The REAL crocodile hunter!

Maxon and his live crocodile

While sitting at my desk I've been noticing a picture (above) in the Environmental Health (EH)office next door. For a long time I thought it was one of those silly made-up photos off the internet because it looked a lot like a guy on a pushbike with a crocodile backpack.

Finally I went next door and sked what the picture, which had pride of place in the middle of their fridge, was all about. I was told that it was Maxon and if I wanted I could go out to the EH workshop and ask him about it myself. I went straight out to find two local workers busy servicing the mosquito foggers, one a tall strapping young guy and the other a slightly older, rather meek little man. Unconsciously I turned to the big young guy and asked for Maxon. He just pointed at his off-sider and went back to work.

Many families pas down skills from one generation to the next such as boat building or bush medecine. Maxon is a local man who has inherited his family tradition of crocodile hunting. Salt water Crocodiles are native to the Solomons and have long been a food source. There are no large terrestrial animals in the Solomons so almost all protein comes from the sea. There is a variety of fish, large and small that can be caught, but nothing compares to the size and therefore nutritional value of a "Salty". Obviously nothing compares to the lethality of a croc either so traditional hunters are few and far between.

Maxon told me his father started taking him hunting and showing him the ways of the crocodile hunter when he became a teenager. Unlike the crocodile hunters taught by Steve Irwin at Australia Zoo (with whome Maxon has met and received much deserved respect) Maxon typically uses one tool, his arms. He described to me how he catches them in some detail.

When a feast is planned or a village is being troubled by a crocodile Maxon will track it until it's located. Ideally this will be in one of the shallow fresh water rivers they like to inhabit. He will then swim into the river and by fully exhaling he can sink to the bottom of the river, lying on his back. The, in his words "simply reach up and hug the crocodile so it cant bite and carry it out". Once out it is tied up with vines. Apparently with very large crocodile "they don't like to be hugged" and so a simple trap of bamboo is made to restrain the animal while he drags it out. If the croc is too big to carry to the feast he will co-opt a ute or car to move it. More commonly he just trusses it up in vines and straps it to his back and rides it away on his bicycle.

Maxon, who also happens to be a triathelete on the national team, is said to have worn a live croc on his back in the annual Solomons triathalon bike section. The double purpose seems to be added weight to make the race harder and therefore a better workout, but also a canny piece of advertising for his services. I asked him if this what the picture on the fridge was all about and he simple replied "no, I just wanted to give him a ride".

One of Maxon's larger catches

Maxon and Me

Where's Rachael?

Bonegi beach looking East to Honiara in the distance

While Rachael is doing some great writing work, when in doubt she can be found snorkelling at Bonegi beach. Like so many places in the Solomons Bonegi, apart from being a postcard-like tropical beach, is the site of yet more WW2 history.

Three months after the Americans had landed on Guadalcanal to secure the airfield and stop Japan's progress towards Australia and New Zealand the Japanese were starting to ramp up their efforts to re-take the island. While the airfield was in American hands the impenetrable vegetation and precipitous terrain meant that Japanese forces still occupied much of the island, in some cases only kilometers from the airfield. Supply and troop ships began supporting the existing Japanese troops from Papua New Guinea. One such convoy was spotted from the air and several of the ships were suck at sea. The next morning at least three of the ships had made it close to shore about 18km from where Honiara now lies. Artillery bombardment caused significant damage to the ships which were then run ashore where at least two of them still lie.

The Kinugawa Maru in about 1944 taken from roughly the same point as the previous photo

Australian salvage workers in the sixties took what remained of the ships above the water line, but they remain quite intact below the water and now make fabulous dive and snorkelling sites which is why Rachael (and I) can be found there so often. The ships are on the land of a village so a Kastom fee of about $5 AUD per car is charged for your own private beach and WW2 wreck.

What remains above the water of the Kinugawa Maru today

Our favourite is the Kinugawa Maru, a 437 ft supply ship which today just breaks the water with one of its two giant 6 cyliner engines and a few bits of structure. Below the usually crystal clear water live thousands of brightly coloured fish and an endless array of corral. The bow of the ship starts only 10 meters from the shore at a depth of about 2 meters and slowly becomes deeper, and more intact as you follow it out. We've only sorkelled on it so far but on a really clear day you can swim out and look at it at least 40 meters down.

The Kinugawa Maru from the air

We've not got to them yet but further up the coast and also only a short distance off shore are a japanese submarine and a B17 flying fortress waiting to be explored. Stay tuned.

A Bik fella tankiu to our friend Jonathon Croft for the underwater shots.

This picture of Rachael was so good I thought you should see it again

Toktok Pijin

Taem bifoa mi stap lelebet lo Solomon Aelan mi lanem tok lelebet pijin. Bae mitufala stap lo Solo mi wandem save staka pidgin. Mi lanem samfala.

Last time I stayed for a while in the Solomons I learnt a little bit of Pijin English. When we decided to come back I wanted understand a lot more. I'm learning some.

Well I have to admit I made use of our recently aquired Pijin-English dictionary for the spelling, but I have learn't enough (and not much more) to be able to put together basic sentances like this. It's certainly enough to intrigue me about what was not recognised as a legitimate language by linguists until a few decades ago - it was described as "bastardised English baby talk".

Pijin is said to have developed in the Solomons in the late 1800s out of a need for European fishermen and Copra plantation managers to communicate with the local workforce. It was then adopted and formalised by missionaries. Unlike Tok Pisin from PNG and Bislama from Vanuatu there were no other languages influencing its development so many of the words are taken from english with little other than a slight change to pronounciation. I supose it is for this reason that the language was disregarded by linguists. However unlike its neighbours the Solomons Pijin does have quite a bit more grammatical complexity.

Another fascinating aspect to the language is that the english words adopted are those popular around 150 years ago. So if you want to talk in the future tense you add bae to the start of the sentance ie.
Bae iu talem mi wea bae iu godaon
You will tell me where you want to get out (of the car)
The bae come from the now antiquated future tense term "bye and bye". Another old term is very frequently used. Save which sounds like sarv-aye means to understand and, I assume, comes from savvy. One of the first and most useful phrases is Mi no save I don't understand.

The use of bae in the first sentance also illustrates another interesting quirk of Pijin which is there is almost no grammar for questions. You simply state what you want and put a raised inflection at the end. This gave me some grief to begin with when I would ask Iu hao? which is How are you? and receive a blank stare until I repeated it with the inflection and get a friendly Mi oraet I'm alright.

If you are trying to pronounce these phrases as you go I should point out they sound almost the same as the english equivalent. The spelling comes partly from a slight reworking of words to accomodate the fact that their melanesian heritage has a few less sounds. For example there are no...
sh, so sharl becomes sak
ch, so church becomes sios
th, so throw becomes troem
nt, so sacrament becomes sakramen
g, so age becomes eij
x, so icebox becomes aesbokis
r, so door becomes doa

Vowels sound as follows...
a as in father
e as in bed
i as in fit
o as in rot
u as in to and/or good

My favourite quirk so far is when an english word or phrase seems to have a completely different meaning until you understand the context. An good example is, if you were asked...
Bae iumitufala go lo taon nomoa? Which sounds phonetically like "Bye you-me-two-fella go low town no-more?" You might be forgiven for thinking we were no longer going to town. However a literal translation would read...
Soon shall you and I go to town and nothing but? Nomoa is often used as an emphasis ie. Mi gud nomoa! As if to reinforce the complexity of this "baby talk" nomoa can also mean no longer! Some words seem to have two meanings. I wanted to ask what happened to a local worker's
knee the other day, it uses what I think is a "language" word - that is one from a local language and goes...
Wot nao kasim knee blong iu?
But then I heard kasim used in relation to going to a house such as
Bae iumitufella kasim haus blong iu?
It was then explained that kasim really means arrived so can be used in both contexts..
What has arrived upon your knee? , and
Shall we go to/arrive at your house?

Other favourites of mine are onomatapias like chicken which is ko-ko-raku, much more accurate than cock-a-doodle-do if you ask me. I also like the oblique uses of words, for example clothing is kaleko and lots is staka.

bae mi go lo waka, mifala bos lukim