Lachie Scarsbrook
“See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me. And no one knows how far it goes”.
If you’ve seen Disney’s Moana, like me you probably just sung those first few lines whilst picturing a traditional double-hulled canoe sailing out into the sunny, blue abyss.
Sparked from a desire to explore the final frontier, to boldly go where no one has gone before, or driven from Hawaiki as a result of resource depletion, overpopulation or just plain old exile, ancient Polynesian sea voyages were no such fairy-tale. Imagine watching solid-ground fade away into the horizon knowing there’s a good chance you’ll sail into forever, die at the mercy of the Polynesian sea deity Tangaroa and be lost from the knowledge of men. Not surprisingly this notion was missing from Moana. Continue reading “Aotearoa: Land of the long or short chronology”