Chathams children don’t return

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33675, 26 October 1974, Page 11

Chathams children don’t return

“Once they go off the island, you never get them back,” said a farmer’s wife at a meeting in Waitangi, the main—virtually the only—town in the Chatham Islands. The subject was one the islanders are very concerned about — their children, and education. And behind it were other, deeper questions. How much development can a small, very isolated, farming-fishing community take? Can it stick with its 1 relatively unsophisticated ways, its traditional insularity, while the world outside rushes ahead? In adopting outside ways, will familiar values be lost? In some ways, the people of the Chatham Islands are closer to the Pacific Islanders than they are to the people of the New Zealand mainland. Better off, certainly; generally better able to handle the mainstream of New Zealand culture and society; much more at home when dropped in Christchurch than a Tongan or Niuean, say, in Auckland. But definitely attuned to a more leisurely, more relaxed, less competitive way of life. Leadership The Chathams, it has often been said, lack leaders. Rather they lack confidence, in them.selves and in their economy. There is a vague, but persistent, feeling that they tend to get the runaround from mainlanders — the shipping company, those who handle their business, even the Government departments they deal with. The attitude is inevitable. given the long delays in communication.

Yet mainlanders working on the islands — the re.si- ■ dent agent, the policeman, the doctors, the teachers, the Catholic Sisters of Mercy at the hospital — soon become part of Chathams life. Especially the teachers. There are many children: more than 200 in the four

schools, 135 at Te One, just out of Waitangi, and between 18 and 24 at each of the sole-charge schools at the fishing centres of Kaingaroa and Owenga, and on remote Pitt Island. Mixed feelings The islanders see education as important but again there are mixed feelings. Those who would like to see a secondary school in the Chathams (at present, secondary pupils go to mainland schools, under boarding bursaries and with free flights home in the holidays) are probably in the minority. But there are those who would be happier to keep their children at home. The majority see it as a positive need to get their children out for an education' — even though it may mean that they will makfe their lives on the mainland. “My daughters always come back home for holidays, to relax,” .one mother said. “But the sort of work they could get here wouldn’t interest them.” Isolation

The problem is not too dissimilar to that of many small rural communities on

the mainland. Yet again, as ■ with so many things in the Chathams, it is accentuated by isolation. It has certainly contributed to the fact that population, like development, has remained pretty static in the Chathams until recent years. The crayfish boom gave it a bit of a boost but that has lagged; with the cray catches falling right off, the remaining boats will have to turn to wet fishing, especially for blue cod and hapuka, to make a reduced living. If the crays come back, the complaints will be forgotten; and some of the farms might be, too, since many islanders are as much fishermen as farmers.

« Trout fanning Fishing undoubtedly has a great potential in the Chathams, given the right encouragement; but its long-term future does not match that of farming. There have been other schemes for development, such as extraction of waxes from the abundant peats, and trout farming. But the quality of the islands water is said to be too poor for trout, while the wax industry still poses many imponderables. Not many of the islanders want tourism and they would like even less to have a big industrial undertaking like a wax extraction plant on the island. Yet there are those who look at the benefits it might bring, like a central power station, more jobs for their children, perhaps better and more regular shipping — and an injection of outside drive and sophistication, (Concluded),

D. S. MILNE, of the New Zealand “Herald,” writes a second and final article on his recent visit to the Chatham Islands.