Recently I tweeted a whole pile of photos from my Flotillas of Hope archive. The thought crossed my mind that it will be good to put a whole lot of them on one page. I won’t give captions of each. Assume when you see photos of boats they are either of Eureka or One Off. There many aspects of the journey to Nauru not only the boat trip.
The excerpt below is from The Tragic Miracle of Consciousness: John Steinbeck on the True Meaning and Purpose of Hope post on Marginalia
When you see photos of stuff on boats they are on one of the boats. The flags were ALL made by community members as were all the pieces of material with messages from Australians. There are also pictures of toys which were gifts from Aussies for the kids at Nauru. We didn’t get to give them the gifts because we were chased out by Nauru Government. The more hazy pics of beaches or buildings in the distance are the photos I took of Nauru when we approached the island. I sent these via satellite phone to our Australian ground crew who then uploaded them on the website. In 2004 social media wasn’t around and yet we got the message out & brought some hope to the asylum seekers. John Howard, Prime Minister at the time released 77 refugees because of our journey.
We learned after returning to Australia—through refugees later released by the Howard Government —that Australian police had been waiting for us on the beaches of Nauru with guns.
There’s also a photo of the Tarot spread that Starhawk created for the Flotillas of Hope when we met.
Whenever you see photos of islanders, they were taken in the Solomon Islands. The photos of buildings and landscapes were also taken there.
Our two small boats sailed more than 11,000 kilometres on the return journey from Australia to Nauru via Newcastle, Brisbane and the Solomon Islands.
I’m glad you’re here.
Journeys and Star Gazing 