Malden Island (Kiribati)
How many of you have read stories about desert(ed) islands and wondered what it would be like to live on one! Well I did for three weeks back when I was much younger. Right in the middle of the Pacific and about 250 miles south of the equator. Probably one of the least accessible places on the planet these days. That`s Malden Island which at the time was part of the Gilbert and Ellis Islands UK Protectorate and which is now part of the nation of Kiribati.The island hasn`t had a permanent population since the guano (birdlime) gathering operations which became uneconomic back in the 1920s and it was abandoned leaving behind some rail tracks and a few ancient Model T Fords. Nowadays it is a designated wildlife sanctuary and closed area and also establishes for Kiribati a 200-miles Exclusive Economic Zone which surrounds it, particularly the rich tuna fisheries. Malden was discovered July 30, 1825, by Captain Lord Byron, in H.M.S. Blonde. He had just taken to Hawaii the bodies of Kamehameha II and his wife, who had died in England. It was named for Charles Robert Malden, Lieutenant, R. N., who landed and made observations on shore. The island is very low, no more than 10 m above sea level at its highest point. The highest elevations are found along a rim that closely follows the coastline. The interior forms a depression that is only a few metres above sea level in the western part and is below sea level (filled by the lagoon) in the east. It has no available fresh water (beyond rainfall pools) and hence vegetation is very limited but it is an important habitat for a number of seabirds. Two kinds of lizards, the mourning gecko and snake-eyed skink are present, together with brown libellulid dragonfly. Birds included Boobys (both Masked and Red Footed), Frigate Birds (both Great and Lesser), Terns (both Grey-Backed and Sooty) and a winter migrant from no less than Alaska - the Bristle-thighed Curlew and another couple of dozen migratory seabird species. Oh and there were a few wild pigs (no longer existing), goats (no longer existing), cats and mice around that had been introduced in the past.
I flew there in the spring on 1958 aboard a Douglas Dakota DC3 aircraft with fabric covered wings and no pressurisation. It was very noisy and flew at only 7,000 feet. Quite different from modern air travel!! The little windows had holes in to help with air pressure adjustment ! I was to be the resident meteorologist. Required to send radiosonde equipment into the upper atmosphere feeding back readings every 60 seconds, climbing up towards 80-100K feet (until the balloon burst). These were sent back to our home base on Christmas Island where an H-bomb was being tested in due course - essential to know what the winds were doing to avoid contamination risks. Along with me were half a dozen other RAF support staff - radio operator, cook, gopher, one officer (to issue our pay weekly) and troubleshoot if necessary. I would send up a balloon with instruments every six hours and that took about an hour. Apart from that we were free agents. Sometimes we wore clothes ! The standing orders were to knock our sandals out when getting up each morning to dislodge any scorpions that might be sleeping in them. It`s only just recently whilst researching this page that I have discovered that there never were any on the island!!! Daytimes were consumed by beachcombing (see my shell collection in the picture gallery), birdwatching and swimming. NOT in the sea as apart from the sharks (which we sometimes fished for) the beach shelved rapidly and was dangerous. Indeed an attempt was made to deliver a LandRover to us from a landing craft BUT it foundered in the soft shelving sand ! So they brought across a bulldozer to rescue it and THAT did the same. By the time I left the island all you could see was the tip of the bulldozer exhaust stack and the Land Rover was living with the sharks!
Our swimming hole was about 100 yards inland from the beach where fresh seawater permeated into a channel between coral outcrops. A slab of concrete was laid to protect our feet and a wooden plank provided a diving board for the brave. Evenings were mostly spent drinking a canned Austalian lager named Pegasus/Peggie for short. The cook would have nothing to do after we`d eaten so he ran the NAAFI (Navy, Army & Air Forces Institute) bar issuing us with beers and taking our money from us. Then next morning he`d "bank" it with the officer, who was effectively the bank. Then the officer would reissue it to us as pay. For it to go round the loop again! The main problem was that that was only a very limited amount of coinage circulating to we had to improvise. This was done by tearing notes in half so that a ten shilling (pre-decimal) note turned into two 5 shilling ones!! The only problem was that if you were leaving the island you had to find who was holding the other half and marry them up and stick them back together. And then out of the blue I developed stomach pains which the medic couldn`t diagnose so I had to be repatriated back to Christmas Island and hence had to find the other half. Ironically after I left all the rest who remained also went down with stomach pains (caused by diesel in our drinking water!!!). So I got to watch the bomb exploded instead of being hundreds of miles away. Finally I`d like to thank Gerry Guay of the US 6th Weather Squadron who did a similar job to me 4 years later, for many of the pictures in my gallery which provide a much better feel for Malden than just words could ever do.
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Browse through the picture galleries below relating to this page and you will get a much better idea than just reading my words! Each page has it`s own set of relevant images - where possible taken by us.