Convair flight to Fiji.

I was waiting for my flight out of Tuvalu, having a beer in the hotel bar.

I had just been talking to an engineer who was looking at resurfacing the runway. The coral underneath is collapsing under the weight of modern planes. It was only build to take lightweight US Army bombers, in 1944. A temporary wartime airfield that was still in use.

I was just digesting this slightly worrying information when my plane arrived. 

It was a late 1950s Convair.....

Had I seen it in an aircraft museum I would have admired its grace and beauty.  

Instead I was unwillingly pushed aboard by a hostess, and endured a flight back to Fiji in it. 

Tuvalu Lunchtime views

Tuvalu, which was called the Ellis islands,  became independent of the UK in 1978. It almost feels like a small UK town or village. Albeit a village that sits on sinking coral and rising oceans. Which is a bit of a worry as most of the atoll is actually below sea level.

Like so much of life, the real story of Tuvalu’s problems are not told. The Americans arrived here in 1943, and built an airfield. Rather than import rock to do so, they scrapped the island away, digging huge borrow pits, crushing to coral and using it to build the runway, which is raised to avoid the sea on what was already a low lying island. They then bulldozed the island even more, to create low sea walls, to protect the airfield. All of this lowered the middle of the island to below sea level. Not a top idea.

Now at high tide the water seeps up in the low lying areas, slipping under the sea walls. I have photos already to prove this. You can see the high sea walls, the raised runway, the lower areas around them and the big holes where the American engineers dug out the materials they needed to create concrete.

Now everyone photographs the water and yells global warming. I think they should yell “American Ceebees”.


Every day on Tuvalu I would walk over from the Government Offices where I was working to a little hotel (where Princess Ann once stayed) and have lunch on a platform over the beach. The views were spectacular.

The Government Office:

The Lunch Platform:

The view to the left:

And the view to the right:

Tuvalu Drought

In late 2011 Tuvalu suffered from a terrible drought. Families were restricted to a few litres of water a day.  

By the time I arrived on the island it was swarming with specialists, all proffering theories.  global warming was a favorite. 

An old hand took me out and showed me the real reason when it rained. Poor maintenance on gutters and catchment tanks, on an island that was so low lying that you couldn't use bore water, meant disaster. 

I took the photo six months after the drought had ended.  Sections of gutter were still missing from this government building.  Downpipes didn't exist. Precious water flow into the ground. 

Tuvalu hammock

Relaxing on Tuvalu.  The hammock is in the hotel garden and that is the airfield on the other side of the fence......

Metangi Gali Bar, Tuvalu

On Tuvalu, a nation of 10,000 people, there is one nightclub. Metangi Gali is an open air courtyard with high walls next to the airstrip.  If it rains you get wet.

The music was deafening, and the fighting was scary.  The locals though were friendly to strangers and would go out of their way to make you feel welcome. If you sat alone they would come and join you, and engage you in conversation.  It was something I noticed time after time across the Pacific...

The memory of standing in a dark open air nightclub, listening to loud music and looking up at the brilliant stars in the sky, will stay with me for many years.

Tepuka Island

Across the Tuvalu Atoll from Funafuti lies a small uninhabited island called Tepuka.   This was my first ever uninhabited "desert island".  Just palm trees and coconuts.

The remnants of the volcano that formed the atoll thousands of years ago can still be seen rising above the sand.  In the distance a deceptively fierce surf can be seen breaking on the coral reef.

Tuvalu fishermen at sunset.

It was early evening on Tuvalu, the remote and distant atoll that was once known as the Ellice Islands.  One of the smallest nations in the World, with just 10,000 inhabitants on nine reef islands and atolls,  Tuvalu is almost unknown.  There is just one flight a week from Fiji.

I walked behind the government offices where I was working, to see the sunset.  A group of local men were fishing on a small jetty.  Fishing is a hobby, a social gathering and an industry in the Pacific.  The men were huddled together, as the massive fireball descended into the lagoon.