Atiu Atiu - Bless you

Atiu - Well worth the time and effort to get here - a magical place that will live long in the memory.
Part of the Southern Cook Island Group, only 5 by 6 kms and no fringinging reef. A green pimple in the deep blue Pacific Ocean. An Island with history both highs and lows and experincing a trouble time since the NZ Government pull funding and with a year the population went from 1500 to just under 500 bearly able to support / sustain itself. The number of people on the island determins the services they get - so no dentist on Atiu but a small hospital and an airbridge to Rarotonga of a small 16 seater plane most days. Everything else comes in by boat but no harbour big enough to dock so every last item has to transferedd to a lighter and brought ashore. At least 8 tonnes of concrete blocks are on the bed of the Pacific as they failed to make the short journey from the boat to land.
We now head back to Rarotonga and start our homeward journey -back in late August so plenty more to come.
Lifted but worth reading on.
Atiu is 11 million years old. It is rising from the sea. This makes Atiu very different from your normal tropical island that starts off as a high volcanic island like Rarotonga, then slowly sinks into the sea becoming like the island of Aitutaki, then an atoll and then a reef over a few million years. Atiu is still rising from the sea, so if you visit us you will be going up in the world. It's guaranteed. But only at a rate of 0.2 mm per year.
Atiu started off with a sub-surface hot spot melting the sea floor, starting an undersea volcano, which grew into a mountain. The sea floor was moving over the hot spot and so, eventually, the hot spot was too far away from the mountain and the volcano died. We were left with a mountain sitting on the sea floor. It was a fizzer. It didn't make it. It was just an undersea mountain and that would have been the end of Atiu, but the sea floor kept moving. It covered a distance of about 1200 km in 8 million years and then it met a long rise in the mantle of the earth. As the sea floor slid up this rise, the mountain was pushed up out of the sea.
Now eight million years does a lot to volcanic rock. It dissolves in seawater at a rate of about a millimetre a century into volcanic clay, mud and slush. That doesn't sound much but over 8 million years that is 80 metres. As Atiu rose, the waves washed the top off the mountain until eventually the waves could not cut fast enough and Atiu rose flat topped to a height of 50 metres above the sea. There it remained for 3 million years, eroding and growing an encircling reef and big lagoon.
Yesterday, it rose again, another 20 metres and the encircling lagoon and reef rose too. Now that reef surrounds Atiu. It is weathered, sharp, jaggered, riddled with coral caves and covered with jungle. We call this encircling region of Atiu, the Makatea.
Makatea is fossil coral. The top fossil coral dates at 120,000 years ago, giving that 'yesterday' a geological meaning. It is interesting that the new reef that is now growing dates from the present to 8,700 years ago and that nowhere on the island can you find coral that is between 8,700 and 120,000 years old.
Scientists and some Australian cave divers that visited Atiu solved this riddle. The scientists discovered that over the last 3 million years the world has been going through a series of ice ages and warm periods. The last warm period was 120,000 years ago and the latest started about 8,700 years ago. The cave divers managed to dive to a depth of 46 metres below sea level and found stalactites and stalagmites in a cave down there. These only grow in air, so the sea level must have dropped a least 46 metres during an ice age. Our reef of 120,000 to 8,700 years ago is beneath the sea.

History
The Polynesians discovered Atiu about 1500 years ago. It is believed the first settlers to Atiu came from the Tahiti group of islands. Polynesians come from somewhere in Asia. This is in spite of Thor Heyerdah's Kon Tiki voyages from South America showing that such journeys were possible, it is now currently believed that the Polynesians came from somewhere in East Asia about 4000 years ago. Genetic DNA testing shows that a race of people called the Lapita spread eastward leaving pockets of people with similar genes in Taiwan, a single valley in Japan and right across the Pacific to the Marquesses Islands, Tahiti, Cook Islands and then finally reaching New Zealand about 1000 years ago.
According to anthropologists, these journeys transformed the people. Crossing the oceans took courage and a special adaptability to surviving famine and cold. Believe it or not, water at 25 degrees C will chill you to death given enough time and these chills happened regularly on open ocean voyaging canoes. Those that survived these voyages to breed had large bodies and muscle mass to get them through the famines and to be able to shiver though the cold.
Captain Cook sighted Atiu on the 31st March 1777 and was finally close enough to send an exploration crew ashore on 3rd April 1777. Cook described Atiuans as magnificent, superbly proportioned and muscular. The crew included Omai from Tahiti and as the Tahitian and Atiuan languages are fairly similar it was possible to communicate. The Atiuan people believed they were most hospitable to crew and performed entertainment and prepared a feast for them. Omai, however, had heard stories about the fierce Atiuans and cannibalism and so believed they were to be the feast. The terrified Omai told the Atiuan stories of how powerful the weapons of the Europeans were and the crew were finally allowed to leave Atiu in the early evening but this was only only after hearing these stories and seeing a demonstration of the power of gunpowder.
Captain Cook was an excellent navigator and a very proficient chart maker so Atiu was one of the first accurately positioned islands on the British Admiralty Maps of the Pacific. Whalers, adventurers and traders came. The interaction was hot. The Early Polynesians were the world's greatest lovers. They loved everybody no matter what race. Then the Tumunu arrived and they loved that as well. And just when this action was at its hottest, two newcomers arrived. They were disease and the missionaries. Disease wiped out all those that had not been born of mixed race, as the early Polynesians had no resistance to the diseases of the out-worlders, so it was just as well the Polynesians were the worlds greatest. The missionaries condemned this free love. They also condemned the Tumunu. They worked hard in stopping what allowed the Polynesians of mixed race survive. Atiu's population plummeted from 3000 to 300.
The out-worlders gave the Atiuan mixed race and disease.
The missionaries gave the Atiuans god and took away free love.
The diseases decimated Atiu and took away most of their magnificence as their once powerful bodies interbreed with the scrawny out-worlders. But we hung in there and survived. Welcome to our world. Atiu.
Modern History, post annexation by New Zealand in 1901, is brilliantly described in John Scott's book 'Years of the Pooh-Bah'. The stories Dick Scott relates show that New Zealand as a colony of Great Britain and then the Cook Islands as a colony of New Zealand, (this means the Cook Islands were a colony of a colony), was a bad and neglectful ruler of the land.
Internal self-governance came in 1965 and 14,000 people had their own parliament and ruled themselves except in the area of foreign affairs and defence.
An international airport on Rarotonga was finished in 1973 and the Cook Islands embarked on the industry of tourism. This industry grew to be the Cook Islands main income earner. Cook Islanders are naturally friendly, enjoy entertaining, singing, dancing and just having a good time. This coupled with a sparkling tropical setting makes the Cook Islands the fastest growing tourist destination in the Pacific.
Atiu Island in 1973 was still a backwater. Phil Amos, a minister in the NZ government visited Atiu to inspect a new pineapple industry started by the United Nations to develop the island. Atiu had no harbour and Phil made the promise that the NZ Army Engineers and Airforce in a joint exercise would build Atiu a harbour. This harbour was completed in 1975 and the pineapple industry flourished until 1988 when Atiu lost the New Zealand fresh pineapple market to cheaper and easier to import pineapples from the Philippines and Malaysia.
Atiu still had no airport. Any tourist visiting Atiu had a choice, to visit Atiu for 5 hours and go back with the boat or to wait for the next boat, which normally averaged 5 weeks before it's return. Finally, Atiu's airport was completed in 1978. Atiu at that time did not have running water, telephone, electricity, and it did not have any tourist accommodation.
One of the first returnee's to Atiu after the Airport was built was Kura Malcolm and her husband Roger. They came back with hardware and a sawmill to build the islands first tourist accommodation. They started in true pioneering fashion, with the tree, and a year later
Atiu Villas opened in 1980 with one villa. The villa and subsequent villas were all constructed out of local timbers and materials. This small start was expanded to 4 villas by 1992 when the number of visitors to Atiu reached 560.
Today there are 4 accommodators on the island with a total of 29 beds and in 2002 the number of visitors reached about 1200. Still not many visitors and represents an average visitor loading of about 12 tourists at any one time. It is still possible to be the only visitor to the island but this is becoming increasingly rarer.
After the opening of the airport the development of Atiu followed fairly rapidly with electricity of eight hours per day starting in 1979, 24-hour electricity in 1998, telephone in 1992, television in 1993 and the internet in 2003. Atiu, finally had the whole technological disaster.
Now you can visit and expect running water, a cold beer and an urgent call from your relative or business at any time.