Alternative Media Group

Island Hopping for the Holidays

Author:

Lawrence Gibbons

Posted:

Wednesday, 16 December 2009

This year I took an early trip home for the holidays. In mid November John and I booked one of those super cheap Jet Star flights back to Honolulu ($800 for two — round trip). Taking the advice of the Hub’s worldly food critic Jackie McMillan, we left Sydney International with a carry-on bottle of duty free. “Jet Star’s great” Jackie warned me. “The cabin crew never check on you and you can have cocktails galore.” The night flight to Polynesia was made all the more bearable by a few nightcaps.

While some Sydneysiders assume Hawaii is almost as far away as California, as the tin-crow flies it only takes ten hours to get from Kingsford Smith Airport to Honolulu.  The next morning, as the sun rose over Waikiki, our plane descended on Oahu, where we were scheduled to catch an inner island flight to the Big Island of Hawaii in just a few hours time.

“Where will you be staying while you are here?” the friendly Border Protection Agent asked John, who only knew we were going to stay somewhere off the grid, in the jungle with my brother. Digging out my brother’s directions, I explained we would be driving south of Pahoa along the hippy trail — where we were instructed to turn left at the only street light on the highway and then left again at the “Runaway Truck Ramp Ahead” sign. In all the times I’ve visited my brother in the thick of the rainforest, I’ve never had his actual house address (assuming he has one).  Eventually we satisfied the US government’s entry requirements and we flew onto Hilo, which is the Big Island’s biggest city, whose charming old town has been decimated by a massive, modern shopping mall on the edge of town. Our own American born Premier here in NSW would love the place: with the strong Australian dollar you can buy cheap cotton cargo shorts for less than $20 (don’t tell anyone we bought four pairs).

From there we drove onto my brother’ hideaway, which is overgrown with mangos, lemons, passionfruit and avocados. A few miles down the winding one-way road, you eventually reach a thermal heated swimming pool under swaying palms on the edge of a surfer’s beach. A few miles the other way down the coast — molten lava from the island’s massive, active volcano spills into the sea. On a clear night (in the rainforest it happens sometimes) spewing lava glows in the distance and the Milky Way sparkles in the crystal clear sky. Late at night, cacophonous frogs from the Brazilian rainforest ribbet to their hearts’ content and feral pigs forage for food. Sweet dreams.

My brother has lived sustainably, off the grid in Puna for over a decade. A self-made, self-sustaining entrepreneur through and through, he earns his keep by picking fruit on rich people’s estates and selling it in town. The southeast corner of the island has seen meteoric growth. Over the last decade the population of the region has exploded and property values have more than tripled. Lured by the prospect of cheap land (much of it uninsurable because of volcanic threat) many California dot commies and gay exiles have bought vast acreages with rotting fruit in paradise. At the market’s translucent peak, my brother was picking fruit for free at the holiday homes of wealthy Americans who had more dollars than sense and selling it to organic markets and expensive tourist traps for a handsome profit.

Then when the market collapsed in 2008, the organic market adjusted and a few lucky small businesses were struggling to pay their bills. The rest had gone out of business. The large, remaining grocery stores are owned by mega-chains who unsustainably ship fruit from the mainland to the islands, where fruit is in abundance. Over the last two years, from 2007 to 2009 the Hawaiian economy has slumped and the valuable tourist market has collapsed by 9%. My brother’s new business model is to trade direct: fruit in exchange for fish, produce for meals in once bustling restaurants.

For our last night on the Big Island, my brother scored half price tickets to see a world-class circus performance at Bellyacres. Owned by a collective of Cirque du Soleil trained jugglers, clowns and acrobats from around the world, Bellyacres is a subdivision of thirty tract homes developed around a happy hippy organic market, where you can buy fresh fruit, scrumptious smoothies and custom-made omelettes on Saturday mornings. At night the open-air marketplace is transformed into a big top: canvasses are dropped over rustic beams, a small jazz ensemble boogies and a troupe of gravity- defying performers create mesmerising magic.

Just down the road from Bellyacres the highway has been lost to lava. Not long ago Kalapana was a thriving fishing village. In 1983 Kīlauea erupted violently. Each day since a half million cubic yards of lava erupts. In 1990, a modern subdivision and a world famous black sand beach were obliterated and the highway was lost to molten lava.  There, at the end of the earth at the roadside Kalapana Café, you will find the Hawaii Independent Journal’s last remaining newspaper rack.

I have been visiting Hawaii since 1992. Three years before I gained the courage to launch the City Hub in 1995, I advised Laurie Carlson when she started the Honolulu Weekly, Hawaii’s only independent alternative newsweekly. In 2005 Laurie expanded her business to the Big Island, acquiring the Hawaii Independent Journal in the years before the market collapsed. The entire state of Hawaii’s economy is half the size of New Zealand’s and its population is smaller than Brisbane. Like NSW, most of the state lives in the capital city of Honolulu. Like much of southeastern Queensland, Honolulu’s urban sprawl has occurred in ubiquitous hotels and anonymous apartment high rises: think the Gold Coast, think Waikiki. And like Australia, a few large corporate interests control the island economy. When Laurie expanded her operations to the Big Island in 2005, she was up against Stephens Media Group, the only game in town. In real terms, the Nevada based corporation owned every last newspaper distributed on the island, bar one. Plus they owned the only printing presses on the Big Island. One year after she acquired the Hawaii Independent Journal, Laurie wrote in the Honolulu Weekly, “Stephens Media Corporation, owner of the two Big Island dailies, has offered to buy the Journal more than once. They enjoy a near monopoly of print media on the Big Island and don’t like sharing their turf with other publications. Last year I approached them about printing the Journal at one of their two presses on the island of Hawai’i. The Las Vegas-based corporation said that they would consider printing only if they could buy a portion of the Journal. We said, ‘No thanks.’” The rest, as they say, is history.

The day before we were due to depart, we flew back to Honolulu and caught up with Laurie. The Honolulu Weekly is still based downtown in historic Chinatown, where some of the island’s last heritage buildings remain intact. A few days before Thanksgiving, Laurie, John and I had lunch at a yummy Chinese restaurant. Our dining editor, Jackie McMillan would be jealous. In her spare time, Laurie Carlson is the President of Oahu Slow Food Movement (what is it about slow and movement that makes me uncomfortable?). Laurie ordered and her selection melted in my mouth (usually I don’t eat string beans). Over jasmine tea she told us her accountant had sent her a congratulatory note: Laurie’s cash flow was positive once again. There was good reason to give thanks.

There’s nothing quite like a good break to reinvigorate you. And the best thing about leaving Honolulu is that you arrive back in Sydney hours before you departed, refreshed and ready to get back to work. As they say in Hawaii, “Mele Kalikimaka,” which is a Polynesian transliteration of Merry Christmas. Here’s wishing you and yours a prosperous, sustainable and independent new year.

My lunch with Laurie Carlson, publisher of the Honolulu Weekly

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