![]() Above is a screen shot of the Radio Vanuatu Internet home page. Outer Island residents in Vanuatu are, for the most part, still dependent on radio for information and emergency services as well as entertainment. And those messages had to be sent by HF, short wave radio or planes. Within the island chain, one way broadcast radio was the primary means of communication between people wishing to send messages between outer islands, or between an outer island and the capital. We never did get an answers to those questions. And we never got a look at the Intelsat station - it was apparently considered irrelevant to our study of island communication needs. How did the experts from Commonwealth countries propose to use that multi-million dollar antenna? And how would it help residents of the outer islands? But in 1981 the cost of two way satellite communication was enormous and use was still limited to communication between the earth station and a few nearby telephones in government offices located in Port Vila and the outside world. HF – VHF transmission station on the north coast of Efate Island in 1981.īack in Port Vila we learned that the giant 13 meter Intelsat earth station had been installed in 1979, just one year before the country gained independence and two years before our visit. The antennas at that rural station, paired with similar, low cost antennas on populated outer islands were, in 1981, the sole means of two way communication between Vanuatu’s far flung populated islands. A short walk took us to our destination - an array of HF, UHF and Yagi radio antennas. The drive through rural Efate was beautiful and ended at a pristine, sandy beach on the north coast of the island (where we were warned not to dip out feet in the surf because of the prevalence of poisonous water snakes). Our hosts were New Zealanders who had been seconded to Vanuatu because of their expertise in telecommunications. One morning during our stay in Port Vila several government officials took us for a drive through rural Efate, specifically to show us the system that actually was used for two way communication between Vanuatu’s populated islands. One question remained unanswered: How could a giant earth station in the capital make it possible for outer island residents to communicate with one another or with the capital? An HF Antenna The earth station was located in Port Vila. And like several other Pacific island nations, Vanuatu, on the advice of outside experts, had acquired a giant and costly 13 meter Intelsat Standard B earth station, put in place to help improve its ability to communicate. ![]() Like most of the Pacific Island nations that have become part of the British Commonwealth, Vanuatu, in 1981, was still dependent on the expertise and management of people from other, more developed Commonwealth countries - primarily Australians and New Zealanders. The entire population of Vanuatu was estimated at a little over 110,000. The population of Efate in 1979, two years before our arrival, was just over 16,500, almost all of them living in Port Vila. Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, is located on Efate Island, a volcanic island of about 1500 square kilometers and the third largest island in the nation. Today the country is part of the British Commonwealth and, perhaps for the first time since before European exploration, took a name based on Melanesian derived languages. The name New Hebrides stuck through years of British and French contact and exploitation and continued from 1905, while the islands were run by a duplicative bureaucracy under a French-English condominium government, until 1980 when the country gained independence. The island group was named Espirto Santos by Portuguese explorers in 1606, then in 1786 it was named the Cyclades by French explorers, and a few years later, in 1774, the New Hebrides, by British Captain James Cook. Vanuatu is a 650 kilometer long chain of about 80 volcanic and coral islands that, without regard to any indigenous place names, had been named and re-named many times during centuries of European exploration and then under colonial rule. ![]() Exploration, Exploitation, and Independence ![]() Photo by Phillip Capper from Wellington, New Zealand, via Wikimedia Commons. Port Vila is beautifully located on a sheltered deep water harbor. 5: Vanuatu – Isolation and Pidgin – The Halborns Menu ![]()
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