Julian Evans writes in a style reminiscent (to me at least) of Paul Theroux - jogging along merrily, even when little is happening, engaging with people he meets and making his own judgements. Travel among the Pacific islands is still considered exotic by many, but only very occasionally does JE encounter any semblance of an imagined tropical paradise. Too many of the islands and remote atolls are overcrowded, prey to the ills of a modern diet, and, ultimately bereft of traditional culture and social norms. Still, the on the spot reportage, with appropriate historical detail, is engaging, witty and very enjoyable. ( )

"The Pacific is not just a third of our planet...it is the tide-beating heart of Earth, the canary in our coal-mine", 26 September 2015

This review is from: Transit of Venus: Travels in the Pacific (Hardcover)
Travelogue in which the author takes in most of the Pacific nations: sailing out from Sydney, he visits New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. For me, the disadvantage of covering so many places in a relatively short (270 p) work was that this reader ended up with a somewhat jumbled picture as to exactly what happened where.
If you're expecting a romantic work of palm trees and beauty, this book doesn't contain too much of that: the author explains "the Pacific that most interested me was a post-nuclear ocean of bad politics, bad aid, bad faith: the more dystopian it was, the more I liked it...I consciously avoided most of the reputedly peaceful, friendly, unpolluted, apolitical or beautiful places."
Certainly I feel I've learnt a lot about the Pacific, notably the Marshall islands, home of the Bikini atoll and ongoing US military testing. While the Americans are billeted on the US-only base of Kwajalein (with all mod cons), the native labour force are housed on a cramped and dirty neighbouring islet, malnourished on the refined foods shipped in by America. He describes the people, removed from their natural lives before the white men came: "Among the young men there was the same kind of jiggling of the legs that I had noticed with uraki, a repetitive muscular tic that went on constantly and reminded me of male polar bears in a zoo, pacing up and down...caused by removal from their snow caves and plains of ice."
A vivid picture of the negative side to the islands of Oceania. ( )

A travel book of an area of the world most people consider Paradise, but on this journey with Author Julian Evans that is not the case. The place I am referring to is the South seas but Julian visits the overlooked or in some cases the underside of these islands and the results are funny, sad, depressing. After reading this book I definitely know where not to go in the South Pacific. ( )