South Pacific: Fiji to Bali
At dusk, I view a magnificent sunset. And as it lowers over the horizon, I believe I see a green flash. Perhaps I imagine it? Soon, the deep ultramarine sky is twinkling with a million stars. It is magical.
Such magic beckons me with my easel on my adventure far out into the Pacific Ocean. During a great visual feast, I have visions of Paradise – beyond what Paul Gauguin had imagined in Tahiti.
Traveling through blueish black waters and …(continued after images)
(continued from top of gallery)…whitecaps will carry me through high swells and deep valleys of water stretching to the horizon under dramatic storm clouds and rosy-orange sunsets. Watery nature fills my eyes for more painting since painting in the lovely Tahitian Islands the prior year.
The Pacific ports of call after sailing from Fiji would be Espiritu Santo, Guadalcanal, Samurai, and Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. Then we would pass through the Torres Strait at Thursday Island in Australia and approach Indonesia where the stop would be Dili in Timor-Leste, Komodo Island, Lombok (Lembar), and finally, at Bali.
Beyond the Polynesian islands, I feel a new kind of troubled beauty as we pass Guadalcanal and Papua New Guinea, islands terribly attacked during World War II. When I reach the Torres Strait and arrive in Southeast Asia, I see a changed sensuality, verging on the exotic. My search for Paradise is taking me into the great unknown.
As we approach each island, I see how different their inhabitants are. After meeting Fijians, I notice how much the new people I meet change from Polynesians to Melanesians to Micronesians, each with unique tribal dances, architecture, art, and what is left of their cultures. For, sadly, I also see great suffering from immense poverty.
Yet I see no relics of World War II in the Pacific, as if it is a forgotten nightmare, and I wonder what island life would be like if the Japanese had won their battles in the Pacific. I never ask this question, but it leaves me wondering: What did the war in this great ocean accomplish when each island looks poor, with its people barely making a living.
Copyright © 2025 by Rosanna Hardin Hall