'Ah! could I tell the wonders of an isle' … contemplating island futures

This essay began as the opening address at the inaugural meeting of anew organisation, the Australian Small Islands Forum (ASIF) held inMay 2012 on Lord Howe Island, some six hundred kilometres east ofPort Macquarie on the coast of New South Wales, Australia. The islandis one of a group of 28 an archipelago. A small jewel in the subtropics,it is just under 15 square kilometres in area; a bow-shaped island, 10kilometres long, and between 0.3 and 2.0 kilometres wide. Like manyislands, Lord Howe has a lagoon side, to the west, and a more ruggedeastern shore; most members of the population of c. 360 people live inlow-lying areas in the north and west (Australian Bureau of Statistics),the south and east being densely forested and mountainous. MountGower, the highest part of the island, is 875 metres above sea level. First sighted and claimed in early 1788 by a supply vessel workingbetween Botany Bay and Norfolk Island, Lord Howe was initially awhaling station (Skiba) and then permanently settled in 1834, havingno indigenous population. By the 1880s, the island was a keyproduction site for the global supply of Kentia palms, which areendemic to the location. In 1981, the Lord Howe Island Act created apermanent park preserve that covers all but about 30 per cent of theisland, and near-shore waters are designated the Lord Howe IslandMarine Park; the whole is recorded by UNESCO as a World HeritageSite of global natural significance. Presently, the archipelago is part ofNew South Wales and, as an unincorporated area, is administered bya Board established by act of parliament in 1953, whose membersreport to the Minister for Environment and Heritage (Lord HoweIsland). It is fitting that the Lord Howe Island Board took a calculated riskto create and host the first Australian Small Islands Forum. I suggestedat the time that there were strong and compelling grounds to createfrom a conference entitled Australian Small Islands Forum an organi -sation of the same name whose members work to represent island-Australians, our diverse concerns, interests and challenges, and ourvaried ways of being in place. It is pleasing that this organisation often referred to as ASIF has started to take shape over the course of2012 and 2013, and has the potential to make important contributionsto the policies of this island-nation, and work with and learn fromother island-nation neighbours. My two-stranded reasoning for making this suggestion at the startof the conference is the subject of the rest of this essay. I am consciousthat I write as a cultural geographer to a readership primarily focusedupon literary studies, and make no pretense at automatic or necessarymembership. Nevertheless, there are long and highly productiveengagements between our disciplines. For example, Angharad Saundersunderscores this point in a recent state-of-the-discipline paper inProgress in Human Geography aimed at re-forging the connec tionsbetween literature and geography. She notes, for example, the ways inwhich geography pervades the content, practice and meaning ofcreative writing (436), and underscores the power of mimesis,metaphor, intertextuality, and fiction [to fashion] for geographicaltheorizations. Moreover and I am grateful to reviewers for asking meto clarify this point in what follows I seek to foreground the materialconditions of island life because I see key opportunities for moreconversation across literary theory and the geopolitics of islandinquiry. As physical entities, and for their metaphorical, emblematic,narrative and linguistic power, islands have much to say about ourpast, present condition, and possible trajectories. Predictably, perhaps, the first strand of my presentation related toislands and my chief arguments were that islanders know how changeand challenge typify what I will call, however contingently, the islandcondition. The second strand concerned the importance of askingpowerful questions about that island condition, not least with respectto how we consider islanders aspirations for sustainable communities, modern and accessible technologies and services, opportunities forenterprise and livelihood, and respect for our cultures and identities.I was and remain convinced that powerful questions, respectfullyposed, open up extraordinary possibilities for positive change and forpreparing for the future.