Describing the meaning of an island is not as straightforward as first appears. The common dictionary definition is simply a ‘piece of land surrounded by water’, smaller than a continent19 and larger than a rock. This definition encompasses a vast array of land-sea compositions, including islands within the landmass of continents which are
18
The term ‘islocide’ is attributed to Malcolm Wells, who used the term at a public forum, Island Insight, as part of the Ten Days on the Island festival, Hobart, Tasmania, March 2007.
19
Conversely, a continent is defined as “a connected or continuous tract of land” (OED) but how is continuous defined?
surrounded by water in the form of lakes; artificial islands; icebergs; and islands connected to continents via bridges, tunnels or causeways. The status of islands also depends on the properties of the water surrounding the land (if ice, they are often temporarily part of the mainland). In Hebrew the word for island was applied to the lands across the sea, the coasts of the mainland Mediterranean (OED). Ships are sometimes referred to as floating islands, enabling the insular way of life to become mobile (Lehari, 2003). The definition of an island is a temporal and a spatial concept. For example, “to the Vikings, a piece of land surrounded by water was not regarded as an ey or island unless it was sufficiently distant and distinct for the sound separating it from the mainland to be navigable by a ship with its rudder in place” (Royle, 2007a: 40). The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UN, 1982: 66) defines an island as “a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide” and thereby excludes artificial islands, such as the ambitious projects being constructed in Dubai20. The term ‘island’ has also been extended to situations where water need not be the surrounding medium, in the form of habitat islands. However, “islands in the sea have the virtue of having clearly defined limits and thus providing discrete objects for study … the whole surrounded by the aquatic realm. In contrast, habitat islands exist typically within complex landscapes, with which they may share uncertain boundaries and overlapping populations” (Whittaker, 1998: 8). Islands naturally are discrete identities by virtue of their water boundary. This research does not consider islands in lakes and rivers. It is only natural and marine islands that I focus on and hence it is these islands that I discuss in relation to academic literature. As noted in chapter one, I am examining only one category of islands21, continental shelf islands, which may have been connected to their adjacent mainlands during periods of significantly lower sea levels (Whittaker, 1998).
Another common debate within island studies is that of size classification of islands, and the resulting impacts of size on various aspects of island life. Smaller islands may
20
A jigsaw of 300 private islands is being constructed through reclamation, to create a nation-by-nation replica of the world (Hardman, 2004).
21
Whittaker (1998) ignores non-marine islands and describes two classes of islands: continental shelf islands, and oceanic islands, which are located over oceanic plates and have never been connected to continental landmasses.
experience more significant problems than those of larger proportions: there is a “common assumption that the smaller the island, the more intense the experience of islandness” (McMahon, 2005: 3). For example, Australia’s island state of Tasmania (68,300km² and 240km south of the Australian mainland) has considerably greater economic opportunities than that of its smaller offshore islands, not least because it has more resources, both natural and human. As such, size may influence island sustainability but then larger populations on larger islands may also create greater sustainable development problems. The term ‘isle’ is usually applied to smaller islands, and ‘islets’ to even smaller islands, but there is no set size limit. The term ‘small island’ is used freely by island scholars but its use is contestable. While many nissologists (for example, Briguglio, 2004; Royle, 2001) claim that the effects of insularity are felt more keenly on small islands, it is not clear what constitutes ‘small’. For example, ‘small islands’ have been defined as those approximately 10,000km² or less in area and with 500,000 or fewer residents (Hess, 1990) but this definition encompasses a broad range of islands, and many offshore islands have considerably smaller areas and populations. While acknowledging that size limits are arbitrary, Brookfield (1990) suggests that ‘small islands’ are those smaller than 1,000 km² and/or with fewer than 100,000 people, in which case Kangaroo Island would be considered a larger island, at 4,416km². The United Nations (1992) recognises that islands supporting small communities are a special case both for environment and development, and that small island development options are limited, which creates special challenges related to planning for and implementing sustainable development. Villamil (1977) discusses the links between reduced scale and problems of viability (particularly diseconomies of scale). Royle (2007a: 42) points to Péron’s (2004: 328) comments on island scale:
the notion of an island shall be discussed, deliberately restricting ourselves to small, inhabited islands: those specks of land large enough to support permanent residents, but small enough to render to their inhabitants the permanent consciousness of being on an island.
Here Péron moves beyond typical physical dimensions of island status and considers social meanings of an island but then the issue becomes how to describe a “permanent consciousness of being on an island”. Nunn (2004) contends that labels such as ‘small’ have been imposed unthinkingly on islands by continental-trained thinkers and are
demeaning. Surely size must matter if we are distinguishing islands from continents, since continents themselves have land-sea interfaces, but I do not consider there to be any great value in setting strict size limits. Hache (1998: 43) has reservations about size limits, noting that “if the mechanisms of insularity can be found and demonstrated, that demonstration should show a “breaking point” between small and large islands through its own merits, and not thanks to some pre-set limits”.
I will now move to one of the most robust debates concerning island definitions, that surrounding fixed links. This debate is one that particularly concerns offshore islands (many of which are within linkable distance of a mainland) and specifically relates to one of the case islands, Phillip Island, which is connected to its mainland by a bridge. Fixed links
What of islands with permanent links – bridges, tunnels or causeways - to the mainland? Are they still islands? Are they artificial peninsulas, no different to a naturally formed peninsula connected to a mainland by a narrow land bridge? An island is completely surrounded by water; a peninsula is surrounded by water on three sides (as an aside, how narrow does the width of the land joining the peninsula to the mainland have to be for the land to be called a peninsula?); and an isthmus is bordered by water on two sides (again, how narrow does the connecting strip of land have to be to be called an isthmus?). Conversely, peninsulas may act as islands. For example, it could be argued that the former Port Arthur penal settlement on the Tasman Peninsula in southeast Tasmania was effectively an island prison within an island, due to the landform and the guard line of soldiers and dogs at the isthmus, Eaglehawk Neck. Indeed the word peninsula, derived from Latin, means ‘almost island’22. The term ‘island’ was formerly used less definitely and included peninsulas and places insulated at high water or during floods (OED). Different forms of fixed links may influence the perception of islandness. In the case of bridged islands, water still flows all the way around the island, whereas causeways impede water flow. Tunnels are not visible from above, and it could be postulated that no visible connection to the mainland translates to greater islandness in a
22
psychological sense. Vehicular ferries are a moveable link; the gap between the island and the continent remains visible, and the connection is slower than that provided by fixed links. Ferries have the capacity to increase tourism but there is still a limit. Air travel is another important consideration. For example, when I travel to other Australian states, mainlanders often assume that I have travelled by ferry which I find puzzling (would they really drive considerable distances between mainland capital cities rather than fly?). I find the 240km water crossing to be an inconvenience when I can travel more comfortably, cheaply, and quickly by air23.
An important consideration in the fixed link debate is the impact of bridges, causeways or tunnels on the journey to the island. However, much of the following literature on such impacts does not draw on empirical data; hence in chapter seven I will draw on perceptions of some tourism stakeholders on Phillip Island in this regard. Ian Watson (1998: 136) notes that for offshore islands, the water barrier between the island and the mainland creates a sharp discontinuity, so “building a bridge to an island removes the discontinuity that is characteristic of islands in the first place. It means that an island, viewed from the mainland, no longer appears mysterious and inaccessible … The rituals of passage to an island … are reduced to an unremarkable car journey”. Conversely, with moveable links islanders may take “a kind of pleasure in the long, slow ferry ride home from more ‘spoiled’ locations, [and] see a boat ride as a desirable transition between the hectic and the bucolic” (Petroski, 1997: 11). For visitors, a fixed link may reduce the fascination of the destination and the sense of adventure associated with getting to and being on an island: “travel becomes seamless between the interior of the mainland and the actual transfer to the island … the risk element, the romantic notion of being cut off and isolated on the island … is also removed” (Baum, 1997: 24). While sea and air links can be used to manage carrying capacity through limits on number, size and frequency, Baum (1997: 24) argues that a “bridge or tunnel land link threatens this control and, thereby, can undermine one of the most attractive features of many island destinations – limitations on the number of visitors who can ‘invade’ the restricted space”.
23
It takes three and a half hours to drive from Hobart to the ferry terminal in Devonport in northern Tasmania and the ferry to Melbourne takes ten hours. It is much simpler to take the 70-minute flight to Melbourne direct from Hobart, which is a faster air travel time than that between Melbourne and Sydney.
Cowley (2000) suggests that modernity and technology are creating borderless places, growing closer both physically and electronically. Deschenes and Chertow (2004: 203) note that while modern transportation has “made most geographical boundaries permeable and increased the connectivity of islands to the rest of the world”, transportation time and cost still leave islands isolated to some degree.
Bridges are a form of development. Philosophers, sociologists and architects have reflected on the meaning of bridges but they tend to consider only bridges linking riverbanks, which is perhaps a function of the technological capabilities of the day. Norberg-Schulz (1980: 18) describes a bridge as a building which enables the environment to become a unified whole and he cites Heidegger (1975: 152), for whom a bridge creates a presence from absence: “It does not just connect banks that are already there, the banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream. The bridge designedly causes them to lie across from each other … It brings stream and bank and land into each other’s neighborhood”. While Norberg-Schulz emphasises that the landscape acquires its value through the bridge, in the case of a bridge spanning the stretch of water between an island and a mainland, the island is unified whole before the presence of the bridge and indeed it can be argued that the island loses some of its values or islandness through the construction of a bridge. Simmel (199424: 6) maintains that although people may go back and forth between two places and thus connect them subjectively, “it was only in visibly impressing the path into the surface of the earth that the places were objectively connected”. In a similar vein, it could be said that while ferries and other watercraft may regularly ply the waters between a mainland and an island, it is only through construction of a bridge and its visibility that island and mainland are objectively connected.
Building bridges is a physical way of integrating an island with a mainland (Watson, I 1998) and island communities can benefit economically from land links, in the removal of limitations imposed by water barriers. Perhaps islands with land links are simply
24
another category of island, more closely integrated25 (in economic and social terms) with their mainlands, but still distinct. In chapter nine I will examine the possible impacts of fixed links on islander identities in reference to islandness, and draw on some examples of impacts of bridged islands around the world. The next section reports on representations of islands. In noting that many representations are academic claims that are not backed up by empirical data, it is appropriate and necessary to place my research in the nexus between theoretical notions and empirical data, which will be synthesised in chapter nine.
Representations of islands
It important to understand how islands have been represented over time, as historical views impact on current perceptions and uses of place. Island metaphors have been well- employed, with islands variously positioned as utopias and dystopias. Western culture, argues Gillis (2004), has had ambivalent relationships with islands; a combination of attraction and repulsion. Their isolation has been exploited for use as prisons and quarantine stations, and as escape to destinations of paradise for continental tourists. Religious groups have long sought seclusion on islands, a “refuge for the soul” (Royle, 2001: 13); while a recent trend of the wealthy is to seek out island hideaways. Peckham (2003: 502) explores the island as a site of double identity, on the one hand representing a place of incarceration and alienation (“precisely because the island held out the possibility of absolute control and dominion, it became the site for the struggle between freedom and authority”), and on the other hand imagined as a place of authenticity where individual resourcefulness was tested and confirmed. Peckham (2003: 499) explores how the island has served as a model for the organisation of knowledge and functioned as an “ideal body politic, in which political and cultural boundaries were congruent and readily defensible from invasion”. Island metaphors have been employed across a number of disciplines: “The island has become an archetypal metaphor that helps us to imagine and understand abstract social structures, either on the level of
25
The degree of integration or connectivity with the mainland also depends on less tangible links, such as telecommunications technology (which can provide greater job flexibility and mean that employees are not necessarily tied to cities for jobs).
politics, morals, social or individual psychology. The metaphor of an island also comes in useful in tackling the urban environment” (Lehari, 2003: 99).
There is a considerable body of fiction based on islands, and classic island adventure narratives such as Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719-20) and Stevenson’s Treasure Island
(1883) have contributed to the appeal of islands by stimulating readers’ imagination in depicting ‘undiscovered’ land, or adult recreational playgrounds (although island settings can also bring out darker sides of human nature as in Golding’s Lord of the Flies
(1954), in which the island was a setting where social values disintegrated). More recently, several films and television programs (for example The Island, Lost) have also depicted metaphoric and (possibly) real islands (as places of hope and as places where individual identity can be reinvented, respectively). Artists, such as Gauguin in Tahiti, have found sources of inspiration and creativity in island settings. While the realm of island metaphors can be explored in much more detail, my research is concerned with literal islands. In this context I agree with Hay (2006: 21) that islandness and island studies is to do with “the stuff of real geographical entities”.
Like in biogeography, where islands are used by species to spread from one region to another, humans have also used islands as stepping stones, particularly for advancement in war, for example in the Pacific during the Second World War. Islands are of immense research and educational value. The twin features of isolation and boundedness have allowed islands to function as field laboratories where theories can be tested in a semi- closed system (King, 1993) and this applies not only to biogeographical research but also to human genetic and epidemiological studies. Islands are also globally significant in the context of the planet’s biodiversity. While much scientific research on islands has been carried out on oceanic islands, Hercock26 (2003: 118) recognises that the value of some offshore islands to biological scientists is in part due to “their insularity, unique biota, and relative analogy to mainland nature reserves”. Islands may also “serve as the proverbial ‘miner’s canary’, providing early warning signals to unsustainable environmental degradation” (Baldacchino & Milne, 2000: 241). For example, in the
26
Hercock (2003) examines how different scientific regimes have contributed to the management and landscapes of two Western Australian islands, Rottnest and Garden islands, significant locations for local scientists due to their use as experimental laboratories and proximity to the city of Perth.
tuatara, a vulnerable species of New Zealand reptile, incubation temperature affects the sex and there are concerns that global warming may result in its extinction (Newby et al. 2004). As such, the tuatara may act as a canary, warning of global environmental change. Islands can demonstrate the negative consequences of humans and introduced species on the environment. Several flora and fauna populations have become extinct on islands through hunting, habitat loss, introduced diseases, or competition or predation from introduced species. Conversely, offshore islands can act as refuges for conservation of threatened species. For example, scientists may relocate Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii), a species listed in 2007 as endangered, to offshore islands in Tasmania to protect healthy populations from facial tumour disease (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2007a). For humans, some islands are “perceived as places of refuge from the overcrowded and poorly-managed environments of continents” (Nunn, 2007: 131).
The Australian context
Turning to Australian offshore islands, the lack of formal records makes it difficult to assess indigenous representations and uses of offshore islands. Most islands were occupied on an ongoing if temporary basis; the existence of middens points to long-term use of island resources by Aborigines. Considering that colonisation of Australia more than 40,000 years ago involved sea crossings, Bowdler (1995) reasonably assumes that