Solomon Islands - On the Silver Screen

As part of my research for this blog, I've been reading Lonely Planet's Solomon Islands 3rd edition, which dates back to 1997. Although that's almost 20 years ago, I like to read the LP editions from the late-90's, as this coincides with my early 20's and the time when I started travelling in earnest, so I feel like I'm following paths I never took - not merely armchair travelling, but time-travelling as well!

Something that's really struck me whilst reading through this older version of Lonely Planet Solomon Islands, is the fact that most of the main 'sights' that you are recommended to visit, are ship wrecks, war graves and pieces of aircraft downed during the intense battles that raged in this part of the Pacific during World War Two.

Pacific Theatre in World War 2

On Sunday morning, 7 December 1941, Japanese Imperial forces bombed Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, effectively declaring war on the United States and setting off a chain of events that saw Japan occupy former British colonies such as Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and Burma, as well as islands in the Pacific such as the Philippines, Solomons and Papua New Guinea.

This Japanese expansion opened up a 'theatre' of war in the Pacific, right on the doorstep of Australia, so the Allied Australian, British and US forces were quick to respond.  Guadalcanal suddenly found itself in the spotlight, as Allied forces deployed a land invasion, capturing the main air base at Honiara and holding the island during a six-month campaign in 1942/43, which eventually saw the Japanese withdraw their forces.

The only movie I could find that was partly shot on the Solomon Islands was Terrance Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998).  Amazingly, I'd never actually seen this movie before and it wasn't like other war movies that I've watched - actually, I found it incredibly slow-moving, languorous and reflective, a welcome change from the usual action-packed movies full of explosions and violence.

Marines rest in the field in Guadalcanal

Malick has a way of expressing the horror of war, without showing the horror and I loved the fact that nature was everywhere in his movie - a painful human death would cut to the shot of a baby bird being born, or a lizard crawling on a tree.  It's like war itself is a repulsive imposition on the natural world.

For practical reasons, most of the movie was shot in Queensland, Australia, however, they did also spend twenty-four days shooting on Guadalcanal and it was really the first time I got to see the Solomon Islands on the silver screen.  The portrayal of the Solomon Islanders is fleeting and has a dreamy quality to it, the native people almost blend into the background, as nature does, removed from the war and its violent intentions.

It must have been bewildering for the Solomon Islanders to suddenly find themselves at the heart of the most globalised war in human history, when the islands had always languished in the shadows of the global stage, far removed from the forces that shaped the 20th century.  I'm sure the US soldiers' experience of Solomon Island culture was just as fleeting as in the movie and most of them would never have heard of Guadalcanal, had it not been for the Japanese invasion of the western Pacific.

Malick's movie also introduced me to the concept of ensemble epic - i.e. a large-scale movie with a massive cast of characters, each one of them claiming a similar importance of role, rather than having one or two defined 'heroes'.  Malick managed to secure a lot of really well-known actors for his movie - Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, Nick Nolte, Jared Leto, John Travolta, George Clooney, Adrien Brody to name but a few.  In fact he had so many actors and so many hours of footage that some performances like those of Gary Oldman, Mickey Rourke and Vigo Mortensen didn't make the final cut!

The Thin Red Line is well worth seeing and different that your usual war movie - a good Sunday-afternoon watch!

Image credits:

Both images used in this blog post are from Wikipedia and are in the public domain.  You can click on the images to see their source page.  

Nordrhein-Westfalen - The Final Word on German Tourism

Until I started researching for this blog, I'd never heard of Engelbert Kaempfer, the 17th century naturalist from Lippe in Westphalia, who travelled through Russia and Persia, all the way to Japan, arriving in Nagasaki in 1690.  He wrote The History of Japan, one of the most famous accounts of a European journey to that most secretive of nations.

The ubiquitous German Tourist

You know that you've managed to get off the beaten track, when the only other Europeans you encounter are Germans.  When I was blogging about Eritrea, back in September 2012, I came across the work of the UNWTO (the World Tourism organisation).  Every year the UNWTO publishes a report on world tourism and it's fascinating to look at the summaries of their findings.  For the purposes of this blog, I have decided to look at the summaries from 2014 and 2004, to find out how many Germans are travelling and how popular Germany is as a tourist destination.

World Tourism in 2003

Bavarian Alps, a popular tourist destination in Germany

Germany has often topped the UNWTO list as the country which provides the biggest revenues in terms of 'outbound' tourism (ie. Germans travelling as tourists to other countries).  Looking at the report from 2004 (which analyses data from international tourism in 2003), Germany was top of the list with a 12% share of the world's outbound tourism.  US citizens were the second-biggest travellers in 2003, followed by the British and the Japanese.

The top tourist destination in 2003 was - perhaps not surprisingly - France, which frequently tops this list as the most visited country in the world. Germany took 9th place as a tourist destination, just behind Mexico and ahead of Canada.

World Tourism in 2013

The picture has changed quite a bit over the past ten years, with the rise of China and the strength of the Chinese economy.  There were more Chinese tourists travelling the world in 2013, than tourists from any other country (11% of the 'outbound' tourism market). German tourists are now in third place (7.4%) and a little bit behind tourists from the United States.

Interestingly, Japanese tourist numbers have dropped dramatically and Japan doesn't even appear in the top ten list any more, despite the fact that Japanese tourists were the fourth biggest group in 2003.  There has also been a sizeable growth in the number of Russian tourists, who were the tenth largest group in 2003, but are now the world's fourth largest group.

France is the world's most popular tourist destination

France remains the most popular tourist destination in the world, however, Germany has become increasingly popular, going from 9th to 7th place.  Germany now receives more tourists than the UK, but slightly less than Turkey, which has seen an explosion in tourist numbers during that 10 year period.

The next ten years in Tourism

It'll be interesting to see how things change over the next ten years - will France still be the world's most popular tourist destination?  Will the number of Chinese and Russian tourists be even higher, or will they be lower?  I think it's a difficult industry to make predictions about and that only time will tell!



Image credits:

Both images were taken by me - please feel free to use them with the Creative commons license:

- Attribution
- Non-commercial
- Share alike

Queensland - Close Encounters of the Easter Bunny kind

I thought it might have been an April Fool's prank when I read the article in yesterday's Courier-Mail reminding all good landowners to kill as many rabbits as possible this Easter. I guess it's a bit of a culture shock, for a reader in the UK, but the article was deadly serious and, judging by the raging debate in the Comments section, controlling Queensland's rabbit population seems to be a very emotive and divisive issue.

There also seems to be a real city/country divide in this debate. On one side are the concerned housewives of Brisbane, totally appaled by the bad taste of the article and the recommendations to rip up the rabbit warrens, a cruel but effective way of dealing with overpopulation. On the other side are the farmers, struggling to eke an existence out of an already quite challenging soil.

Being a rabbit myself (according to my Chinese horoscope) my instinct is to side with the bunnies and their, very natural, desire to breed and prosper. Europeans (well, one Victorian settler in particular) created this problem, right? Maybe we need to live with the consequences and let Mother Nature find a solution?

If this was just a question of rabbits eating up human profits, then I'd probably stick to this, however (apologies to my fellow bunnies) rabbits are a pest that have caused untold devastation to the fragile ecology of Australia, outeating native mammals (like the incredibly cute Bilby), destroying native plants and causing major soil erosion. It might cause some mirth to people here in the UK, as we're tucking in to our chocolate bunnies and eggs this weekend, but it's an incredibly serious issue for people in Queensland and one that may be difficult to resolve.

I was genuinely surprised to find out that owning pet rabbits is banned in Queensland and you can be fined up to 30,000 Aussie dollars if you contravene this ban. Although plagues of rabbit were first reported in Victoria and Tasmania, the year-round warmth in Queensland has encouraged rabbits to breed more than they would in Europe, where they seem to 'take a break' during the winter.

If only they'd had time to evolve in the way native mammals like the Antechinus has done.  The male Antechinus (a type of rodent) only lives for 11 months, the first ten of which are spent eating and growing.  Like many male mammals, the Antechinus' thoughts eventually turn to reproduction and males spend their eleventh month engaged in this noble pursuit, dying with exhaustion as they literally shag themselves to death.  A lack of male Antechinus after the 11th month, means the female of the species has less competition in terms of feeding herself and a new generation.

Ironically, it's highly likely that the rabbit populations only survive in Australia because people do. I'm sure that the Australian outback is an incredibly hostile environment for rabbits and it's only human interaction with the Australian soil that has created suitable conditions for farming which, as well as feeding the human population, has also sustained the 400 million rabbits that are estimated to live in Australia.

Of course (European) spring is an apt time to talk about rabbits and it's no coincidence that rabbits appear, in chocolate form, as part of our Easter celebrations. In many cultures rabbits are associated with fertility and survival instincts. In some cases, like Israel, this is interpreted as cowardice, rabbits being the Hebrew equivalent of 'chicken' in English, eg 'to chicken out' of doing something.

In other cultures, like the myths of West Africa and the Cherokee tribes of North America, rabbits are considered to be extremely clever tricksters. This mythology has been handed down to us through the Br'er Rabbit stories and, ultimately, cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny.

The playfulness of rabbits has been applied to human sexuality, especially in advertising products for women, so that everywhere from an Argos catalogue to a hen party in Blackpool, you will see that supreme icon of rabbit mythology, the Playboy bunny.

Interestingly, Oriental mythologies, such as those in Japan and Korea, associate rabbits with the moon and, I can't help wondering if indeed it's our entire planet, not just Australia, that has been taken over by these furry fiends!

Image credits:

The image of the Queensland flag has been created for Wikimedia Commons by user Denelson83 who is male and comes from Vancouver Island. He has contributed a lot of flag images to Wikimedia Commons, so thanks Denelson83 for sharing these with the world!


The image of the rabbit is from flickruser Wolfpix a.k.a. Jack Wolf.  Jack is from Albany in California and is an incredibly talented wildlife photographer - you can see more of his images on his commercial website http://www.imagekind.com/
 
The image of the Playboy Bunny Tattoo was provided copyright free by flickruser cwalker71 a.k.a. Chuck Walker - Chuck is a freelance photographer from Pitman, New Jersey and you can also visit his site http://cwalkerphoto.com/