Occupying armies

Featured in

  • Published 20120306
  • ISBN: 9781921922008
  • Extent: 264 pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

I KNOW THREE stories about the Moriori, a long-ago people who survived, in tatters, a determined attempt to eradicate them. The first goes like this: at a time that nobody can remember a group of men, women and children set off from the east coast of New Zealand and plunged into the vast ocean wilderness of the south-east Pacific. Nobody knows why they left the safety of the mainland – whether it was restlessness, or curiosity about what lay beyond the horizon, or grim necessity. They packed food and fresh water into a two-hulled canoe and, presumably, hoped for the best.

A few days into their voyage a mist closed around them until they could see nothing, wherever they looked. All they could hear were the thrashing of waves against the sides of their canoe and the cries of seabirds warning them of land. Cautiously they rowed on, until they came upon black rocks looming out of the fog, then an island and, within the perimeter of this chunk of earth, a safe harbour where they were able to land.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Scenes from life with father

MemoirPICTURE A WINTER'S evening in a kitchen in Wellington, New Zealand. An Antarctic wind stalks the house, rattling windows in its quest for a...

More from this edition

How to survive an earthquake

MemoirTHE NUMBERS ROSE slowly, like a cricket innings, and the commentators droned. There was little new information and the television news recycled the same...

Crime scene investigation

PoetryThe car deaf as a hearsefrom the screaming weightof all that came before,we drive down a tarmac slashedby white line, white line,into the splintered...

Ghost town

FictionI DIDN'T WANT to go back to the town that wasn't there. It was three months after the wave receded, and the network wanted...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.