Stories From The Pacific

Freediver and artist Rava Ray finds solace in the sea, swimming with stingrays and dancing with humpback whales in the depths of French Polynesia. So when it came to giving birth, Rava wanted the water nearby.

LLane Munau is a filmmaker from Bougainville. The Crisis began she was 10 years old and her father decided to move the family inland to escape the brunt of the violence. In the bush they spent about half of the decade-long civil war, which killed 20,000 people. And for a while, Llane was protected from the harsh realities of the conflict. 

This edition of Stories From The Pacific was a repeat of the program broadcast on 5th July 2023 Add description below the above disclaimer 

Papua New Guinean sprinter Nelson Stone grew up around sports like Taekwondo and boxing. But the fighting didn’t always stay within the ring. Taking up athletics in his early 20s was a turning point for Nelson, who wanted to turn his life around. Nelson Stone would go on to become a household name in PNG, wining multiple gold, silver and bronze medals across Pacific Games and Oceania Championships...

When Sereima Leweniqila started playing rugby union, it was on her bed with a souvenir sponge ball from the Hong Kong Sevens. Despite the societal rejection of girls playing the sport, Sereima went on to become captain of the national side, Fijiana.

Leki Lao started off his photography journey shooting weddings. But on the day of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption, he found himself on board a navy boat travelling across obstructed seas to survey the damage. The photos he took that day of a very different kind, and they were among the first to emerge from the disaster. 

Tapani Mangisi grew up in Tonga in the 1950s, playing marbles beneath giant mango trees and observing huge colonies of flying foxes. Today, lamenting the fact his children could barely speak Tongan, he started to work to preserve his native tongue.

Cindy Filo’s childhood home was next to both a Seventh Day Adventist church and a nightclub. Both had a big impact on her life. But a cordless microphone at the latter gave Cindy the opportunity to perform untethered from a young age. She wowed crowds across the Pacific as the hilarious and cheeky Cindy of Samoa, becoming renowned for her impersonations of queens like Tina Turner and Whitney Houst...

A big mining company. A small island. And a lawyer just two years into practice. William Kadi from the Solomon Islands’ western province took on the case on behalf Wagina’s 2,000 residents, who were opposed to the idea of digging up 60% of their land for bauxite. Throughout the grueling process, William’s escape was music. And he soon found himself going from a huge legal battle to a huge hit song...

A painting of a ship. A cane knife. A pair of shoes. As the curator of Queensland Museum’s First Nations Cultures, South Sea Islander Imelda Miller collects objects that tell stories. Through these objects and their histories, she wants to give others the chance to connect with places, ancestors and identities. Imelda’s custom collection sheds light on the lives of South Pacific Islanders, includi...

While Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson was living in Samoa in the late 1880s and early 1890s, he became known as “Tusitala”, or teller of tales. But surrounding his household were, in fact, many tusitala. Their stories have never been heard, until now. In her latest play, O Tusitala – Tellers of Tales, prolific Samoan writer Sia Figiel brings to life the characters of Villa Vailima, explorin...

Seti Afoa grew up by the sea on the island of Upolu in Samoa. But like many Pacific Islanders, he feared the deep. As an adult he decided to conquer that fear to find the freedom that comes with open water swimming. It led him down the path of creating Samoa Events, hosting swim series, cycle tours and half ironman challenges in Samoa and around the Pacific. But it also gave him a way to rediscove...

Waso Mathews grew up in Rabaul in Papua New Guinea’s East New Britain province. Her place was one where she never went hungry, where she was safe and it was also a refuge for others who weren’t so lucky. In 1987, she moved to regional South Australia. She didn’t see a single Papua New Guinean for years. Then seasonal workers started arriving from PNG as part of the PALM scheme. Waso saw the strugg...

Katerina Teaiwa’s family was forced from their home of Banaba in Kiribati when almost the whole population was displaced and relocated to Rabi Island in Fiji in 1945, to make way for more mining. From 1900, the UK, Australia and New Zealand mined phosphate for 80 years to use for fertiliser. Today, Katerina’s scholarly and artistic work highlights the history and current situation of Banabans, whi...

Raki Ap grew up in the Netherlands never really understanding why his family was there or why he didn’t have a father. When he was 16-years-old, his mother sat him down and explained that Raki had in fact been born in a refugee camp in Papua New Guinea, after Indonesia invaded his home country of West Papua. He learned that his father - anthropologist and musician Arnold Ap - was targeted and even...

The school yard was not a friendly place for Peter Sipeli, who loved to daydream and listen to Whitney Houston. He was a writer before he ever put pen to paper and Peter's words would go on to change hearts and minds. Peter helped establish Fiji’s first gay rights lobby and his advocacy work continued with delivering workshops to the military and police force, to educate them on gay rights. More i...

Ann Singeo’s childhood was full of adventure. Each weekend, her dad would take her and her siblings to discover a new island – in Palau there were more than 500 to explore. They would camp, fish and learn about taking only what was needed from the land and sea. These trips formed the foundations for Ann to later co-found the Ebiil Society, a non-profit which aims to educate about environmental pro...

Ever since his childhood days singing at church, the stage has always felt like home to Klenneth Pombo. At school he also excelled in sport, but after realising soccer wasn't going to make him any money, he pivoted to comedy. His journey started when he scored a big gig hosting a PNG comedy TV show at the age of just 17. And then came a meme that kicked off PNG For Realz, his Facebook page that ai...

Eleven kilometers below the ocean's surface, in the Mariana Trench, is the deepest known part of the sea. More people have been to the moon than to that point. And while it's located in the waters of the Federated States of Micronesia, until 2021, no Micronesians had ever been there. Dr Nicole Yamase became the first Pacific Islander to make the journey down.

Gabrielle Langkilde had always wanted to go to Harvard, ever since a mentor told her she would. But the fast and competitive culture at the ivy league school was very different to her village back home in American Samoa. Gabrielle also realised the university was lacking a Pacific presence. So she started a Pacific-focused column in the prestigious student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. It was th...

There is a children’s book that can be found in schools across Kiribati called Teaote and the Wall. It’s about one woman’s quest to build her own sea wall to protect her home in Tarawa from rising sea levels. The book is based on the story of i-Kiribati woman Teaote Davies and introduces children to the human impacts of climate change. Teaote also happens to be the Aunt of Stories from the Pacific...

When Leonid Vusilai was a child in Vanuatu, he dreamed of becoming a pilot. It was mainly for the prestige associated with it but he also wanted to travel the world. His dad advised against it and gave Leo another idea that would see him fly around the globe anyway, only this time as a renowned chef and winner of Pacific Island Food Revolution, Season One. 

Hina Cross was seven years old when the last of the 193 nuclear bombs was tested in French Polynesia in 1996. But she never learned about it in school.  After being diagnosed leukaemia at the age of 24, Hina began to realise the full extent of the fallout.   Now an Anti-Nuclear Activist and newly appointed Member of Parliament in Tahiti, Hina aims to unveil the country’s true history and give Poly...

When Cathy Neap was growing up in the Papua New Guinean Province of Enga, girls weren’t supposed to speak up, let alone kick around a footy.   But she made it her mission to prove that if the boys could play rugby, she could too.  Cathy eventually led PNG’s first national women’s NRL team to the 2017 World Cup and the side earned respect from across the country. 

Jordan's been drawing since for as long as he can remember. He started by holding children's books up to the window and tracing around the images. It was then that he discovered that drawing offered him an alternate universe, in times when he needed to escape. Now in his mid-20s, Jordan is quickly becoming one of PNG's leading visual artists.