In 1980 I was near the end of a two year contract working in the Solomon Islands for New Zealand foreign aid. Part of a project building and operating pole and line fishing boats.
It was a rewarding and often exhilarating experience. We were certainly isolated in the Solomons, but — weirdly — we felt more connected to the world there than back home.
Mostly that was because of the people we met — the locals, of course, but also the Brits, Aussies, Chinese, Americans, Japanese and others we met or worked with. Our own team, local and expat, and the aid workers, missionaries, traders, bank officials, diplomats, fishermen, yachties, pilots and so on.
And interesting characters like the strange German with intriguing scars who claimed to be a duellist. Or the cheerful Austrian minding the rich American woman on her husband’s massive motor yacht — it was moored in our bay for months. Or the oldest sailing vessel still operating, which also hung around for months. We were a richly varied lot, and it gave us a taste to see more of the world.
Anyway, Trevor (my boss) asked the New Zealand Government if I could stay for an extra year, and they agreed. Meantime, however, I had a few weeks leave due, so the deal was that Stephen and Adrienne would stay with their grandparents while Heather and I tripped round the globe. Maybe we should have felt guiltier about abandoning them, but everyone claims to have enjoyed it.
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One of our connections to the wider world was our telex, which Heather used to evade travel agents and track down a Pan Am deal called Around the World in 80 Days. Provided you kept traveling in the same direction you could fly to any Pan Am destination making as many stops as you liked, for up to 80 days. Brilliant. But there was a catch. You had to purchase the ticket on American soil. No problem, said Heather. I’ll just confirm that Guam qualifies as American territory, and if it does we’ll fly up on Air Nauru and buy our tickets there. Which is what we did.
The ticket to Guam was the only booking we made, but we left a tentative itinerary as well as mail and telex contact details via American Express offices. Apart from that we were out of contact. Hasn’t the world changed?
I kept an intermittent diary.