Christmas Islanders look to the future

Press, 10 March 1984, Page 28

Christmas Islanders look to the future

Christmas Island, so called because of its discovery by Captain Cook on Christmas Eve, 1777, is remembered best as the site of British and American hydrogen bomb tests in the late 1950 s and early 19605. More recently, since the granting of independence to the Gilbert, Phoenix and Line Islands (now collectively known as Kiribati), in 1979, this lamp of limestone in the central Pacific has become the focus of a different sort of attention. The Government of Kiribati, suffering from a severe lack of income, is exploring ways of making money out of its single largest land mass. Christmas Island is said to be the largest coral atoll in the world. Even so, reference books are sometimes confused about where it is. Postal services frequently confuse it with another Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. Captain Cook found the island uninhabited and wrote in his log: “Should anyone be so unfortunate as to be accidentally driven on the island, or left there, it is hard to say that he could be able to prolong existence.” On the island, the bomb tests are recalled as one of the few successful ventures there. The Christmas Island tests had few long-term effects. There were no casualties among people. The residual radioactivity is said to be less than the present radiation level in central Los Angeles. The tests killed thousands of birds, but the bird life has recovered. Now, for the islanders, helicopter seats serve as rocking chairs, macrame shopping baskets are made from multi-coloured wires, and the island remains a store of iron, pipes and drums. The island’s only hotel, the Captain Cook, rarely fills enough of its 24 rooms to pay running costs for its power generator. The only profitable venture at present is the export of food fish to Honolulu. “The island must be good for something,” say the locals. “After all, it forms more than half the land area of Kiribati.” There is talk of a casino, a tax haven. Other ideas include increased tourism, commercial salt production, or an increase in fishing. Sport fishermen are attracted from Honolulu. A pilot salt plant has been built. But the island remains a civil service outpost for Kiribati, where most of the work is maintenance of services for the people who live there. Perhaps Captain Cook’s impression of the island was right To those who live there it hardly seems to matter, so long as the toddy keeps flowing, the fish keep swimming, the sun keeps shining, and the bar doesn’t run dry.