Pitcairn Island Immigration | Hacker News Reader

Pitcairn Island Immigration

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66 pointsjanandonly56 comments

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I once talked to Tom Christian, the ham radio operator, years in my youth.

I have friends, also hams, that have travelled there for a DXPedition: https://pitcairndx.com/.

It is seriously remote.

[edit]

More detail about the island: https://pitcairndx.com/the-island/.

Transportation was by the ship Braveheart, one that often takes hams to remote places. https://pitcairndx.com/transportation/. One fun thing that they did was EME operation, a technological challenge bouncing signals off the moon https://pitcairndx.com/eme-2/

One island that has been very difficult to operate radio from is Bouvet. Landings are difficult, and one team travelled all the way there at great expense but had to turn around as rough seas made landing impossible.

I met Tom on the island when I stayed there about 12 years ago. He's a cousin of mine - my grandmother was born there and I'm a descendent of Fletcher Christian too. I was there for a month and had a great time. The island is small but very hilly so there's lots of walking around and exploring that can be done. There's definitely a feeling of remoteness when your boat leaves and the realisation that there's no way to leave until it comes back again!

Are there a lot of tourists that show up in their own boat?

Reading _Serpent in Paradise_ cured me of any desire to spend a lot of time in Pitcairn. The author does a great job conveying what it was like living there as an outsider. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/415696

Note that book is from 1997, before the sexual assault trial against thirteen of the ~20 men who lived on Pitcairn. Most were convicted.

There used to be a Pitcairn newspaper called "Dem Tull" that was online. Some issues are here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170523142005/http://www.demtul...

“ Land is granted on a leasehold basis and there is currently no charge. New Migrant Home Land Applications may be made to Island Council at any time within the 2 (non-consecutive permanent residency period. However, a request will not be progressed until such time as the applicant(s) are on-island”

It’s 2-years, just a grammar/spelling error. But the open parentheses is aggravating

I’d probably leave the kids at home:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Pitcairn_Islands_sexual...

> A study of island records confirmed anecdotal evidence that most girls bore their first child between the ages of 12 and 15. "I think the girls were conditioned to accept that it was a man's world and once they turned 12, they were eligible," Tosen said. Mothers and grandmothers were resigned to the situation, telling him that their own childhood experience had been the same; they regarded it as just a part of life on Pitcairn.

> One councillor told him, "Look, the age of consent has always been 12 and it doesn't hurt them."

What in the bonkers hell. It seems like the place was just Child Abuse Island (r) (tm). Made their own little cult home. Crazy business.

This bit about how they were not subject to the Crown because they'd mutinied against the HMS Bounty's officers is an even better story. Unbelievable stuff.

Glad they were subject to the law. Though it looks like they're all free now, and presumably back at the noncery.

> It seems like the place was just Child Abuse Island (r) (tm).

Yep - look at some of Simon Winchester's writing where we goes into more unfortunate detail about this. Pitcairn is not a place you want to go.

Mexico has some pretty low ages of consent, until recently it was 13 in Japan.

Age of consent in Japan wasn’t 13. That was the national age of consent, but literally every prefecture had a higher age specified in local law, and the higher number is what mattered.

Changing the national age was largely symbolic, although it did have the beneficial effect of enabling national police instead of just local police to go after these cases.

> Unbelievable stuff

And silly, as the law (esp. international) usually cares more about de facto control in situations like this. Crazy argument to raise, but I guess if you can't argue they aren't nonces...

It's quite possible that the people involved did their time and the island is moving on from the events of the past. It seems uncharitable to paint an entire island with the brush of a single, very bad event that happened years ago. Imagine if every country had to be judged by the worst thing that happened in the country's history.

> Imagine if every country had to be judged by the worst thing that happened in the country's history.

I think it's a little different considering less than 50 people live on the island. It's more comparable to a small neighborhood than a country.

It also seems uncharitable to describe this as a single event.

I read that too, nice little community they have there

holy shit, a third of the island

Of the island's male population

> There are no school age children currently on Pitcairn.

Yeah, I'll pass. Can you imagine how hopeless it must feel for kids here?

There are no school age children.

Honestly the whole thing looks like volunteering to be in a survival situation. No thanks.

> … Olive Christian, wife of the accused mayor, daughter of Len Brown and mother of Randy Christian, both of whom were also among those accused, called a meeting of thirteen of the island's women, representing three generations at her home, Big Fence…

"Live Like a Local When you Stay at Big Fence with Steve & Olive Christian":

https://www.visitpitcairn.pn/accommodation/big-fence

Related. Others?

Live the Dream, Make the Change, Move to Pitcairn Island (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28102843 - Aug 2021 (111 comments)

Live the Dream, Make the Change, Move to Pitcairn Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28098025 - Aug 2021 (1 comment)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14566717 (June 2017 - added to https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights!)

Pitcairn Islands - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9116933 - Feb 2015 (1 comment)

Repopulation drive (2014) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648367

in 2023 The Pitcairn Islands: Mutineers, Murder, Mayhem, and Incest https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37455091.

I've always wondered why the UK bothers to keep up such a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. Would've been 10x cheaper for the budget to buy the residents 50 houses in Australia and just keep the island as a nature reserve.

"What we have, we hold." - British Empire proverb

You never know when these places will be useful. Maybe they'd discover something valuable in territorial waters. It's a cheap lottery ticket.

I think it's the closest land to R'lyeh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%27lyeh

It keeps the saying "the sun never sets on the British empire" true, iirc.

Mandatory citation of XKCD: https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/

The sun sets at 3:30 during winter on that cold, wet little island

The further an empire declines, the more desperately it clings to the shreds of a past glory.

See also the constant references to the "blitz spirit" by generations who weren't alive to remember it.

Remote islands can be very useful to navies

Such as a Royal Navy?

Because China will claim it as its territory and set up a military base there before you can count to ten.

Just ask The Philippines.

And because it enables claims on resources located in its economic zone and the corresponding seabed.

Take for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Polynesia, tiny islands but huge ocean area with immense resources.

Seems pretty far for China to care about. Pitcairn Island is roughly the same great circle distance from Beijing as it is from London.

Would you say the same about Solomon Islands?

What makes you think it's looking at London?

Pitcairn Islands is half way to the Americas, and right in the thick of a bunch of U.S. territories.

What are the US territories it's in the thick of? Closest territories are French Polynesia and Rapa nui, a Chilean territory.

You might be interested in Rockall [0], a rock in the North Atlantic. It even has a song [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockall

[1] https://youtu.be/AV1MrOPt0pg?si=LGYMHfYJS0bMFF5I&t=1057

... it's rock music then? :)

Two songs it seems. Gang of Four - Ether.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee_HrbO9xfI&pp=ygUSZ2FuZyBvZ...

This has been done. Pitcairners were relocated to Tahiti (they hated it and all came back to Pitcairn after just 6 months) and then later to Norfolk Island (most of them stayed, but around 40 of them moved back to Pitcairn after a couple years).

Saying "they hated it" when referring to their return from the migration to Tahiti is underselling things a bit. Over a third of them died from sickness having no immunity to things having been isolated so long. The island lifestyle there was completely unlike Tahiti of the past due to the influx of non-Tahitian people, and they basically lived in slums. Luckily they were able to sell copper sheathing from the Bounty to pay for the return journey back to Pitcairn.

If the UK loses Pitcairn, the sun will set on the British Empire. Literally. Without Pitcairn the UK will be entirely in the dark part of the day for the first time in centuries.

For other readers like me, from the faq

——

Does Pitcairn have Internet, phone and television?

Yes, there is internet on the island, all homes and government buildings have their own Starlink Terminal.

There is no Cellular service for mobile phones however international communications are easily achievable via mobile phone apps like Messenger, Viber, WhatsApp etc. There are two mobile satellite phones on Pitcairn for emergency use only, should the main telecommunications system fail.

There is 1 Free-to-air Television Station at present, ABC from Australia however entertainment and news can be streamed easily via the internet.

——

It would be nice to have fiber. How much would it cost to get fiber hooked up to a remote island like this?

Mid-hi five figures per kilometer, pick endpoints and do the math. Divide the total by the population.

Looks like a mere 1,477 km to Hao which seems to have cable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hao_(French_Polynesia)#Tertiar...

Starlink is available there now and is probably the best option for high speed internet.

In that page there's a picture of a signboard with distances to other places around the world.

Interesting that Pitcairn-South Pole distance is twice that of Pitcairn-New York distance. Unintuitive to me.

On a tangent, I like the idea of living in tiny somewhat isolated but reasonably developed islands (ie., not the rainforest type islands — personal preference) and sometimes think about moving to some place like that for a year or so. Might help that I'm an introvert. Probably not Pitcairn though.

Has any of you lived in places like Svalbard, Faroe Islands etc? What is it like?

A paradise. It's just the people there...

There's a really nice series of episodes on the Extremities podcast about Pitcairn.

Their honey is fricken delicious. Super unique flavor for me on the US west coast.

I wonder if there are similar opportunities closer to Europe and less remote.

> applications must also attach a police certificate or letter from every jurisdiction in which they have resided in, disclosing whether they have any convictions and the nature of those convictions.

Presumably to prove that you have a criminal record before approval? /s

edit: this was a joke about their mutiny, was unaware of the criminal issues brought up in another comment

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