, p. 23.

  6 Flynn, Michael, The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1993, pp. 1–8.

  7 Ibid, p. 461.

  8 Walter, R., A Voyage Round the World in the Years 1740, 1, 2, 3, 4 by George Anson, Esq., Alex Lawrie & Co., Edinburgh, 1741, 1804, p. 20.

  9 Nicol, J., Life and Adventures, 1937, p. 25.

  THE SANDSTONE CITY

  1 Darwin, C., Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships, Adventure and Beagle, between the Years 1826 & 1836, Describing their Examination of the Southern Shores of South America, and the Beagle’s Circumnavigation of the Globe, Henry Colburn, London, 1839, published also as The Voyage of the Beagle, Penguin Books, 1989.

  2 Tench, W., A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, G. Nicol & J. Sew ell, London 1793, published also as 1788, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1996.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Dawes, W., Unpublished notebooks, William Marsden collection, School of Oriental and African Studies library, London.

  6 Twain, M., Following the Equator, American Publishing Company, New York, 1897, published also as Twain, M., Mark Twain in Australia and New Zealand, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1973.

  GROUND ZERO

  1 Prothero, D. R., ‘The Chronological, Climatic and Paleogeographic Background to North American Mammal Evolution’, in Janis, C. M., Scott, K. M., and Jacobs, L. L. (eds), Evolution of Tertiary Mammals of North America, Volume 1: Terrestrial Carnivores, Ungulates, and Ungulate-Like Mammals, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.

  2 Behler, J. L. & King, F. W., National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians, 16th edn, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1998.

  3 Wynn, J. C. & Shoemaker, E. M., ‘The Day the Sands Caught Fire’, Scientific American, November 1998, pp. 65–71.

  4 Kyte, F. T., ‘A Meteorite from the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary’, Nature, Vol. 396, 1998, pp. 237–39.

  5 Ibid.

  6 Melosh, H. J., Schneider, N. M., Zahnle, K. J. & Latham, D., ‘Ignition of Global Wildfires at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary’, Nature, Vol. 343, 1990, pp. 251–54. Schultz, P. H. & D’Hondt, S. D., ‘Cretaceous-Tertiary (Chicxulub) Impact Angle and Its Consequences’, Geology, Vol. 24, 1996, pp. 963–67.

  7 Landis, G. P., Rigby, J. K., Sloan, R. E., Hengst, R. & Snee, L. W., ‘Pele Hypothesis: Ancient Atmospheres and Geologic-Geochemical Controls on Evolution, Survival, and Extinction’, in Macleod, N. & Keller, G. (eds), Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinctions: Biotic and Environmental Changes, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1996, pp. 519–56.

  8 Prothero, D. R., ‘Protoceratidae’, in Evolution of Tertiary Mammals of North America, op. cit. Smit, J., ‘Extinction and Evolution of Planktonic Foraminifera at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary after a Major Impact’, Geological Society of America special paper no. 190, 1994, pp. 329–52.

  9 Ward, P. D., The Call of Distant Mammoths, Copernicus Springer-Verlag, New York, 1997.

  10 Thornton, I., Krakatau: The Destruction and Reassembly of an Island Ecosystem, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1996.

  11 Johnson, K. R., ‘Leaf-Fossil Evidence for Extensive Floral Extinction at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary, North Dakota, USA’, Cretaceous Research, Vol. 13, 1992, pp. 91–117. Hanson, T. A., Farrell, B. R. & Banks Upshaw III, ‘The First Two Million Years after the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in East Texas: Rate and Paleoecology of the Molluscan Recovery’, Paleobiology, Vol. 19, 1993, pp. 251–65.

  12 D’Hondt,
S., Pilson, M. E. Q., Sigurdsson, H., Hanson Jr, A. K. & Carey, S., ‘Surface-Water Acidification and Extinction at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary’, Geology, Vol. 22, 1994, pp. 983–86.

  13 Ward, P. D., The Call of Distant Mammoths, op. cit.

  14 Sheehan, P. M., Fastovsky, D. E., Hoffmann, R. G., Berghaus, C. B. & Gabriel, D. L., ‘Sudden Extinction of the Dinosaurs: Latest Cretaceous, Upper Great Plains, USA’, Nature, Vol. 254, 1991, pp. 835–38.

  15 Askin, R. A. & Jacobson, S. R., ‘Palynological Change across the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary on Seymour Island, Antarctica: Environmental and Depositional Factors’, Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinctions, op. cit.

  THE FATAL IMPACT

  1 Trollope, F., Domestic Manners of the Americans, Alan Sutton, Dover, New Hampshire, 1832.

  2 Sauer, C. O., Sixteenth Century North America, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975.

  3 Casey, J. M. & Rogers, R. A., ‘New Extinction of a Large Widely Distributed Fish’, Science, Vol. 281, 1998, pp. 690–92.

  4 Matthiessen, P., Wildlife in America, Penguin Nature Classics, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1959.

  5 Bradford, W., Of Plymouth Plantation 1620–1647, Modern Library College Editions, New York, 1952, first published as History of Plymouth Plantation in 1856.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Catlin, G., Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of North American Indians, Dover Publications, New York, 1844, reprinted 1973. Frazier, I., Great Plains, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1989.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Fiedel, S. J., Prehistory of the Americas, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.

  10 Henneberg, M. & Henneberg, R. J., ‘Treponematosis in an Ancient Greek Colony of Metaponto, Southern Italy, 580–250 BC’, in Dutour, O., Pálfi, G., Berato J. & Brun, J-P. (eds), La Syphilis avant 1493 en Europe?, Actes du Colloque de Tulon, Centre Archéologique du Var and Paris, Éditions Errance, 1994, pp. 92–98. Steyn, M. & Henneberg, M., ‘Pre-Columbian Presence of Treponemal Disease: A Possible Case from Iron Age Southern Africa’, Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, 1995, pp. 870–73.

  11 Farb, P., Man’s Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1968.

  12 ‘Mourt’s Relation’, (facsimile) Applewood Books, Bedford, 1622.

  13 Bradford, W., Of Plymouth Plantation, op. cit. Wilson, J., The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1999.

  14 Crosby, A. W., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, Greenwood Press, Connecticut, 1972.

  15 Turner, F. J., The Frontier in American History, first pub. Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1893, reprinted 1947.

  16 Wilson, J., The Earth Shall Weep, op. cit.

  17 Trollope, F., Domestic Manners of the Americans, op. cit.

  18 Wilson, J., The Earth Shall Weep, op. cit.

  19 Farb, P., Man’s Rise to Civilization…, op. cit. Nye, R. B. & Morpurgo, J. E., A History of the United States, Volume 2: The Growth of the USA, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1970.

  20 Wilson, J., The Earth Shall Weep, op. cit.

  AMERICA UNDER THE GUN

  1 Stephan, S. A., ‘The Passing of the Passenger Pigeon’, Game Stories, No. 18–19, 1932.

  2 Matthiessen, P., Wildlife in America, op.cit.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Gollup, J. B., Barry, T. W. & Iversen, E. H., Eskimo Curlew: A Vanishing Species?, special publication no. 17, Saskatchewan Natural History Society, 1986. Matthiessen, P., Wildlife in America, op. cit.

  5 Ibid.

  6 Teale, E. W., Autumn across America, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1956.

  7 Clutton-Brock, J., Horse Power, Natural History Museum Publications, London, 1992.

  8 Hornaday, W. T., ‘The Extermination of the American Bison’, Smithsonian Report, Washington, 1889, pp. 369–548.

  9 Ibid.

  10 Ibid.

  11 Doughty, R., Wildlife and Man in Texas: Environmental Change and Conservation, Texas A&M University Press, Texas, 1983. Hampton, B., The Great American Wolf, Owl Books, New York, 1997.

  12 Knapp, A. K., Blair, J., Briggs, J. M., Collins, S. L., Hartnett, D. C., Johnson, L. C. & Towne, E. G., ‘The Keystone Role of Bison in North American Tallgrass Prairie’, Bioscience, Vol. 49, 1999, pp. 39–50.

  13 Pringle, H., ‘The Slow Birth of Agriculture’, Science, Vol. 282, November 1998, pp. 1446–50.

  14 Hampton, B., The Great American Wolf, op. cit.

  15 Hornaday, W. T., op. cit.

  16 Hampton, B., The Great American Wolf, op. cit.

  17 Ibid.

  18 Hornaday, W. T., op. cit.

  19 Hampton, B., The Great American Wolf, op. cit.

  20 Davis, L. B., ‘The Twentieth Century Commercial Mining of Northern Plains Bison Kills’, in Davis, L. B. & Wilson, M. (eds), Bison Procurement and Utilisation: A Symposium, memoir 14, Plains Anthropologist, 1978, pp. 254–85.

  21 Hampton, B., The Great American Wolf, op. cit.

  THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF WILLIAM BUCKLEY

  Bonwick, J., William Buckley, the Wild White Man, and his Port Phillip Black Friends, George Nichols, Melbourne, 1856.

  Brown, P. L. (ed.), Narrative of George Russell, Oxford University Press, 1935, (Cited by Sayers in a footnote to the 1967 edition of Morgan).

  Butler, S., The Dinkum Dictionary, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2001.

  Curr, E., The Australian Race, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1986.

  Dawson, J., Australian Aborigines. The Languages and Customs of Several Tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Australia, George Robertson, Melbourne, 1881, (Facsimile: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1981).

  Hiatt, L. R., Arguments about Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.

  Langhorne, G., ‘Reminiscences of James Buckley who lived for Thirty Years among the Wallawarro or Watourong Tribes at Geelong Port Phillip communicated by him to George Langhorne’, manuscripts collection of the State Library of Victoria, c. 1836.

  Morgan, J. The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, 1852, (ed. C. E. Sayers) Heinemann, Melbourne, 1967.

  Pickering, M. ‘Consuming Doubts: What Some People Ate? Or What Some People Swallowed?’ in Goldman, L. R. (ed.), The Anthropology of Cannibalism, Bergin and Garvey, London, 1999.

  Presland, G., Aboriginal Melbourne: The Lost Land of the Kulin People, McPhee Gribble Publishers, Ringwood, 1985.

  Robertson, C., Buckley’s Hope, Scribe, Melbourne, 1980.

  Tipping, M. (ed), Nicholas Pateshall, A Short Account of a Voyage Round the Globe in HMS Calcutta 1803–4, Queensberry Hill Press, Carlton, 1980.

  Pike, D. (ed) ‘Buckley, William’, The Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1788–1850, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1966.

  Todd, A., The Todd Journal. Andrew alias William Todd, John Batman’s Recorder and his Indented Head Journal 1835. Geelong Historical Society, Geelong, 1989.

  Wedge, J. H., ‘Narrative of William Buckley’, Published in Labilliere, F. P., Early History of the Colony of Victoria, 1878: Vol. 2. Reprinted in Morgan, J., The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1979.

  THE GREAT AERIAL OCEAN

  1 Weart, S. R., The Discovery of Global Warming: New Histories of Science, Technology and Medicine, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, 2003.

  2 Lovelock, J., Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979.

  3 Kump, L. R., ‘Reducing Uncertainty about Carbon Dioxide As a Climate Driver’, Nature Vol. 419, 2002, pp. 188–90.

  BORN IN THE DEEP-FREEZE

  1 North Greenland Ice Core Project Members,‘High-resolution Record of Northern Hemisphere Climate Extending into the Last Interglacial Period’, Nature, Vol. 431, 2004, pp. 147–51.

  2 Walker, G., ‘Frozen Time’, Nature
, 429, 2004, pp. 596–97.

  3 EPCA community members, 2004. ‘Eight Glacial Cycles from an Antarctic Ice Core’, Nature, Vol. 429, 2004, pp. 623–28.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Jones, C. D. et al., ‘The Carbon Cycle Response to ENSO: A Coupled Climate-carbon Cycle Model Study’, Journal of Climate, Vol. 14, 2001, pp. 4113–129.

  6 Bush, M. B., Silman, M. R. & Urrego, D. H., ‘48,000 Years of Climate and Forest Change in a Biodiversity Hot Spot’, Science, Vol. 303, 2004, pp. 827–29.

  7 Yokoyama, Y. et al, ‘Timing of the Last Glacial Maximum from Observed Sea-level Minima’, Nature, Vol. 406, 2000, pp. 713–15.

  8 Clark, P. U. et al, ‘Rapid Rise of Sea Level 19,000 Years Ago and Its Global Implications’, Science, Vol. 304, 2004, pp. 1141–44.

  9 Clarke, G., ‘Superlakes, Megafloods, and Abrupt Climate Change’, Science, Vol. 301, 2003, pp. 922–23.

  10 Fagan, B., The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization. Basic Books. New York, 2004.

  11 ‘Time and Chance’, Economist, 19 December 2003.

  12 Richerson, P. J., Boyd, R. & Bettinger, R. L., ‘Was Agriculture Impossible during the Pleistocene But Mandatory during the Holocene? A Climate Change Hypothesis’, American Antiquity, Vol. 663, 2001, pp. 387–411.

  2050: THE GREAT STUMPY REEF?

  1 Wallace, A. R., The Malay Archipelago, the Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise: A Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature. Macmillan. London, 1872.

  2 Bellwood, D. R. et al, ‘Confronting the Coral Reef Crisis’, Nature, Vol. 429, 2004, pp. 827–33.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Abram, N. J. et al, ‘Coral Reef Death during the 1997 Indian Ocean Dipole Linked to Indonesian Wildfires’, Science, Vol. 301, pp. 952–55.