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Although Christmas
Island lies just 400 kilometres south of Jakarta, 1,300 kilometres
west of Australia it has a 90% Malay/ Chinese population and is
governed by Australia. For over 1,000 years flotsam and
jetsam have transported life to this remote island creating a
unique bio-diversity, today over 90% of the island is classified
as National Park. Unfortunately the same Southern Equatorial currents
that bought life to the island also dump the world’s debris
on two tiny coves on the East Coast. Plastics and glass travel
the currents of the Sunda Straits and land one of the few beaches
chosen by turtles for nesting. In April and September just before
and after the wet season, community volunteers collect over 1.5
tons of this rubbish from Greta and Dolly Beaches. Ooi Jun Seng,
a student from Christmas Island High School and his friends recorded
their collection of 2888 pieces of rubbish weighing 73.25kg from
five selected transects, the total amount of rubbish collected
in one day on the 90 metre beach weighed in at 372.75kg! Most
of the rubbish here is from Indonesia; the highest volume things
are thongs, toothbrushes and small plastic toys. Many curious
objects have washed ashore -a child’s school bag from Tasik
Malaya, a hat from the presidential security forces and the
head of a wayang golek puppet. Originally the rubbish
was thought to come from the Indonesian fishing boats but as you
look through the material you can see many objects from the cities
of Java.
Turtles have been called ecological ambassadors;
it is their plight in our cluttered, poisoned oceans that may
galvanise the world into caring for our most precious resource-
the sea. The food and materials once used to contain
food were organic. As economies grow the use of packaging increases.
Fifteen years ago it was normal to buy food in a banana leaf,
it was disposed of by tossing it on the ground and it decomposed
very quickly. The Indonesian rubbish found on Christmas Island
is the result of people buying small quantities of packaged items
frequently and an inadequate disposal system for rubbish. It would
be unfair to pass judgement on those creating this rubbish, without
thinking about Australia current use of 20 billion plastic bags
a year.
The movement of tides and currents are central to the
life of the sea. The rubbish travels on the same currents as fishermen
and traders throughout history. This knowledge of the sea and
the winds is still held in the communities. Indigenous
respect for the sea dictates that some may never raise their voice
at the ocean, must ask permission to cross a sand bar and that
to be shipwrecked is deserved. Each coastal community places names
and seasonal significance on the shifting winds and tides. As
the seasons change island communities every where follow a fixed
sequence of activities linked to the weather and the oceans phases.
For hundreds of years the north west monsoon bought the Makassan
traders for the trepung in Australia, months later they
left on the wind from the East. Today it is old fishing lines,
tooth brushes and light globed that connect us to our neighbours.
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