My first impression was of a place so ramshackle, so poor, so scary, so unexpectedly filthy, that I began to understand the theory behind culture shock - something I had never truly experienced in its paralyzing and malignant form. The idea that this miserable-looking town could be regarded as a capital city seemed laughable."
I am quoting from chapter 8 of Paul Theroux's book "The Happy Isles of Oceania", headed up "The Solomons: Down and Dirty in Guadalcanal".
And he continues, "Why would anyone come here? It was not only hideous, it was expensive. Nearly all the food in Honiara's stores was imported - from Australia, New Zealand, Japan and America. It is often possible to gauge the prosperity of a place by looking at the central market. Honiara's central market was pathetic - a few old women selling little piles of blackened bananas and wilted leaves and some tiny fly-blown fish. "If I were a king, the worst punishment I could inflict on my enemies would be to banish them to the Solomons", Jack London wrote in his Pacific travel book, "The Cruise of the Snark". He added, "On second thoughts, king or no king, I don't think I'd have the heart to do it."
Jack London visited the Solomons in 1908, fifteen years after the islands had become a British protectorate. Paul Theroux wrote his book in 1992. When I got there twenty years before, Honiara could still have won the "Tidy Town" award and I felt very comfortable there - as did the many friends I found I suddenly had who wasted no time in visiting me from neighbouring New Guinea where I had spent the previous three years.
I lived a gracious life in a big house on Lengakiki Ridge overlooking Honiara and the ocean beyond, all the way to Savo Island and Tulagi. I was member of the Point Cruz Yacht Club and every day by 4.30 sharp the offshore breeze would fill the sails of my CORSAIR dinghy. Wednesday nights was Chess Night on the terrace of the Mendana Hotel and there was always a big do on of a Saturday night at the Guadalcanal Club (commonly referred to as G-Club). Life was one big party.
Mendana Hotel
Guadalcanal Club
I was the 'Secretary' (Commercial Manager) of the British Solomon Islands Electricity Authority (BSIEA) in Honiara. The meek-and-mild General Manager was a British civil servant 'Yes, Minister' type, who wanted to get through his contract with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of benefits for himself and his cohorts of expat time-servers.
I was bored by the ease and comfort and meaninglessness of it all. Those were my restless years and I still had places to go - more than thirty, as it turned out - and so this subject left Her Brittanic Majesty's Protectorate to return to reality (spelled PNG, then Burma, Iran, again PNG, Thursday Island, Samoa, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Greece, etc etc).
After eighty-five years, the British left the Solomon Islands in 1978 to let them return to the old ways. Luckily, the British never left Australia.
