We had a quiet day today. We got up at about 6.30 and went to mass. I sat next to Luisa Ika Pakerati and Mungo and I managed to stay for the whole service.

This was the Luisa I’d visited and talked to at Tahai

There was another baby about Mungo’s age on the other side and that helped. I always enjoy mass immensely even when the singing is a bit dowdy as it was today.

After mass I came home and found Carlo very tetchy because of the kids and I suspect, regret at having turfed Soledad. That came about because Carlo went and moaned at Milarosa (Georgina’s sister) and it got back to Soledad that she was going to be chucked out the next time she abandoned Victor. So she left yesterday afternoon rather tearfully. I gave her a cup of coffee and ten escudos.

Of course this left me in charge of keeping the place in order which I was not at all good at.

Anyway after washing five nappies I walked down towards the church to meet Grant. On the way three people gave me contradictory information about his whereabouts “He’s in the church” “Now?” “Yes now” “is he in the church?” “No church finished he probably at the hotel…”etc.

We finally met and then set out for Maria Leon Hei’s place where we’d been invited to lunch. I forgot the Leon bit of her name and we enquired after the house of Maria Hei and landed up at a totally strange house but nevertheless that of someone I knew, a nice woman who helped me at the ECA a few days ago. We got to lunch finally and a very nice lunch it was with roast chicken and potatoes with wine. It’s the first time I’ve come across oven cooked food here.

The atmosphere there was a little austere and I was grateful for Mungo who was nice and affectionate and pottered about and ate soup. I feel I rather buggered up that relationship by not recognizing her at the airport. The house is very smart by local standards with a sofa with soft cushions – a bit faded and unmatching – a radiogram on four legs working from a transformer – a table full of shell necklaces and statues. It’s funny how statues are liked by the populace itself – they are not just made for tourists. Lunch was sitting up at the table with napkins (paper). It was served by Anna, sister in law to Pat McCoy. The conversation was remarkably dull – learning the language, cooking, nothing about life here at all except that she has a resident member of Lan Chile in the house who has fresh vegetables sent tin every week. She got very suspicious of Grant when he wanted to take her genealogy.

Tonight I went to mass to count the people for Grant. Maria/Suzy, Georgina’s sister was there and the woman I met at the Ikas was there too and urged me to sit down. I’ve taken to crossing myself with the holy water like everyone else for the sake of not being too conspicuous. There was no singing in the evening service and few people – 98 odd.

On the way home I met a girl who asked me if I wasn’t afraid of the devil in the dark. I said I’d just been to church so how could I be. She walked with me a little way and then went into her house. A little girl walked further with me. She had a long name which began with Norida and ended with Pakerati. She has four sisters and one brother and was going to the pictures tonight. She taught me the words for moon and stars.

Monday April 17th 1972

I collected the rest of the ECA list today.

So many of the ECA items make my mouth water even now because they were such rare pleasures - tinned cream and tinned peaches! (One of the few times Grant and I came to blows was when I sprinkled crystals of salt instead of sugar on my bowl of them and he laughed. I threw the bowl at his typewriter and he hit me. Mungo went to get Grandma Luisa out the back to sort us out which she did. The typewriter was OK)

Confort too, that is the toilet paper that served for everything besides its obvious purpose. Long after we returned to Sydney people would look a bit askance at the toilet roll that sat on our table at meals.

I’m cooking lunch today cos Carlo’s gone to Entel.

Entel, the telephone office, was quite a walk out of town and the only place one could phone the continent or any other country. There were no phones in houses at the time.

He says he’s going to tell Georgina to come back as soon as possible because he’s fed up with doing the washing and looking after the kids. I took Coca down to her grandmother Luisa Tuki, as mentioned above and Juan Riroroco her husband.

This morning Milarosa looked after Mungo while I went to the Co-operative. It had no fish, only a lot of Santiago fruit. I bought grapes and apples for tomorrow when Mana Ika and his wife are coming. There were certainly a lot of kids at Luisa and Juan’s. I wondered who they all belonged to. I met Veronica, sister in law to Georgina this morning too, also with a little baby. I wasn’t sure if it was hers or not but she knew it was ten months old.

7.30pm

It’s been a quiet day. Grant’s still out.

He got very involved in the church records and the padre kindly let him work on them in his house.

I went down to buy fish today and couldn’t but talked to two little girls on the way Alicia and ? I can’t remember. They were supposed to be cleaning and scuttled off when someone called them. I ended up down at the harbour and met a girl who is marrying an Australian in Santiago and is going to Australia. She is called Maria and has a little daughter, half American. She says the American family wanted to have the girl and are always sending clothes for her. She told me about how she told her mother about the baby but I couldn’t understand a word because it was in Pascuence English.

I’m reading Middlemarch and I’m glad I brought it as it has a very brisk effect on me and stops me moping if I ever feel like doing so.

For some reason I need to read George Eliot’s Middlemarch about once every ten years. The strong voice and unwavering ethical compass reassure me. However each time, depending on my stage in life, I identify with a different person in the story. I’ve been the silly little sister, the mortified wife of a shamed eminent citizen of the town and even the flirtatious Rosamund..

Questions that raise themselves

Where is the island heading? Materialism – maybe further isolation and separation of families into definite pecking order. Maria Hei is of the upper group but at present even she has to go to the ECA. Supply is the leveller at present.

What are moral standards here? A) Soledad, probably promiscuous, Louisa Pakerati Ika, strictly monogamous c) Innumerable illegitimate children everywhere..

Moral standards!!! Promiscuous!!! What a little prig you were then Julia. But I guess all these years later we would talk abouit “sexual mores” but mean the same thing.

Religion and superstition – how strong now? “Aren’t you afraid of the devil in the dark?”

Infant mortality – how much gastroenteritis?

Gifts and exchanges – should we do more reciprocating? Today Rosa asked for one of Carlo’s avocado pears. Should I have let her have it?

Where does the money come from?

Most of these questions gradually got answered as time went on. Quite quickly I realised that the huge public service provided regular cash which percolated through the system and resale of items from the continent added more. Tourism, then in its infancy, was to end up making the island quite rich. Then there was fishing and a bit of agricultural production Huge cabbages used to come into town now and then probably overfed on fertiliser..

We spent most of today at Luisa Ika’s place out at Tahai and I looked at some statues for the first time. Grant explained Professor Mulloy’s reconstructions to me including a very big chicken house which I couldn’t believe was simply for chickens.

Professor Bill Mulloy was an archeologist who made many expeditions to the island and was responsible for restoring ceremonial sites, especially the ahus where statues had fallen.

Tahai is an astonishing place – so beautiful and rugged - and dead. I was filled with pity for the people who have to live in the shadow of these statues. Below the four big moai is something like a little harbour. It makes you feel quite excited at first because it suggests commerce and life at some time in the island’s history. And then you realise there is simply not enough water for it to have been a harbour and that it must have simply had a ritual purpose.

Oh Julia 26 -only now do I recognise your need for commerce and “life” and how you were trying to shape the place into something you could understand and like. You were not unlike the priests using rongo rongo boards for firewood simply because they didn’t understand their use and needed firewood to cook wafers for communion. I suppose homesickness took many forms and at least you did no harm.

The day at Mana’s was nice. He came to the house with an elderly Atan lady around 9.30 and picked me up after collecting a few tomato plants off Carlo and we picked up Grant from the post office. In the morning Grant talked to Mana’s wife Luisa and took her genealogy.

One of the most significant research tools for Grant was gathering family trees and working out links between people as well as the shapes of families. It was a time honoured ethnological practice.Often in the process, stories would be told; who made a clandestine voyage from the island when it was forbidden by the government, who died when and how, which families were related and hence not allowed to intermarry and all sorts of other issues. The genealogy book went on being a such a sacred object in our family that when Grant’s study caught fire in 1990, Mungo, then 19, ran in to rescue it and only retreated when his hair was catching fire. The charred relic was tenderly recopied.

She had ten children, the first two of whom died and they were married after four years of living together. She said she’d only slept with one man, her husband. She talked to other men, but with the body – no.

She works incredibly hard. Gets up at 5am and goes to bed at 12 or 1 if there is more work to be done. She gave us a huge lunch of salad soup. ( I can’t remember what this odd sounding dish was now) which we couldn’t manage, and meat with rice. She also served ‘pan’ and guava jam. The pan is a cross between bread and pancake and very rich. Mungo screamed about lunchtime and on her instructions I took all his clothes off He did have a bit of a nappy rash and she told me to wash him in warm water and put talcum powder on him and let him go without a nappy. “He’s a baby so it doesn’t matter”

She bore all her children at home with Mana holding her back and her holding the bed. They were all big babies, she said and Mana said they’d been brought up on fish soup and bread and not much milk. Interesting. Both Carlo and Mana have pronounced against too much milk.

One of the sons, Alberto, went to New York to be brought up there but came back after six months. There is a photograph album with lots of pictures of him by a television set and an electric stove and at the zoo. He’s home now looking none the worse for the ordeal.

In the afternoon all the boys came home from work and played with Mungo There is one son, several cousins and a nephew all very much of an age. They taught me two new cat’s cradles of which I think I can still do one. They all ate hanging around the kitchen. There seems to be no notion of sitting at table to eat. All water at Mana’s place is brought in from ten miles away although he is building a lavatory. At present there isn’t one – only a very public bench with a hole in it.

I talked to a neighbour a little as well – the woman with the two week old baby at the airport and Mana’s sister who has one baby boy of nine months who is still breastfeeding. She is very old and worn looking but the baby is fat and flourishing and obviously very much loved. I think that the husband has left her for the continent. Another tubbier looking woman was there with a little girl. They tried to show me some kai kai too. They also said for some reason to do with Mungo’s teeth that my next one would be a girl.

It wasn’t.

I felt full of life and easiness after visiting that family. They seem a happy lot and there’s always a lot going on. Mungo enjoyed it too and ate a great plate of semolina.

Saturday, 15 April

I forgot to mention that we went to a rehearsal on Thursday of the conjunto that went to Santiago today. It took place at the school and was supposed to start at 9pm but in fact got going at about 10.30. Quite a lot of people were there including the governor and the terrible tourist woman who claims to be a professor.

We all sat around the walls of the school hall and waited and finally saw the dancing. It began with a solemn pascuence chant given by the boys dressed in grass skirts and necklaces of straw and accompanied by a skin drum, two horns clacked together and other bits and pieces. The girls were a bit tense but danced wiggling their grass skirts and funny little bikini tops with tassels on them. They had none of the abandon of the best dancers here, like Soledad, and looked altogether a bit too well brought up. The performance warmed up a bit and included some kai kais with their chants.

Apparently the group has 50 costumes altogether. We only saw 30 – the grass skirt outfits and the girls’ feather skirts and flowered head dresses and Elena next doors’ shell garments that I saw being made when I went there with Georgina.

The dance left me with a very mixed impression. A lot of care and love had gone into the costumes but the dancing was anything but authentic. The grand finale was like something out of South Pacific with lots of waving goodbye and throwing of flowers (this was only mimed at the rehearsal). It all seemed oddly vulgar – even the kai kai chanting with the rolling drum in the background. I felt the meaning of this type of dancing lay in the doing rather than the watching and the conjunto was part of the revival of things touristic rather than artistic.

This comment seems very judgmental and unfair now.

The whole thing finished very late and we trogged home in the dark feeling cold for the first time. We’ve all got some kind of cold now.

Carlo told us at lunch that Georgina has 3 more children. The oldest is a girl who has for some reason been more or less adopted by the ex governor of the island and is living in Santiago now. The other two are living with Georgina’s parents.

That is Juan and Luisa, the parents of Georgina. Maria/Suzy, Milagrosa,Victoria, and nine more living. Luisa bore sixteen children in all. Luisa became a close friend later when we moved into the little house in front of theirs.

The ten year old boy smokes and is a little tearaway and the seven year old seems to be turning out queer, C says, because he likes playing with dolls and doesn’t like being rough. Carlo maintains that his way of bringing up kids is ‘straight” whereas the island way is uneducated and uncivilized. He also said that most young girls have a baby somewhere. Georgina did not tell him how many she had when they were married but he considers those before marriage her responsibility and those after, his. On the continent a man can be imprisoned for unlawful sexual intercourse. He himself served 20 days in gaol. But not so here.

Victor was crying this morning so I took him into our room. He was very hot and needed clothes taking off but basically he seemed to want company because he cried again when I put him back after about an hour. The bedroom next door is very foetid and stuffy. I wished I could adopt him because he’s an affectionate little boy. He’s a bit spotty now.

Mungo has a touch of diarrhea for the first time. The other kids have been fighting a lot today. Coca is home for the weekend. They really don’t have enough to do though, today. Coca has a pile of little shells that she is threading. I offered to take them out for a walk but Carlo says it’s best they stay quietly at home.

We’ve had a busy morning. After breakfast, around 7am, Soledad and I went to the hospital taking a bumpy short cut through the fields and guava bushes. When we got to the hospital, which is made up of a number of caravans and prefabs, Sole went in and had a long discussion with the sister from which she emerged in tears without her free milk ration. I think she had lost her book. Anyway she went on about the “fuckin Chilean woman” for quite a while.

There were quite a few people hanging around the baby section,which seemed to be divided into “control” and “casualty”. The casualty was run by two men, who could have been doctors. (They were giving injections anyway).

In fact they were nurses. There was only ever one resident doctor on the island.

The Control was being run by a Chilean nurse and the free milk and vitamins were being given out by a nun. A Chilean woman with three girls and a fourth at school was waiting. Another woman had a baby of about a year and then there was Victor and Maria/Suzy, Georgina’s sister who had come in as an antenatal patient.

When the matron turned up I was seen first. I got a little book. Mungo was checked over – hair, teeth walking ability and then he was weighed somewhat laboriously by me and him getting on the scale together and then me alone and deducting the second figure from the first, arriving at 10 kilos 60 gms. The matron checked which injections Mungo had had and we established what measles was and she said that the inoculation was only given in winter here. I was rather embarrassed at having to accept free milk because it seems a bit much coming here and taking advantage of benefits being given to the island because of its poverty.

Actually during the socialist Allende government years there were very good social services and not just for the island.

Anyway it will do for Soledad.

I saw a baby who had been born the night before at the hospital. All dressed in brand new pink clothes with a pink shawl. A boy, again – ‘with no name yet”

I found out where the Telegraph Office is today. Sole sent a telegram from a little box office near the Policarpo monument. He [the official] wrote it for her.

After the hospital we trogged over the fields again and Victor was put to sleep whilst we went off to buy some meat, having heard on the radio that some was to be for sale in the paddock down by the sea beyond the fishmarket. There was a little group of people around the butcher’s kiosk when we got there, and meat – that is steak rather than tripe or liver- was selling at 15 escudos a kilo. We bought three kilos. A tall fair Chilean boy played with Mungo for a bit. We met Romero (a shopkeeper) with a straw basket going down our way and Veronica coming back with lots of bones and blood. The butchery was done very crudely by just chopping hunks off the main carcass and hooking them on a scale. The head was sitting, with its horns, on the wall around the kiosk patio. There were avocados and tomatoes too. Sole made me do the buying – maybe because I always seem to go in front of people I shouldn’t because of Mungo.

(or more likely my ‘stranger’ status. This magic wore off after a bit rather to my relief.)

On the way home we called in at Alviras’s, another one of Georgina’s sisters who lives in the waterfront group of houses. Someone there was carving a statue of a spirit.

Most likely a moai kava kava, a skeletal figure that, alongside replicas of the statues, was a popular tourist item.

We also called in at the bar which was owned by Soledad’s “aunt” where we were given a drink of ‘water’ which was pisco, (a sort of brandy) and lemon in fact. I met a little baby there called Juan Tuki, about three months old. We got a lift back from the telegraph office.

Grant has a bad cold and Mungo is a bit off colour today too. I feel exhausted after two big walks with Mungo on my back.

I had a backpack style sling which served me well. People were always asking me why Mungo didn’t walk and I answered with one of my few Rapanui phrases “Hupe hype” (lazy). How unfair to Mungo! On the whole people tended to leave their small children at home but that wasn’t an option for me then.

Yesterday I found out that there’s a Pentecostal church here with 30 members Chilean. Also apparently Georgina does not get on too well with Milarosa – the ‘black’ sister. The only sister liked by Sole is the one I call Maria and she calls Suzie.

I liked her very much too and have called her Maria/Suzy in the diary because therenare so many Marias.

Thursday April 13th 1972

Today started on a bad note. At about 3.30 am Victor started crying and woke Mungo. This went on fitfully until 6am when Soledad returned from a night out. Carlo was furious with her and had apparently had nightmares. I had too. Sole was exhausted and slept sitting up on her bed after she’d fed Victor. If I’d known she wasn’t there at all I’d have fed him myself.

I went out with Grant this morning down to the co-op. It had nothing much so I headed for the harbour and met a woman called Maria Hito. She told me there were no fish now but would be at three this afternoon and would I like to come to her house and drink something. We went and I was introduced to Pat McCoy’s sister in law Anna.

Pat McCoy was an archeologist who had married an Easter Island girl. but didn’t live on the island at that time.

The house was the most stylish I’ve seen yet – soft cushions on the sofa, nice washed plastic flowers and not a lot of clutter. It is in the main street. Bright blue. Anna showed me a letter in Spanish from Pat, saying he’s coming in June or July.

After that I came home and found a tired looking Soledad and Rosa from up the way eating semolina.

Grant and I met the plane this afternoon. I encountered Maria Tepano again and didn’t immediately recognise her. I don’t know why I find it so hard to remember faces even when the personalities make quite a firm impression.

This went on to be a problem all my life. I believe it has a name now - just checked -Prosopagnosia, it is. Often causes offence. Fortunately not every face is unrecognisable but often quite important ones.

As usual we met all the people we know there, Sergio Rapu, the girl next door’s boyfriend, the governor, innumerable young girls who like Mungo and various relations of Georgina’s who I can’t identify but who greet me with kisses. The jolly one from the bar was there with little Juan Tuki. I met Maria Luisa Pakerati Tuki too and she invited me to the place tomorrow at 9am.

The box didn’t come and a search is being set up all along the route it took. I saw a young man doing kai kai (cats cradles) at the airport too. I also saw a middle aged woman with a little two week old baby. It had a very unsterilized looking bottle of water. She told me she wasn’t breastfeeding and then seemed to be with a great display of modesty and shrouding with shawls. I admired the baby and then as usual she said it wasn’t as good as mine with white skin and blue eyes – all the good things.

Grant said he found out today, and will be getting documentary evidence for the fact that there are about 70 children fathered by the Americans here.

I went to the ECA this morning after calling in at Lan Chile with Grant to find what had become of the box. (A piece of our luggage which got lost en route) The LAN office is a grubby little place on the FAC base near the runway.

After the Lan office I went to the cooperativa and bought six eggs and six little peppers. Then I was given a lift home and was accosted by a terrible American woman who is touring here at the moment. After that I left Soledad (the girl’s name I now discover who works here and I suspect of being Georgina’s eldest daughter) and went to the ECA which wasn’t too full. I was helped by a really nice sensible woman called Maria Ihe (as far as I could hear). She was nice and clear about showing me how to make my list and get a bill and then get the goods on the bill. I bought a small Nescafe, 2 toilet rolls, 10 jugos and one kilo of rice. After that I felt rather confident and went to Alvarez, the little shop on the corner and bought a bottle of vinegar for 30 escudos which seemed a lot.

Then Mungo and I went to the funny little junk shop with ducks and kittens at the back and we shared a jugos and I bought a tin of tomatoes.. It was a very peaceful ten minutes I spent there with my juice on the veranda waving to people who passed on horses.

The old man who runs the place has a silver moustache. It stocks very little – a few sweet potatoes, tinned tomatoes and one or two other tins and lots of shell necklaces, carvings and coral.

When I got home a chicken stew was under way made with a home grown chicken. I deduced this from all the feathers round the dustbin. It was a tough but tasty stew. I talked to Sole a bit and she told me the plot of a John Wayne film she’d seen the night before, only totally non comprehensibly. I couldn’t understand a thing. She also expressed her contempt for Chileans. For all that she’s called her baby after his Chilean father. She also told me that there is a Well Baby Clinic here and she’s going tomorrow. Tonight, to my surprise she’s going to an evening class. For senoras, she said. Something that sounded like Liberal Arts.

Mungo and I fell asleep after lunch as did Christian, and woke in stuffy rooms around 3pm feeling terrible. Christian moped in the back yard for about half an hour and then Mungo and I set off for Maria’s.. She wasn’t there so I walked to the shore and watched 11 little boys playing football on the green(?). I fielded the ball for them once or twice. We played among the rocks for a bit and then set off for home and found Maria doing the washing by the wall on the way home. She invited me in and gave me jugos and I gave her the little angel top I’d set aside. She told me that you can get free baby milk at the hospital. She’s a nice woman. She gave me some coral and sausage and two tomatoes.

I grew to understand and appreciate the gifting that was part of all visits and learnt to do it myself after a bit.

When I got home I made Mungo some scrambled eggs and the old man who gave us a bunch of bananas some days ago came by with another and a reproachful look.

I’d not been reciprocal I guess.

I got him coffee and fed Mungo and finally Grant came home and gave him some razor blades which he wanted. He’s giving Grant his genealogy now I think.

I’m tackling Rapanui language now I think. I don’t think I’ll get anywhere unless I do. Today I felt a bit inadequate and as if I was doing nothing – no baby studying or string figure collecting. I must try harder.

Tuesday 11 April 1972

We got up at 6am today because Grant was meeting Sergio Rapu at 7.30 at the school.

Sergio spoke perfect English, having spent many childhood years in the US with the family of Bill and Emily Mulloy. Bill was the principal architect on the island and had restored a lot of statues. He was a schoolteacher the but went on to be Governor of the Island in Chilean dictator, Pinochet’s time

I walked down with him. The town was very much alive with children going to school and trucks setting off for outside town. We met Sergio in his van and he took us to school. I went down to the fishmarket but as usual there were no fish. It was beautifully cool and I got a lift from the boyfriend of he girl next door who is going to dance in Santiago on Saturday. I did the washing when I got home and wrote to Pat. I had a moment of panic when I couldn’t remember her address – just complete blankness. It came back – at least I think it’s right.

I studied Rapanui for a while and at last a bit is beginning to stick. I can say the odd thing that makes sense to an Easter Islander. Sole and I went to the meat ECA and she bought two chickens and me one. We ate one of the chickens for lunch with noodles.

After lunch Sole said she was going to have her photo taken at the police station for her Chilean boyfriend (sweetie), one of the FACS officers who was here and would I like to come. So we trooped off to the carabinieri (police quarters) part of town at the end of the airport and went to visit a lovely little house full of strange things – dried fishes and a turtle shell – a tame pigeon and three little grey cats and a duck and two sorts of hens. We sat about for a while and looked at some photos of the woman’s family and then Sole took Mungo and had her photo taken with him and a big red flower. It cost, I think 25 escudos. The woman said she took all sorts of photographs. including passport photographs.

Many continental Chilean wives provided special services to the island, such as cake making, dressmaking and photography.

After the photography session we went to look for eggs in the cave Ana Kai Tangata down by the sea.. I was a bit terrified handing Mungo down over the volcanic rocks and I didn’t get right inside where there were baby birds but sat up on a rock watching ferocious spray bashing on the other side of my rock and seeing Sole paddling about down in the cave. I wondered if she ever felt trapped with the waves sealing her in every few minutes. She said it was very hot in there when she came back. She is very agile.

When we got home Carlo was a bit fed up because Victor (Sole’s baby) had been crying. Little Victor does get abandoned rather a lot.

It was a good day. I got the washing done too and darned Grant’s socks. Noticed that Sole doesn’t sterilize her bottles at all. I wonder if the clinic advises sterilization or not. What advice does it give?

One rather ghastly thing I heard today was that there are still five cases of leprosy living in the leprosarium. The youngest, who is only 24 has just lost a leg. It seems terrible that they should be out there on their own with two visits a week from the nurse except in cases of illness. They cook for themselves. What an awful sentence that must be. The doctor told Grant about it.

Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease probably arrived on the island in the late 19th century and many families lost large numbers of members to the illness. As with tuberculosis, malnutrition may have been a factor as the families least affected had access to meat from the sheep ranch whilst others did not. The sheep were raised for wool and tallow and surplus meat was apparently disposed of in the sea lest the incentive to work be eroded.

Chile annexed the island in 1888 and, in time, a policy was implemented (as in other Polynesian countries) of isolating sufferers in a colony on the outside of town. This place was called the sanatorium when we were there. Effective treatment in the 1950s and 1960s allowed people to slowly return to Hangaroa and live in the community. About four people still lived in the sanatorium out of town which had once accommodated and isolated many sufferers. I have heard that the sanatorium has since been closed and a memorial for those who died there has been created.

I was mistaken in imagining living in the sanatorium as a “sentence’ In fact I later got into the habit of visiting the sanatorium because it was a lovely place with orange trees unaffected by the pests that had ruined the trees in town. The people there seemed content and happy to have the odd visitor.

A few people in the village still bore signs of having had the disease. This did not seem to be a stigma, although Continental school children (those belonging to government officials stationed on the island) still used to mock islander schoolchildren by mimicking having no fingers and suchlike. It played its part in the complex tensions between islander and continental Chileans at the time, as will emerge in the diary later on.

At about three Grant came home with the little English speaking Chilean and the head of the cooperative and they stayed chatting for a while. I went for a walk to see Maria, Georgina’s sister but the place was all padlocked up.

I discovered somewhat to my horror that Florencia (aka Soledad) is coming to live here. She keeps pressing me to go to the cinema, go bathing with her. I don’t want to because last time she guided me round the American base and begged bread off the Chilean FAC base. I don’t feel it comfortable becoming an inseparable partner to her and she speaks the peculiar pidgin English that is more difficult to understand than Spanish. We (Grant and I) went to the hotel tonight after looking in at the FAC cinema and I chopped my toe up. Carlo keeps on about Mungo needing a corrale (playpen) and doesn’t like the food I cook. Ah well.

Sunday, 9th April

We got up at 6.30 this morning to go to mass. Grant wants to go to all three – 8am, 10am and 7.30 pm. We were quite surprised to find the church chocabloc at the early mass but were told people went to it because it was not as hot as later in the day.

I like the mass. It seems a really joyous celebration and an assertion of Pascuence identity. So much here is improvisation and voracious adoption that its good to see something unique – though I suppose the mass too is adopted. I felt much happier after going to the mass even with Mungo grubby and smelling and wriggling around.. I lurked around the church doors quite a bit, though I began the service inside and the old lady sitting next to me was not above giving Mungo the odd tickle. People were not quite as glittering as at Easter but still smart, though I noticed one old lady in bare feet.

Regarding “improvisation and adoption” mentioned above. Flattened oil drums for building and many other purposes as well as plastic flowers for tarting up tourist houses come to mind! I remember thinking before we left for the island that it would somehow be “ethnic” and being disappointed in the drabness of the cement buildings that predominated in Hangaroa. I would have liked a grass hut or two I think! Specially to live in.

I got a lift home with the girl next door and her boyfriend. She wore a silver lame and white dress and looked as though she’d stepped out of a bandbox. We’re going swimming this afternoon.

Milarosa, another of Georgina’s sisters came up to me after the service and I thanked her for the tins of sweet potatoes she’s given us. I do wonder why they have tinned sweet potatoes here. Surely they are the one type of food that could be home grown.

Probably remnants from the American base.

The children woke fantastically early today and larked around in their room. Apparently all Pascuence children get up early in town and Coca (Georgina’s daughter and oldest of the three kids in the house) wakes the others up.

LUNCHTIME OVER 12.30

Rosa (lived in a tiny house next door with Luis, Georgina’s brother) brought her little girl to lunch. I think Carlo wanted Soledad and Rosa to eat in the kitchen but they wouldn’t. Soledad took a surreptitious small portion at first and then more. Some kind of class system operating but not very successfully. Carlo made Rosa put the jugos in the fridge. The meal of nicely done rice and meat pleased Carlo. Perhaps that’s why he let Sole get away with eating with us (as she cooked). I still can’t fathom her status at all. Every chance she gets Sole goes for a solitary dance with the record player.

I went to Anakena Beach with the Edmunds Rapahango today.

Percy Edmunds was the sheep ranch manager on the island from 1904-29 and sired two big families whose descendants continue to be influential.

Orland Paoa is after Grant for giving a talk to his tourists and was going to take us both to the beach but Grant wouldn’t go.

Orlando Paoa ran various tourist enterprises and Grant would have been an asset because he spoke several language and knew a lot about the island. But to have helped anybody with tourism would have caused complicated problems which we didn’t need.

I was startled by the barrenness of the rest of the island. A few sheep, but not that many, on the yellow brown hills. I saw a moai. (Easter Island statue).

Moais are omnipresent these days and indeed I bought three in Bunnings the hardware megastore to make a little altar in the garden for Grant’s birthday a few years ago. Among many other figures, politician Malcolm Fraser was likened to a moai (and not kindly). The stony and mysterious inhumanity of the image seems to trigger mockery. Worse yet, appalling artefacts have emerged such as a tissue box where you pull your tissue out of a moai’s nose. It is sad. Nobody would demean a crucifix thus (not that such an object really lends itself to mundane adaptation). Anyway I for one affirm the beauty and nobility of the moai above and am glad it will stand long after I am gone.

Lots of visitors today, “eating up food,” so Carlo says bitterly. But I think he likes them to come. He was awfully bored tonight with no one here.We planted my seeds today. Silver beet, thyme, squash and beans. Hope they grow.

I walked down to meet Grant in the dark tonight. It wasn’t creepy but I was alarmed by a madman or a drunk and a dog and was glad to get home after missing him because the mass was already over.

On the island the important landing was the Thursday one from Santiago and we almost always met it. The airport on Thursdays was a social occasion with shell necklaces to bestow on incomers and carvings to be sold. When we first arrived, transit passengers could go on a short tour of the island before the plane left.

The plane Georgina was getting a lift with belonged to the Chilean airforce and was quite small.

The end of a rather frustrating day. Yesterday I was told I would have to cook because Georgina was going to the cooperativa to buy lamb at four centavos a kilo 1– very cheap and only available once a month.

I stayed in but, for one reason or another, Carlo cooked so it was a bit of a waste. I did look after the kids while the two of them (Georgina and Carlos) went to meet the Chilean airforce plane, however.

This was the first stage of Georgina’s manoeuvres to get a lift to Santiago on the plane. A party for the generals at the house was also being planned.

One of the younger Pakarati brought a sheep home and Carlo butchered it very efficiently. He laughed and said he was ”like a doctor”. It had the liver and lights and tripe in it but the entrails had been removed.

Later Carlo lit a fire out in the yard and made bread on a sort of griddle. He was in rather high spirits about this and came in with a bag of bread saying it was enough for three, four days.

I went for a walk finally, down to the little beach beyond the hotel and met Grant on his way home. The shore is very rocky and surfy with lovely rockpools. I noticed a large number of children galloping around on horses.

Carlo asked tonight if the girl who called in around breakfast this morning had wandered around because he was missing 200 escudos. Georgina said he was a silly fool. She bought a little shell bag today to take to Santiago with her when she has her legs treated. (Georgina had bad varicose veins.) Its opening is too small to put anything in but it’s very pretty.

Last night Georgina held a party for the Chileans from the airforce who flew in yesterday morning. About fifteen came, including two generals. They are all on a sort of goodwill mission on its way to Europe. Most of them spoke English. They brought a lot of cognac and Pepsi Cola. They were invited because Georgina wants to go to Santiago for free with the plane. At first no girls were at the party except me, but gradually more came. At one point there was so much noise that Mungo woke and had to be taken for a walk. Coming back from this walk I met a girl who came up to me and introduced herself as Georgina’s eldest daughter by a Frenchman.

This was Soledad who became part of the household from time to time and guided me on walks sometimes.

She said she was going to stay in the house while Georgina was away. She spoke garbled but comprehensible English and a little French. We went in together and since everything seemed to be so above board I said to Georgina (who was pretty drunk) “I’ve just met your oldest daughter”. She was furious and said “You know Coca, you know Chico, Christian – they my children etc etc no other, you understand?” and of course I said yes.

In fact I had either misunderstood because of my limited understanding of Spanish or Soledad was fantasising. I’ve just checked Grant’s sacred genealogy book and Sole is not amongst her children.

I get awfully irritated with her (Georgina) sometimes. She summoned me to her room this morning “una pocito parfum” I was still staggering around sleepily. I looked for the lipstick too but that seems to have disappeared for the moment.

I wonder now why on earth I took make-up with me let alone perfume! But I guess in those days it was what one did. I’m not sure I could put lipstick on now if I tried!

It is rather exasperating not having any control over what happens when. And I put too much water on the paraffin stove today and mucked it up. And Carlo told me not to use so much water.

My walk was nice though. I enjoyed that.

Tonight there seems to be yet another dance with the Chilean generals. Pretty cloths have been put over the furniture and there is a feeling of excitement.

I could do without it though.

Grant met some interesting people today. Someone told him that a Chilean geologist from the national university disappeared without a trace in 1968 Their theory was he discovered something fishy going on at the American base and was done away with by them.

Anyway I saw Soledad again today – this time with her baby who apparently has a Chilean father who deserted her. The baby’s name is Victor and he’s three months old. She was at the house of Maria, Georgina’s sister whom I visited with Grant this afternoon. She seemed quite a different girl – more withdrawn and not talking English at all.

The party went pretty well – plenty of dancing and drinking and Georgina got her lift to Santiago. She got very emotional, late on in the evening, and went on about having us in her house and how hard it was that she had to go so soon. A rather sophisticated Chilean student engineer looked a little scornfully at all of this “I’ve never met people like this before” he said.

This morning there was a good deal of washing up and a couple of Chileans came by with cameras and I took a photograph of the family with them.

We had fish for lunch with lamb stew later.

This afternoon Georgina and I went visiting. We called in next door first where where Adriana and her mother (?) were making a hula hula costume. This consists of a bikini top covered in shells and feathers and a skirt with strings of shells. There’s a head dress too. Big black shells for nipples and a ring of black shells circling them, otherwise all tiny little white ones with holes punched in them. For thread she used unraveled flyscreen. There were five sorts of shells in all being used. Apparently the hula hula is done in Santiago and for the tourists here.

We talked for a while at Adriana’s and then went on to Georgina’s sister, Maria’s.

We met her on the step and she was nursing a baby but she explained it wasn’t hers and moreover it wasn’t too beautiful because it was “muchas negrito” (very black) Maria herself is expecting a baby in a month. She usually works at the hotel but at the moment is off work and will be for two months after the baby. She was wearing a leopard spotted dress and produced a bottle of wine for us to drink of which Georgina drank most. Also there was a sister in law and the girl from the party. They told me that a certain Rufina was “Miss Easter Island.”

Once a year there was (and still is) an islandwide festival called Tapati Rapanui, that is Easter Island Week. Rufina was elected at the last one..

After this we went on to the dressmakers who speaks very good English (comparatively) because she worked for the Americans for three years. She has red hair and a girl about six and a boy of eight months called Pedro. Again I was told what a great loss the Americans’ departure was. She works at the hotel as a chambermaid but seems to go to Santiago quite often. I asked if it wasn’t awfully expensive and she said she didn’t think so. (Islanders got special rates on the plane) The dressmaker cut the dress very cleverly with a tape measure while we waited. I was very sleepy.

I have to get a poster with flowers on it for Georgina and see if I have any baby clothes for Maria.

Georgina goes to Santiago tomorrow and there is a great deal of excitement. She’s making a head dress out of dried flowers and cardboard now and has packed her red suitcase. There is to be another party tonight with meat cooked in the garden and “drinky drinky” Georgina is a bit cheesed off that I haven’t got any hairspray for her elaborate coiffure. She really is a bit predatory. She’s got at my shampoo now and I know for a fact they sell it here. All the same I shall miss being bullied and helped by her for the next little while.

This morning Grant and I went down to the cooperativa and I bought a kilo of tomatoes and talked to an old man there. I sent a letter to mum at the post office and waited at the fish market for a while but only a boat with lobsters came in. I made friends through Mungo with Maria Pakerati – a tall dark girl who works at the hospital.

I met a Scottish woman, an air hostess who seemed very frustrated by her dealings in Spanish for a statue. Someone wanted 300 escudos (9 dollars) for one he was making for her. She liked the place though.

After I left her at the church I called in at Maria, Georgina’s sister. Soledad was there too with little Victor. I stayed and talked a little and had a glass of jugo Noticed they had a little electric stove. I wonder who the man of that household is. Maria’s eldest daughter is fairish and called Graciela. I noticed that Victor was wearing plastic (rubber actually) pants but no nappy. Again he cried when I picked him up. He was left on the bed while I was there. They told me that most people breast fed for only two or three months and then got milk from the ECA

Details included because I had undertaken to record childcare practices.

She also said that Georgina liked fiestas too much and when she was gone we’d all get more sleep.

I grew to love Maria, Georgina’s sister for her dark comments and philosophical acceptance of life and the need to settle down and get married after the baby was born. Her husband to be appears soon.

This afternoon we went to the airport. We arrived about an hour before the plane was due and all the stalls were set up and people gathered. They sold carvings and shell necklaces and one had a couple of puffer fish. Various young girls whipped Mungo off from time to time. I also met Miraflora (?) and an American lady who knew the geologist who disappeared. A nice lady from one of the stalls gave Mungo a necklace. It is a strange emotion seeing a plane coming and going with all this ceremony. One feels a sense of loss.

After the party last night Georgina took off at sevenish this morning in all her finery. The plane returned, however, an hour later with one of the engines having failed. Georgina was then supposed to leave at one but didn’t. I got thoroughly fed up with the mountains of washing up that got left at each of the false departures and also at Georgina’s repeated scrounging. She got our one plastic glass and demanded a sanitary towel. I didn’t have any.

I’d brought a supply of tampons with me.

So she swiped the clean nappy that I put in the kitchen to dry up with. Then she demanded another so I said I wouldn’t give her one. She was amazed and assumed I did not understand her demand. She went away anyway. I felt very tormented about the whole thing but have decided not to be milked dry by Georgina. She has things I don’t have and I don’t suppose she’d willingly share her scent.

I went off in a rage this morning fed up with all the people and the commands and I was dead tired anyway having been woken at 5am by the alarm, and rushing to the airport for 6.30. (That is the LAN Chile plane) There were quite a few people there including the museum Rapu.

It was a great anticlimax when the plane (air force plane) came back. Georgina was quite pleased, however, because it gave her a chance to get washed and dressed all over again and have her hair done again. She wore the dress she had had made – long in pink and black Tahitian cloth and she paused on the steps of the aeroplane for her photograph to be taken.

I got a guided tour of the American base, much against my will today. When I went off for my walk I was accosted by Soledad and made to look at the sights of the American base.

Later I took off again along the coast and walked as far as the Moai Tahai. I saw some statues and then needed a drink of water. I called in at Luisa Pakerati’s (I found out later) wife of Mana Ika Nohoe. She runs a tourist house with carving as a sideline. She has an enormous family and a whole sheep hung in the kitchen plus lobsters in the fridge. She gave me jugos (powdered fruit drink) and Mungo condensed milk and pan – sort of heavy pancakes with guava jam which he scoffed. He was very much appreciated there and had a whale of a time with the younger boys.

There was one very beautiful older boy called Juan something and one with a band round his head called Joel. The Mongolian Frenchman with the pigtail lives there too. His name is Tuli and he says he lives for free.

Carlo is talking tonight about the grabbing nature of Georgina’s family. Apparently he put some meat away in the larder in a sack and it was gone in the morning. None of them were invited but they came to the party. He’s a bit bitter about that.

The ECA was the Chilean government store on the island in the 1970s and sold basic food supplies like flour and rice and oil. (There will be a list in the appendix) Also building materials and paraffin could be got there. The bulk of these goods was shipped to the island twice a year. Items were often in short supply or bad condition. (We sometimes had to sieve the flour to get the weevils out. But queuing at the ECA was central to the life of island housewives as I learnt early on.

We set off after breakfast – me with Mungo and no bag to carry things in. Grant came too. The meat ECA is in the American Base which is a sad place now. There are lots of little steel huts, each with a garden overgrown. Only the foundations of the casino and mess room and cinema remain with weeds growing. The meat fridge was given to the ECA by the base when they left so that’s why the shop is there now.

We queued for something like an hour at the first ECA in the out at the old American base because the manager hadn’t arrived. I sat about on the grass with Mungo and listened to the Pascuence wives talking. Someone gave him an apple. I noticed one baby of four months had a pushchair – very old but serviceable. One or two people pointed out ruins of the old American life – one said “We never thought it would come to this”. It seemed very sad. I bought a chicken, a kilo of apples and a kilo of potatoes and half a kilo of butter when my turn came. It came to about 100 escudos (4 dollars). They wouldn’t sell me half a kilo of lemons for some reason. After that we tramped across to the second ECA in Hangaroa which sells groceries. I copied out the first half of the list on the wall.

There is quite a bit about queueing in the diary. It could be peaceful, or tense and ridden with conflict, but on the whole it was good for me. I made friends, learnt Spanish and Rapanui and found out what was going on.

Everybody bought in bulk as far as I could see. Especially Rinso (detergent). I was all for buying two small packets but Georgina insisted I buy five. So no wonder the clothes here are all so clean!.

Mine never were because I didn’t ever master the technique of mercilessly scrubbing fabric. I used to soak our clothes in a vessel made of half a petrol drum split horizontally and then get in myself and rock it back and forward like a washing machine. Because the soapy water had been heated by me, a local dog used to jump into the drum as well and enjoy the rolling. Fortunately Grant wasn’t troubled by his appearance but as time went on the islanders were and he would be offered the odd garment. It’s lucky I was so young because I was an awful housewife by Island standards - didn’t make “amuerzo” (lunch) for my husband (because he didn’t want it) couldn’t keep floors shiny by scrubbing them with wire wool etc. After a mistake or two however I could cook a meal out of almost anything, a skill honed by post war rationing perhaps.

I got very irritated at the grocery ECA. Mungo was crawling about in the black dust finding cigarette ends all the time and I couldn’t understand anything that was said to me.

Georgina’s sister greeted me with a kiss today. Maybe one is accepted as one of the family when you stay as we are going to do. Finally Georgina sent me on ahead for home. I wasn’t sure of the way and my bag broke and a lorry came by and covered me with dust. I nearly wept with the frustration of it all.

After lunch I left Mungo with F and Grant and I went to see Sergio Rapu (brother of Alfonso Rapu) at the schoolhouse.

Alphonso Rapu led an island uprising in 1964 and his brother Sergio became governor later under the Pinochet government. When I was there Sergio was a schoolteacher.

The English teacher spoke rather awful English.

I cooked supper tonight under incredibly primitive conditions. Only one burner on the stove worked and that erratically. There was no light and someone or something had shat in a dark corner. I produced fried chicken and rice, however with a few ancient PX spices thrown in left over from the Americans. I also achieved a few odd onion rings with dried milk and cornflour!

Georgina wasn’t well tonight. Carlo teased her and said she was making theatre. I lent her my purple dress with a smocked waist to copy. I think it is a very unsuitable style for her but she seemed to want to copy it. She had a good look through the wardrobe today and seemed a bit disappointed I hadn’t brought more dresses.

We went to mass last night rather late because of Mungo yelling. It was about half an hour’s walk into town with the little pack of dogs that seems to go wherever we do. It was a starry night but the path was mostly lit by street lamps which are all over the island now. There’s twenty four hour electricity.

As we got further into Hangaroa more people were walking to church with us. The church was full with a little crowd outside and at the back as well. Our hostess F. and I edged our way into the little crowd at the back and then she went out leaving me with the girls. Men and women were roughly separated with men on the left side of the church and women on the right. There were a few women with the men but not vice versa. Almost everyone was remarkably smartly dressed, some almost exotically so. One girl had a satin dress plucked up like a cinema curtain in pale cream. Some were wearing rather inappropriately hot clothes but very elegant.

There was quite a bit of shifting about in the little crowd at the back where I was. Firstly any person entering the church pushed through to the little pedestal containing holy water. They dipped a finger in this and crossed themselves. A lot of people put their first finger in their mouth for a second after this. I wonder if this is a Catholic practice or particularly Pascuence.

The mass was sung beautifully and was a strange mixture of ordinary chanting and Pascuence music. Every so often a singing leader would break out into a verse of chant and the whole congregation would take up the line and the church would resound with the noise.

Extraordinarily some babies slept through all of this. One or two didn’t and squawked from time to time. One’s squawkings were identical to Mungo’s so I started every time I heard them. It was an inspiring service, especially when it came to taking communion when the Pascuence took over completely. A surge of singing accompanied a general surging towards the altar to take the bread and wine. At least half the congregation went up. I don’t know how many people went to confession. There was a certain drift up the right side of the church throughout the service so I suppose that’s where they were going.

F. didn’t take communion but she rushed through the little crowd at the back door just as everything seemed to be finishing and people were moving out of the church. Nobody seemed as frivolous about church as she is though there is a bit of whispering at the back.. Mostly, however, people attended strictly. A lot of people were late including two nuns. It didn’t seem to matter.

F. 0is a kind person I think. She is full of energy and has awful varicose veins which she is going to have treated in Santiago some time. She is always preparing little meals. The style seems to be South American – lots of sauces with a fairly simple main dish. We had some good soup last night with a sort of onion omelette and sweet potato. Lunch was avocado and spaghetti with a chunk of salami on top. Breakfast was bread and avocado with a chunk of salami.. All the meals were accompanied by Nescafe. We add our own to a cup of boiling water. The children eat more or less the same as us though I think they may have had chocolate and bread for breakfast. All except Mungo seemed not to have milk.

Powdered milk was supplied to babies at the hospital and it could be bought at the government store too

They eat quite a bit of bread. The youngest wears a T-shirt and no nappy. I haven’t noticed any accidents yet. The older boy wears some ragged trousers and a shirt and the girl a dress with pants. Her hair seems unbrushed and scruffy though the boys’ is quite clean. They are nice kids, though J is very aggressive at times. He came to me this morning and told me his little brother had got hold of a knife which I thought was good.

Presumably telling me about it was good, not Christian having it!

Apparently there is little notice taken of children crying. Mungo’s crying was quite happily tolerated last night (though it upset me). F’s husband H said his kids didn’t mind. They’d all grown up with it and all they did if it bothered them was to get up and go into another room.

Mungo seems a bit disturbed by the racket and activity at the moment- especially the noise of the record player blaring out at night, or worse, the local radio station with its crackles. I’m going to let him cling for a bit because I think he’s quite justified. It is an ordeal having him in our room though.

Last night F. asked me if I had any perfume. I produced my “Maja” which she liked. She loves clothes and scent. I wonder how far I should go in sharing my things. For instance I have 8 nappies – too few according to my standards but should I give her four? I think I need all I have here but should I share it anyway? I’m not going to give away clothing yet.

My packing for this expedition left a lot to be desired. Why on earth did I bring perfume? Where did I think I was going?

I think we’ve settled quite well though I still feel terribly tired after all the travelling and the mass last night.

6pm

We went to the couranto this morning.

Courantos are earth oven feasts held by different families on religious holidays. They are open to everyone, including tourists.

We arrived late because it started at eleven and we thought it started at 12. Lots of people were already coming away. It took place by the church in a field. The earth oven had been emptied by the time we arrived and all the food was in a little hut. A boy came out with some chunks of meat for us and some sweet potatoes and sweet porridgy stuff wrapped in banana leaves which was made of bananas, flour and sugar. We ate it sitting on leaves under a tree with people hanging around in groups and children ferreting in the pits for any last bits left over in the ovens. The meat was remarkably tender and eaten with lemon. We had melon afterwards and we were given a bunch of bananas too.

The people we passed on the way were loaded with food. One of them called F over and showed her what she had wrapped in a cloth. People here walk, travel in trucks and on horseback. The cars don’t seem to make a habit of giving lifts.

There was a feeling of aimless congregation about the feast. We were there ages wandering from group to group – or between about three groups. I talked a little to N. who has two half American children – a boy and a girl. Apparently five marriages came out of the Americans’ stay. They were here five years and left a year ago. N. works in the hospital now, She seemed to half feel she should go back to work most of the time.

An old rather drunk man with a captain’s hat kept saying “English American” to me and talked a quite incomprehensible English under the tree and later at the house of P. who gave the couranto. I went and sat on the step with a group of people and Mungo was played with. The same sort of aimlessness prevailed. A few men sat apart with a bottle of alcohol and drank that.

Afterwards we were invited to the town house of P. He’s a big man, very black because he has a Tahitian mother. A bottle of brandy was produced for Grant. Later a Chilean director of the cooperative (an occasional shop that sold local produce and stuff brought in from Chile by individuals on the weekly plane) turned up. I left with F. and we walked home calling in at her father’s (where she bought a bottle of brandy for 100 escudos) and her sister’s, where we talked through the window. The whole day has been in Pascuence. Now I feel I need to learn that too. Grant was given a fish on the way home which we are having for dinner.

I look back with affection on F’s vitality and willingness to take me everywhere with her in those early days. I was very passive, not being able to speak either Spanish or Rapanui.

Looking back I can remember us surrounded by our luggage and many tourist hunters approaching us but on hearing we were staying for upwards of a year and couldn’t pay nightly rates shaking their heads and going away. Finally we were almost alone when a truck stopped near us and we were hailed by an exuberant and flamboyantly dressed tourist seeker who, it turned out, was eager to rent us part of her house and could even get a cot for the baby. Her name was Georgina Riroroco Tuki and from then on she and her family adopted us. We hopped on the back of the truck with our stuff and drove to a house named Piriti, which had been a night club during the years that a US Base had been situated on the island. The base had departed hastily when the socialist Allende government was elected in Chile leaving a generator, some ancient bottles of salad dressing and quite a few babies behind.

But now, over to the diary to hear first hand about the place and our landlady and how we got on.

Julia and Grant on Rapanui, 1972.

We are now settled in a house near the airport owned by a Chilean Carlos Mardones, and his wife Georgina. Actually the house belonged to the Riroroco family of whom Georgina, his wife was one). We have a smallish room of our own with a cot for Mungo and are paying 400 escudos a week (17 dollars). We knocked this down from 800 which Grant had inadvertently offered. There are three children in the household – all a bit grubby but very affectionate and nice – a girl of 6 who is only here at weekends, called Georgina after her mother, a boy Carlo, after his father and a little boy called Christian. The house is built of wood and corrugated iron and is full of unexpected electronic equipment, left I suspect by the American airbase.

There was a secret US airbase located on the island in the 1960s. It packed up and left when socialist president Allende was elected. About 100-150 military personnel were stationed there and the place had a PX, a shop full of nice things. Some islanders were employed by the base in different capacities. The base also left its generator which provided 24 hour electricity while we were there.

There are two radios, two record players, two fridges and a blender. At least one of the first works too. The living room has a rather good lino tile floor but the dining room is stone (cement) and so is the kitchen. Our bedroom has a cement floor. The living room has a picture of a nude girl on the wall along with some shell necklaces looped about and a few odd photos. There are two little heads – American or Chilean I think, having a telephone conversation. The whole effect is a bit pathetic. They have a very old but serviceable lounge suite too.

The house, we learnt, had been a night club largely servicing the American Base which was nearby. It had been christened “Piriti” (Pretty) by a patron. On the wall was a framed collage of headshots of the Americans who came to Piriti.

I learnt two cat’s cradles tonight from Elena, a neighbour. Mungo is yelling fit to burst his lungs.

One of my missions was to collect Cats Cradles (string figures) and I asked about them when I could.

We are off to mass in a minute.

We set off this morning at about 6.30am from Canberra and had a nice flight here. Derek Freeman saw us off and gave Mungo a rattle.

Mungo’s been nice. We had a spring roll between us this morning and he slept like a log on the bus out to the airport from town. I kept dozing off myself and nearly dropping him. People here are nearly all Australian as opposed to New Australian though I met some New Australians in Paddington. At one point I was longing for a lavatory and rushed into a baby shop. To be a little less direct I asked for somewhere to change the baby. The two ? Italian ladies were delighted and produced a piece of brown paper for me to do it on the counter which I did cursing inwardly a) because he didn’t need changing and I only had one nappy b) I still didn’t have a lavatory. Finally I sneaked into the Town Hall and took advantage of the facilities there.

I am struck by how English I am here bur after all I’d only been in Australia for three months. My language! I haven’t said lavatory for over fifty years and as for ‘Australian as opposed to New Australian’ How strange that sanitised notion is now. I find it slightly unsettling to think I was ever anything but Australian now.

One notices Hotels here – rather lugubrious and austere places – all male.

Paddington was very pretty in the sun – very hilly too so that the terraced houses mounted one behind the other up the hill.

Now we are waiting in the airport ready to head for the Fiji plane.

Fiji, 28th March, 1972

I’ve just completed a perambulation around the Motel Gateway to lull Mungo to sleep. He behaved very well during the flight from Sydney though he didn’t sleep but kept up a string of antics and laughs all the way. Now it is hot and steamy and there are lots of little frogs in the grass of the motel.

We had a day in Fiji before catching the plane to Tahiti.

March 29th Tahiti

We had a good flight last night with Mungo sleeping all the way. He never woke, even on take off. It was weird getting on to the plane because there was a huge jumbo jet parked alongside our UTA plane making a fearful noise revving up. We scuttled up our steps and inside where we settled down and wrapped ourselves in little rugs. We flew up and over lots of little scudding clouds with a full moon. We had quarter bottles of wine and some rather inferior sandwiches and slept for a couple of hours. The flight took four and half hours so that we arrived at six am. It was a very spectacular entry that we made into Papeete. Suddenly a black jagged shape appeared to my left. I suddenly realised how low we were because it was an offshore island of Tahiti. Then we came down lower and lower over the sea until we just hit the airstrip and landed. Grant lost his glasses and found them again.

At the airport I had a great sense of exhilaration. It was warm and breezy and the sun had only just come up. The airport seemed to be full of marvellous people – middle aged ladies in beautiful hats and girls with long stiff hair and flowers and brown skins. A party from the plane was being met as we went through the passport check. The meters had leis slung over their arms and each person gave each person off the plane one so that they ended up with piles of flowers round their necks. The flowers smelled very sweet and the people kissed each other and laughed and talked and finally a photo was taken and they all went away and a girl came up to sweep up petals from the airport floor.

We had a nice surprise here. Apparently the airline is obliged to pay for the hotel and food of transit passengers and they do it in style too. We are in the Maeve Hotel on a beach. It is very modern and comfortable and has only the vice of playing supermarket music softly over loudspeakers.

This afternoon we had a sumptuous lunch and it pelted with rain as it did on Fiji. Everywhere here is covered with brilliant flowers – hibiscus and bougainvillea flowers and many more I don’t know the names of. Afterwards Mungo and I played on the beach and we went into Papeete. I was a bit disappointed in it in a way. It could almost have been a French town, even down to the baby shops. Only the market had a hint of Tahiti in its fruits and avocado pears.

We visited Bengt Danielson who was on the Kon Tiki. He lives with his wife in a real Polynesian house – one of the most beautiful houses I could imagine in a gorgeous setting. You drive in and there are ancient looking trees and the black island out in the sea. You cross a little bridge and there’s a thatched hut all open with warm breezes flowing through. He came out to meet us and wore a blue printed sarong. He and Grant talked and I talked to Marie Therese, his wife. She showed me their family albums. They have a twenty year old daughter and an adopted son of twelve whose mother was their maid, I think.

The Danielsons were very kind to us throughout our stay on Easter Island and sent little luxuries to us from time to time. Chocolate and an electric hotplate to replace the Chilean one that nearly electrocuted me.

We are both a bit tense about what tomorrow will bring. This comfortable hotel gives us no sense of preparing for Easter Island at all.

March 30th, On the way to Easter Island

Julia and Mungo on the flight to Rapanui, 1972.

There are 70 people on board and Mungo is sleeping. The plane is bumping a bit and I saw a flash of lightning out of the window. I hope we don’t crash. The fasten your seat belt sign is on. We are all three very smelly after a hot day in Tahiti. And I accidentally put the Mung to sleep on a wet disposable nappy so he smells of urine. Ah well.

Grant and I had been married for about a year and had been parents to Mungo for eight months. He’d been born in London and we’d got married so that I too could be funded to go with Grant to the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia where he was to do a doctorate in Anthropology. We set off to do fieldwork after about three months in Canberra. I took just eight nappies. I can’t imagine how I thought I’d manage.

He wanted to study the culture of Easter Island, (also called Rapanui and Isla de Pascua). The island, now a part of Chile, has a fascinating and tragic history. Its original Polynesian population was reduced to 111 souls in 1874 because of slave trading raids and the diseases brought on the ships they came in. Also two groups of islanders set off for Magareva and Tahiti at this time.

Grant first wanted to know how much of the original culture had survived. Many popular books have sensationalized the mystery that surrounds the strange and solemn statues that are both scattered around the island, and left, half finished, in the volcanic quarry where they were carved. There are no stories to account for this state of affairs and nobody has yet deciphered the wooden tablets known as rongo rongo boards of which hardly any now exist. Grant was not interested in solving any particular mysteries but he wanted to know how completely knowledge of the past had disappeared, and what the islanders had done to fill the void created by the absence of traditional knowledge and customs.

Studies had been done in the Caribbean to see what the human beings did there when torn from their African homelands. What took the place of what had been lost? Would Easter Island’s situation throw any light on what humans do when deprived of their cultural framework?

After we had been on the island a while, I asked Grant what business of ours it was to poke into the lives of the islanders. What was the purpose of anthropology anyway? I think I was a bit irritated and homesick at the time. But his answer pleased me. He said the purpose was to tell the story of people who couldn’t tell it themselves because it didn’t seem like a story to them. It was “normality”. Systematic data collection, particularly genealogical, tells its own story which is usually of immense interest to the subjects of the research themselves. In fact, over the years, many islanders have sought out details of their genealogies from Grant who rounded up all known Rapanui, living and dead, from parish records and other sources together with the stories that attached to them.

I had my plans too. I wanted to gather native plants and find out about their medicinal uses and also see what child raising practices were. Being a relatively new mother myself I hope that perhaps thought I might learn a thing or two and it turned out people were all too ready to teach me. I had also been asked to learn and record string figures or cats’ cradles if they were still known by anyone on the island as these were often found in the Pacific region.

The journal was to be a data record – the people I met, the things I saw and so on. In the event it was much more than that to me. As Ann Frank’s diary was to her, it became my friend and confidante. I have edited bits that are boring but the bulk of the text is as it was written even when incidents do me or Grant no credit.. I sometimes comment on these from the point of view of the eighty old woman I am now. Sometimes I forgive my younger self and sometimes I don’t.

One issue I have had is whether to give people their real names. Since nearly fifty years have passed since I wrote these diaries, most of the principal characters have died and even the naughty children are now middle aged. It seems worth using the names as I learnt them for history’s sake.

The diaries often show Grant in a rather bad light, especially in our domestic context, but he was happy with that. It’s the way it was and if the diaries were his I’m sure I wouldn’t come off so well myself.