More New Tales of the South Pacific: Combined, Expanded, Illustrated Edition

By Graeme Kennedy

Island hop with Graeme Kennedy in this eagerly awaited -- and newly illustrated -- combined and expanded Volumes character limit )
One and Two of his best-selling "New Tales of the South Pacific." They offer the complete collection of beautifully
written short stories based on an intriguing cast of characters and their triumphant and tragic experiences in a region
many believe to be Paradise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9780473281762

Book preview

More New Tales of the South Pacific

Graeme Kennedy

ISBN: 978-0-473-28176-2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the

National Library of New Zealand

First published:  May 2014

Published by Santel e-Publishing

Auckland New Zealand 2014

www.santelepublishing.com

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Proofread/Copyedit:  www.ProofreadNZ.co.nz

Design: Judith Sansweet

Cover photo by : Sean Shadbolt, courtesy of :

Samoa Tourism Authority, Apia, Samoa

Copyright © Graeme Kennedy 2014

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper. magazine, radio, television, or internet review, or for academic or educational use, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or buy any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Santel e-Publishing   Box 707 Orewa, Auckland, New Zealand

Table of Contents

Dedication

More New Tales of the South Pacific

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Volume 1 Cover

Tale 1 PARADISE NOT~A Brief History of Oceania

Tale 2 GUESSING YOUR WAY IN ~ Wallis and Futuna

Tale 3 JUST ANOTHER SOGGY DAY ~American Samoa

Tale 4 WHERE KINGS ONCE BATHED~ Niue

Tale 5 A TRUE MAN OF GOD

Volume 2 Cover

Tale 6 A LEGEND . . . A LIFE~Aggie Grey

Tale 7 DREAMING OF BOATS~Samoa

Tale 8 CANE~Fiji

Tale 9 THE LAST RESORT~Samoa

Tale 10 PALAGIS AT PLAY~Samoa

Tale 11 THE ENDS~Samoa

More Tales

Tale 12 WHAT'S IN A NAME?~Niue

Tale 13 THE ADVENTURER ~A Tribute to a Friend

About the Author

Thank You

Dedication

All my New Tales of the South Pacific books

are dedicated to the indigenous people

of the Polynesian South Pacific.

MORE  NEW TALES

OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC

Island hop with Graeme Kennedy in this eagerly awaited -- and newly illustrated -- combined and expanded Volumes One and Two of his best-selling New Tales of the South Pacific. They offer the complete collection of beautifully written short stories based on an intriguing cast of characters and their triumphant and tragic experiences in a region many believe to be Paradise.

Featuring a special new Tale, The Adventurer, Kennedy pays tribute to an old and dear friend, John William Fox Walton, and also takes a short look at a bit of uniqueness on the island of Niue

There is another, gritty side to the Pacific Kennedy has come to know well – a side away from the five-star resorts, where the reality of life makes dreams fragile.

Volume 1 begins with a brief history of the Oceania region; then Kennedy moves on to highlight some of the varied cultures that have made the South Pacific their home; he uses some very personal vignettes to showcase a few familiar character types.

The highlight of Volume 2 is the life story of the Queen of the South Seas, the legendary Aggie Grey, who was once thought to have been Michener’s model for his outrageous character, Bloody Mary. More New Tales of the South Pacific includes stories of black humour, despair in the happiest of Pacific Islands, and the bittersweet end of life for two persons who, like Robert Louis Stevenson, go to Samoa to die.

Reminiscent of the great Louis Becke, More New Tales of the South Pacific is Kennedy at his best. 

Acknowledgments

There are many who deserve thanks for their assistance, mentoring, and encouragement over my years travelling widely throughout the South Pacific, unknowingly gathering material for my short story collections. They will know who they are and I hope accept my individual appreciation within these overall expressions of gratitude.

The long-gone Auckland Star during those decades allowed me to indulge my love of the islands while Fairfax Media gave permission to reprint my Aggie Grey life story first published in the Star.

The kindnesses and generosity of the Grey family in Apia and of island people throughout the Pacific will never be forgotten.

Special thanks to Tina Meredith, Randal Lockie and Harry Gallagher for sharing their vast stores of knowledge and insight for a new story, The Adventurer, and to Stafford Guest for his assistance with What’s In a Name?

I am also indebted to my hard-working publisher and copyeditor, Judith Sansweet (who allows me to punctuate as I see fit) and to my wonderful and always supportive wife, Wendy.

Foreword

I made my first visit to the real Polynesia in 1976 to interview and write the life story of the legendary Queen of the South Pacific, Aggie Grey at her wonderful old hotel on Beach Rd in downtown Apia on the occasion of her 80th birthday.

It was also my first visit to Samoa, and I was overwhelmed by the indigenous peoples’ dignity and pride in simply being Samoan, their generosity and extraordinary sense of humour and fun. The expatriates, mainly from New Zealand, Australia, the US and UK, were equally entertaining and impressive in their unique outlook on life — like the Samoans, they assumed this land was their own and respected it.

I had previously visited other islands as a newspaper journalist of many years and had enjoyed wonderful times around the pools and bars at glistening resorts with tourists and business travellers who stayed for a day or a week.

But the Samoa experience was far removed from the fleeting and ever-changing encounters at the shining 5-stars.

I was a guest of Aggie and her family — which included everyone who worked at the hotel — and I soon slipped easily into the social stream to chat and laugh with locals and expats who 10 minutes earlier had been total strangers.

Beyond the Samoas, from the Cooks, Tonga and Niue to the many French Pacific possessions including remote Wallis and Futuna, I have found after almost 40 years of travel through these islands that the same pride and acceptance of newcomers who make the effort to become part of their beautiful world remains.

The expats continue to work in lands they no longer call foreign. Many marry locals, most drink in the downtown bars, and they all tell their stories. Yes, their stories — hilarious, heart-breaking, or thought-provoking, it is difficult to know where fact ends and fiction begins, but all are unforgettable and all are true to the raconteur.

VOLUME 1

Tale 1   PARADISE NOT

A Brief History of Oceania

LET’S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT before we start: the South Pacific is not Paradise.

There are many, of course, who do believe that these islands and the great ocean in which they lie really are Heaven on Earth, but they have been for decades exposed to the epithet constantly used by unimaginative advertising copy writers and lazy newspaper sub-editors. And there are other reasons for the misconception.

For almost five centuries, Europeans have been returning from the Pacific with tales of friendly and handsome men and women inhabiting enchanting islands basking in warm blue lagoons, edged with pure white sand under coconut palms whispering in the trades. They still marvel at thundering reefs, mystical green-jungled peaks, rainbowed waterfalls and flowers with perfumes to assault the senses.

There is barely an island which does not fulfil the promise, whether a towering volcanic peak or a gem-like coral atoll only feet above sea level, they are uniquely South Pacific in their warmth, their vivid colour and their slower, more gentle pace.

And for more than 100 years, great writers have seduced us with stories from these islands - stories of adventure, romance and mystery to send the mind wandering through dreams of, yes, Paradise.

Rupert Brooke wrote lovingly, poetically of the South Pacific while Robert Louis Stevenson continues to enchant millions of youngsters with his classic Treasure Island which he wrote in misty Scotland years before he ever set eyes on a palm tree. But he did spend the last four years of his life in Samoa where he was honoured with the chiefly title Tusitala — Teller of Tales.

Herman Melville’s Typee, Omoo and Moby Dick will be read as long as there are books. Frisbie is regarded for his sensitive prose about his travels, while Louis Becke — perhaps the greatest of all Pacific writers — wrote dozens of stories to present the harsher, sometimes savage realities of island life. And who has not been thrilled by James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific or Return to Paradise and wished they were there?

By contrast, the influential writers of today are the thousands of anonymous men and women who churn out the tourist brochures that decorate every travel agency and invite us to visit these magic lands to sun, swim, surf, dive, sail, canoe, scuba, snorkel, eat, drink, dance, laugh, love and enjoy, enjoy, enjoy the South Pacific.

And how easy that is. For the price of an air ticket and a hotel room, anyone can have a lagoon at the doorstep, surf thundering on the reef a mile out, the Trades in the palms overhead, warm sand sifting between the toes and the heady smell of flowers under a tropic sun.

The South Pacific did not miss out on the tourism boom that followed World War II when the military’s great advances in aviation technology spilled into the airline industry, and long-range commercial air travel for the first time carried leisure-seeking affluents on holidays abroad.

The old DC4s, DC6s, Constellations and later the jets created a huge new industry for the islands – first in Hawaii, and then Tahiti and Fiji to gradually spread to almost all of the quiet, untouched atolls and peaks.

And along with the aircraft came the hotels; first on the main islands, and then in the smaller