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T
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he 16-seater shudders
on the breeze. Below, a small grid of unsealed roads runs through a village of
fibro buildings ringed by palm and jungle trees. A contracting grass airstrip
dips at each end into the blue of the Pacific.
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| The beautiful Taro Island - soon to disappear under the rising seas. |
It could be the
setting for a film about the end of the world. And for the people who live here
- and will be forced to leave - it is.
Taro Island: a sometimes picturesque coral atoll adrift in
the ocean at the north-western tip of the Solomon Islands.
Barely a kilometre
long and less across and almost none of it more than two metres above sea
level, it is barely a smudge on a map. Yet this smudge - with its nearly 600
permanent residents, its hospital, churches (four), school, police station and
courthouse - is set to take an unwanted place in history. Though tiny, it is the
capital of the province of Choiseul. Soon it may be the first provincial
capital in the world to be abandoned due to climate change.
Read the Age story
- “The vanishing island”.
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