Christmas Island (Kirimati)

Created by webmaster. Last modified on 2002-08-19 00:50:43
Contributors: Jimmy Cornell, Aventura III
Countries: Kiribati

We tried to enter the lagoon but even with the centreboard up and drawing 3 ft we could not find a suitable passage, so eventually anchored in 10 ft off the main settlement, right by the tennis court, which is supposed to be lit at night, and marks the best place to land on the beach.

Christmas Island was used by the British for their nuclear tests and several decades later the island is still struggling to wipe out the consequences of this devastation. Even if radiation may have ceased to be a hazard, the amount of military hardware that still litters the island and lagoon is almost impossible to imagine. Mountains of rusting metal and huge abandoned fuel tanks line the beaches and as the local population is either unable or unwilling to use whatever natural building materials are available, such as palm and pandanus, this means that the villages consist of shacks patched together from bits of corrugated tin. Malden and Christmas are a permanent reminder of how 20th century man has raped the environment, without any thought for the consequences of his actions.