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Category Archives: Islands

Lancer girls’ basketball sails by Channel Islands into second round of CIF playoffs – Video

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Lancer girls #39; basketball sails by Channel Islands into second round of CIF playoffs
On Saturday, the Orange Lutheran High School varsity girls #39; basketball team started off the CIF playoffs in emphatic fashion with a 61-35 win over the Channe...

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Lancer girls' basketball sails by Channel Islands into second round of CIF playoffs - Video

Little wonder subantarctic islands uninhabited

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Steve Knowles knows what it's like to call New Zealand's subantarctic islands home and struggles to fathom how early settlers managed to survive there.

The HMNZS Wellington arrived at the Campbell Islands overnight with Conservation Minister Nick Smith, philanthropists Gareth and Sam Morgan and Conservation Department and Metservice staff on board.

The scientific expedition was earlier forced to seek shelter at Stewart Island after sailing through a storm dubbed "hell on earth" during an initial attempt to reach the islands.

While the sub-Antarctic islands are now recognised as UN world heritage sites and are nature reserves, they have a history of attempted but ultimately unsuccessful settlement, both by Maori and Europeans.

Knowles, a Metservice Networks Operations Manager, spent a year on the Campbell Islands as a 22-year-old meteorologist in 1990, and said the early settlers would have faced enormous challenges.

"It's no picnic down there, temperatures quite often get down to the low single figures, you can get snow any day of the year, the days when there's no wind is pretty seldom so wind chill is always a factor and just being able to get out of that and stay comfortable must've been a quite a struggle for those guys."

While he and his four colleagues had hot water, central heating and solid buildings to call home, the early settlers were forced to live in sod huts, he said.

Those promised a new start would have found living on the islands dismal.

"It's a constant struggle with morale, morale can be a big issue in a place like that, and it's really a matter of keeping yourself occupied, having an interest and keeping positive about things... Those guys would've done it pretty hard back in the early days," he said.

"And it's not a matter of going down to the hardware shop to get supplies, you've basically got to make it from scratch if you don't have it there or come up with another solution. It's tough times."

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Little wonder subantarctic islands uninhabited

Islanders afraid to go home 60 years after Bikini Atoll

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By Giff Johnson ,AFP March2,2014,12:11amTWN

Part of the intense Cold War nuclear arms race, the 15-megaton Bravo test on March 1, 1954 was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

It vaporized one island and exposed thousands in the surrounding area to radioactive fallout.

As those who remembered that terrifying day gathered in the Marshall Islands' capital of Majuro, along with younger generations, to commemorate the anniversary, many exiles refused to go back to the zones that were contaminated, despite U.S. safety assurances.

I won't move there, Evelyn Ralpho-Jeadrik, 33, said of her home atoll, Rongelap, which was engulfed in a snowstorm of fallout from Bravo and evacuated two days after the test. I do not believe it's safe and I don't want to put my children at risk.

People returned to live on Rongelap in 1957 but fled again in 1985 amid fears, later proved correct, about residual radiation.

One of the more than 60 islands in Rongelap has been cleaned up as part of a US-funded $45 million program, but Ralpho-Jeadrik said she has no intention of going back.

I will be forever fearful. The U.S. told my mother it was safe and they returned to Rongelap only to be contaminated again, she said.

It is not just their homes which have been lost, said Lani Kramer, 42, a councilwoman in Bikini's local government, but an entire swathe of the islands' culture.

As a result of being displaced, we've lost our cultural heritage our traditional customs and skills, which for thousands of years were passed down from generation to generation, she said.

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Islanders afraid to go home 60 years after Bikini Atoll


  1. Islands