Repeating a stunt for a brand new problem - rising sea levels

S

ailosi Ramatu paces out a few steps and crouches before a silvery shoreline. His black hands begin to dig the black sand. It is not long before he finds what he is looking for: just below the surface is something solid. It's a stunt he's done with visitors before. When many understand climate change in concept but not through personal experience, this exhibit carries great weight.

"This is the post of my old house, my first house," says the 54-year-old, who was born at a time when you could rely on the seasons to bring shoals of fish, and the soils to grow fat cassavas.

In the 1960s, the Ramatu family's traditional Fijian bure stood back from the shores of Natewa Bay, on Vanua Levu, Fiji's second-largest island. To its south snaked a narrow estuary; a few considered leaps for a small boy to reach the opposite bank and run past mangrove forests and coconut palms to school.

Read the story in today’s Good Weekend in the Melbourne Age - “Escaping the waves: a Fijian village relocates.”