Islands need landing places

if you are going set foot on them. If you are going to live on them they need harbours or ports or other safe places to land. If at all possible those places must be available all  year round in all sorts of weather.

But there are also other sorts of ports - ports used for industrial purposes in this instance. 

There is currently a "parliamentary inquiry" going on into the circumstances surrounding the decision not to allow the building of a port to remove timber from the island I once lived on. I lived on that island a very long time ago. I lived in the centre of it and I saw very little of the port where the ferry landed. I went on the ferry just once. After that our family used the plane. It was a twenty minute trip by air but an overnight trip on the ferry.  If it was rough weather the ferry could not dock. If it was very rough weather the plane could not fly in either. In medical emergencies the local "crop duster" - a tiny light plane would be used instead...often landing on a dirt track nearest the scene of the incident.

Now there is an all weather airport and there are more sealed roads. The harbour where the ferry landed is still in use but the forestry people want another port, a port dedicated to their business. The islanders are opposed not to the port itself but to the location of the port. A decision was made to deny permission to build it there. There is a "conflict of interest" inquiry because the politician involved in making the decision is also the owner of land through which the timber lorries would travel. Her family has farmed the land there since the island was settled.

She claims that the decision was made on environmental grounds. There are also concerns about the impact on tourism, the island's other main source of income. The local mayor has backed her. He has made his case. The area is prone to flooding. It is ecologically sensitive and more.

It would be cheaper to build a port there than anywhere else. It makes economic sense. More than anything else this would be why the planning permission was sought. But is it worth the possible environmental damage for something that will be used, at most, for about ten weeks a year?

The island seemed a very remote place when we lived there. It was that very remoteness which made it beautiful in a wild sort of way. I have no desire to return to it now. The tourist industry has taken over and it would not be the same. 

There is something I hope has not changed too much. There is another port on the southern side of the island. When we lived on the island there was a bay with a long jetty where quite large vessels could dock. We went there several times. The school's staff picnic before the year started would always be held there. I remember my first sight of it. There is a long, long and gently curving, beach of very white sand. It stretches a very long way. There was nothing to see except the sand, the water and the low cliffs in one direction. In the other there were a few buildings and the long jetty. There would sometimes be a few small fishing boats and perhaps a much bigger vessel.

It always seemed a very long way from the rest of the world. Just a handful of people lived there all year round. They had no television reception. Radio reception was poor. It was as isolated as the light houses further along the coast.  

There was an email for me this morning. In it, as an aside, someone suggested that they could turn that area into the port the timber people want to build. Thankfully they won't. It would be entirely the wrong place.