All good things must come to an end...

And this month back on Pitcairn has been one of them.

Today I set sail on the Claymore II on a 36 hour journey to Mangareva.

So to finish up the Pitcairn portion of this blog, here are a few of the photos taken on my amblings around the place, while walking, aboard the longboats, aboard cruise ships, driving around on my trusty stead.

Enjoy…

Cruise Ship Amadea Vs the Yacht Southern Cross

Some Pitcairn coastline. This area is called 'Down Issacs'

More coastline, the cave looking thing on the left is called 'Gudgeon'

Can you spot the goats? Pitcairns only local source of red meat.

Following the huge earthquake in Chile, Pitcairn was one of the first places on Tsunami alert. Luckily for us, Pitcairn is very highly elevated and is in the middle of very deep ocean. Therefore Tsunamis don't get much of a chance to build up enough to do much damage. However, we did have some really interesting swell down at the landing.

If you look closely, you can see how low the water has dragged out emptying the harbour.

Within seconds, the water gushed back into the harbour

This activity was more like extreme tides rather than large waves. Very interesting to see as most of have never seen down the landing completely drained of water before.

The french cruise ship 'Princess Danae' stopped in for a visit.

Onboard the Danae watching the longboat pass by.

Paparazzi! They took more photos of us than we did of them.

I didn't spend all of my time fishing, swimming and eating. Decided to try my hand at making a strap basket. These baskets are made from shipping straps.



The finished product

Also tried my hand at some wood burning

More Scenery, from the Highest Point on the island, looking down

Overhead view of St Pauls Pool

The School

A part of the main road

The beautiful

And the not so beautiful...

A view of the rest of the world from Pitcairn.

Good-bye from Distant Horizons blogging centre on Pitcairn Island...

To Do Item 2 - Fishing

For me, this is very closely related to “to do item 1’ as I fish for dinner rather than for sport. There are heaps and heaps of different types of fish you can catch around Pitcairn whether it be out in the boats or just throwing a hand line in off of the rocks.


One of my favourite Pitcairn fish is called Nanwe (don’t know the English name sorry!) Luckily for me its quite easy to catch and can be caught off the jetty using a handline.

This colourful guy is called a Po’o.


He was unfortunate enough to get hooked on my line (I was very very pleased with myself!)and is delicious fried, then cooked in coconuts milk (as is the Nanwe). He was caught on the other side of the island in a place called 'Sandy Harbour'. Not a whole lot of sand in this harbour...

To Do Item 1 – Eating

Easily one of my favourite pastimes, there’s no escaping the fact, I love food!

Pitcairn weckle (food) is quite Polynesian in the types of food and the way that it’s cooked. Most food here is fried is vast quantities of oil, then drenched in coconuts milk – totally delicious and very bad for the waistline.

Probably one of Pitcairns most important foods is the Breadfruit which grows in abundance here. Its importance is due to the fact that this fruit is the reason that people live on this little island at all. (Refer to the story of the Mutiny on the Bounty)


Breadfruit is quite starchy inside and once it starts to get ripe, it goes all soft and smells quite sweet. Pitcairners tend to use them before they start to soften. The most popular way to cook breadfruit is to just boil it. However, you can fry into crunchy chips, cut up for stew or cook any way that you would a potato. Normally served with meat, it makes for a filling and delicious side.



This fellow was caught by my uncle for a ship.


To his disappointment (and my gain!) the ship decided that they didn’t want lobster, so my uncle donated his catchings for the eating. I didn’t get around to cooking this chappy straight away, so delivered him into the freezer until cooking time. Yum…

Supply Ship day

Last Tuesday was supply ship day. Pitcairn receives supplies twice a year every six months via the Government chartered ship the ‘Claymore II’.

The Claymore loads up will all of the supplies for the island, such as provisions for the store, mail, building supplies, petrol, diesel, new fridges, washing machines etc at NZ. It departs NZ on a two week trip to Pitcairn. Once it gets here, it spends a day unloading, then heads off to Mangareva (an island in the outskirts of French Polynesia, in the Gambier Islands – closest airport to Pitcairn) At Mangareva, the Claymore picks up a load of passengers, and takes them back to Pitcairn – this is a two day trip. After passenger drop off, a load of people leaving Pitcairn are picked up and ferried to Mangareva. Then back to Pitcairn, and then back to New Zealand. Six months later, it does this all over again.

This ship is the only regular, reliable way to get to Pitcairn and its how I will be leaving in a weeks time (yikes!) It’s very expensive and (as you can see) is no cruise ship…

However, back to supply ship day. The ‘able bodied’ Pitcairners are divided into four main groups, a group to man the longboats, one group at the landing to unload the boats, one group at the warehouse for building supplies and the last group at the store.

Unloading the boat

There is a lot of stuff to unload and everyone helps out where possible, this is also considered ‘public work’ and is therefore mandatory for the islanders of working age.
Container delivery to the store

I spent the bulk of the day helping out at the store – any excuse to be around any sort of shopping, even if it is mostly just food stuffs! Most people place large orders privately via the store – when you can only get supplies once every six months, you tend to bulk buy. A large portion of my day was spent lugging around 20kg bags of potatoes, onions, flour, sugar etc sorting out who got what. Working some fancy maths when orders had fallen short, exhausting work on a very hot day.
The Store

Everything was unloaded by around 3.30pm, so off to the post office to collect Dad dads six months worth of mail. Next it was time to head down to the landing to see Darralyn off (one of the islanders heading over to NZ for some nursing training.) and it wasn’t long before the harbour was filled with bodies escaping the heat. A fitting finish to a busy day!

To Do Item 3 – My Daily Swim

I have managed to go swimming everyday except for two days.
My first excuse was because Daddad had me out foraging for bananas to trade with for a passing ship.
My second excuse was due to unsavoury weather…

However, every other day apart from those two, you’ll find me seeking relief from the heat in the crystal clear water down at the landing.


My swimming buddies

Overhead view of the harbour, or in this case, my swimming hole

Christians Cave and the Eco Trail

On my first Saturday morning, the day was sparkling and beckoning for me to get out there and explore! So I decided to head up to Christians Cave (known as Big Cave to locals – Pitcairners are real imaginative when it comes to naming places…)

Christians Cave is not really a cave as such, but more of a large opening in the cliff face. History says that’s where Fletcher Christian used to hide out from the rest of the population when all of the fighting started.

Before you start the climb, you get to walk along the Eco Trail. I found it very educational and quite interesting. Here are photos of the signs along the way, if you click on them, you should be able to read them if you are interested…









Next stop, Christians Cave. Its one heck of a climb, but the view up there is magnificent.

As you can see, I am a firm believer in appropriate footwear when climbing sheer rock face. I don’t think that this photo does justice to how steep it really was!

Once you are in the cave, you can get a fantastic view of Adamstown (Pitcairns capital and only town)

Can see my house from here!

The easiest (tho not necessarily safest) way back down is via a shortcut called ‘The Tunnel’. The tunnel is a vertical drop and the only way down (especially for someone of my meagre height) is to but your back against one rock face, jam your legs against the other and walk your way down.

From the bottom looking up at the tunnel. That really doesn’t look so bad, why are my knees still shaking??


This is a photo taken from the boat looking at Christians Cave from afar.