Recently, Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands Special Coordinator, Tim George, took time out for a third walk in Solomon Islands, picking up where he left off his previous trek from the rugged Weathercoast of Guadalcanal to Gold Ridge. His journey from Gold Ridge to Tetere completes the crossing of Guadalcanal by foot. Here are his impressions of a resilient region that is helping to kick-start a revival in the provinces.

Our companions for this walk are my wife Geraldine, and Barry and Meg Apsey. Barry is a member of RAMSI who has been Commissioner of Corrections Service of Solomon Islands since 2005. Under his outstanding leadership, the Corrections Service has made impressive progress, and now is a leader in the South Pacific for its professionalism, facilities, focus on rehabilitation and humanitarian care, and compliance with international standards. Solomon Islanders are increasingly taking charge of the Corrections Service, and Barry will hand over the reins as Commissioner to a Solomon Islander later in the year.
Meg is the principal librarian at the University of the South Pacific Center in Honiara. Drawing on her strong professional background, she is doing wonderful work to improve the all-important library services for local tertiary students, whose access to written and on-line materials in Honiara is otherwise very limited.
The Route
Our walk is a relatively straightforward 28 kilometres to be covered in one day. It starts at the Gold Ridge Mine and proceeds down the rolling slopes flanked by forest and gardens, before entering the cool, seemingly endless rows of palm trees in one of the large blocks of Guadalcanal Plains Palm Oil Limited’s (GPPOL) plantations.
It then proceeds along a section of the busy Honiara-Tetere Highway, then leads past more plantations, before arriving at Tetere Beach. The conditions for our walk are comfortable and the views from the starting point over the sweeping Guadalcanal Plains and Iron Bottom Sound are spectacular as is the uninterrupted view of the imposing mountains at our back.
We are keen to see close-up how this very productive part of Solomon Islands is faring, five years on from the 1998-2003 tensions period. Long a major centre of market gardening for Honiara, the region is also home to two enterprises of national significance—the GPPOL-led oil palm industry and the Gold Ridge Mine. During the tensions, the area was wrecked by inter-communal violence and other militant activity. A number of people were killed or injured, many fled, daily life broke down, and businesses, schools and clinics ceased to function. Gold Ridge Mine and GPPOL (both under their previous ownerships) were forced to close, and with them the two major sources of private sector employment.
Gold Ridge Mine
Our walk starts at the Gold Ridge mine processing plant, where we chat with the security guards and other shift workers who arrive in one of the many mini-vans and company vehicles which ply the unsealed, but well maintained, access road from the plains. There is an air of activity and efficiency about the mine complex.
Back in Honiara, the day before our walk, I meet with John Blake, the CEO of the company which owns the mine, Australian Solomons Gold. He and his team brief me on the progress in preparing the mine for gold production which is targetted for early 2010.
Impressive work has been done since the company bought the mine in 2005 in exploration work including in drilling and proving resources. Environmental studies and follow-up work have been exhaustive. The crucial question of landowner rights and the part the local community will play in the future of the mine is being addressed very thoroughly.
Relations between the community and Australian Solomons Gold are good. The company is active in the provision of assistance to schools and other community facilities.
In stark contrast to the situation only a few years ago, security at the mine and the surrounding village areas, and on the main road to the mine, is overall good, apart from the now all too common phenomenon in Solomon Islands of problems associated with the potent illegal home brew, kwaso.
The potential significance of the Gold Ridge mine for the nation, for Guadalcanal Province, and for the local community, is considerable. Gold Ridge’s current reserves exceed one million ounces with the potential for more discoveries. Projected output from the mine is 135,000 ounces per year during the first three years with a goal to produce 500,000 ounces per annum within the next three to five years.
Of the gross earnings, the Solomon Islands Government receives 1.5% in royalties, the provincial government 0.3%, and the landowners 1.2%. The company currently employs 200 people, and is likely to employ a large number of people in the coming year when the company embarks on major construction work, prior to the first gold production. Once fully operational, the mine will employ around 500-600 people.
Leaving the mine, we check our map and note the names of the villages around Gold Ridge that are a reminder of the region’s colourful history, which includes a brief goldrush in 1931: Tinomeat, Bagarice, Oldcase, and Arsenic.
The Honiara Highway
Once onto the plain, we settle into a 15-kilometre stretch, which includes the main highway from Honiara to Tetere, before our next stop, the Tetere Prison Farm. The highway is an excellent tar-sealed road, upgraded a couple of years ago by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Japan has funded two major bridges on the road, opened earlier this year, and travelling time between Honiara and Tetere, once one and a half hours, is now down to 40 minutes. We are told access to markets, schools, clinics and other services has been greatly improved, boosting economic opportunities as well as quality of life for the local people. We also walk past evidence of other donor generosity—the Don Bosco Experimental Farm, supported by Taiwan, a hospital supported by an Italian organisation, and a school which is assisted by the United Nations Development Programme. In addition to the new road, other improvements in services are also apparent. We pass the solar powered ANZ ATM, located next to the Tetere Post Office, and, thanks to recent extensions of Telecom’s services, we are able to use our mobile phones.
Tetere Prison Farm
At Tetere Prison Farm, we are greeted by Inspector Ledi, filling in for acting Commandant Douglas Teaitali. Tetere is a low-security facility that is providing a place for training and pre-release rehabilitation programmes.
The immediate impression is that the leadership team at the Prison Farm is doing a very good job. The farm and its facilities are neat, orderly and attractive. The farm—with the help of prisoner labour—is producing a wide range of nutritious vegetables and fruit, such as corn, pumpkin, radishes, beans, cabbage and pineapple, which are used to feed the prison population nationally, thereby significantly defraying costs for the Corrections Service.
The farm is also growing seedlings for future plantation growth of teak. In conjunction with GPPOL, oil palm plantings are also planned. Increasingly, teams of prisoners from the Central Rove prison will be brought to Tetere on day trips to help work the fields.
Relations between the prison farm and the churches and other local community groups are very good, and organisations such as the Don Bosco Experimental Farm provide valuable training and other support for prisoners. In addition, a number of dedicated individuals generously give their time to regularly visit prisoners and provide pastoral support.
The prisoners at Tetere are securely locked up at night, but during working hours security is light, as befitting prisoners who are low risk. For them, life at Tetere is clearly a major improvement on normal prison life, and it is not surprising that prisoners elsewhere are keen to make the transition to Tetere if possible. The current Tetere prison population is small, only nine, although I learn seven more prisoners are scheduled to make the move to the farm from Rove two days after we visit. Facilities at Tetere can accommodate up to around 50 prisoners, and there is scope for the farm to accept a higher percentage of the dwindling national prisoner population (down from 280 a couple of years ago to 180 currently) in the future, if prisoners are eligible.
We visit the impressive new staff housing at the prisoner farm, for which Barry as Commissioner of Correctional Services can claim much credit. Six new houses for prison officers and their families were opened earlier this year and six more are on the way. Supplied by a company based in Papua New Guinea, the houses, made mainly from timber, are prefabricated and take just six weeks to construct. At SBD$350,000 per house, it seems good value, and Barry, Inspector Ledi and I agree that such houses could have ready application for other Solomon Islands civil servants, including police. Perhaps, in the future Solomon Islands companies will be able to draw on the considerable talents of local builders and tradesmen, as well as the plentiful supplies of local timber, to manufacture similar houses and help meet the urgent need for improved government housing nationwide.
Tetere Police Station
From the prison farm we walk next door to the Tetere Police Station. This is a busy station covering a large amount of territory from near Henderson in the west, to Aola in the east. There are more than a dozen officers stationed there, headed by Senior Sergeant Francis Sale. We also meet Chris Griffin, an alert and capable New Zealander who is currently providing the supporting RAMSI Participating Police Force adviser role for the station. His background was in the military before joining the New Zealand police force 12 years ago. Griffin briefs us on the current security situation. Clearly it has improved vastly in recent years, and now the problems are the familiar ones of petty crime and kwaso-related offences. RAMSI’s military component continues to maintain a presence in the area, but it is relatively low-key, and members often work closely with local communities. Recently, for example, Tongan RAMSI soldiers were pleased to be able to build classrooms for a local school.
Like the prison, relations between the police station and the local community are good, and police work closely with a number of local chiefs. Cooperation on security issues with the major employers in the region, GPPOL and Gold Ridge, is also good.
GPPOL
Our last major stop on the walk is to visit the GPPOL mill, down the road leading to Tetere beach. The GPPOL Project Manager, Harry Brock, kindly takes time out of his busy working Saturday to show us around the mill, and explain the process of making palm oil.
The mill has not change much since it was established in 1976 but is working well, having been refurbished thoroughly to repair the damage caused by sabotage during the tensions. Brock’s youthful looks belie his maturity and experience. Since GPPOL—whose parent company New Britain Palm Oil Ltd is a PNG-based palm oil producer with significant Malaysian backing—acquired the plantations in 2005, Brock has played a major role in reviving the important oil-palm industry on the Guadalcanal Plains.
In a relatively short time, GPPOL has been a conspicuous success story, and like Goldridge mine, its current and future operations have considerable significance for the national and provincial economy, local landowners and the community. Currently, the company’s holdings include 6100 hectares of plantations, with prospects for a total plantation size of 15,000 hectares in 10 years. This year over 22,000 tonnes of crude palm oil and 2500 tonnes of palm kernel oil was b produced, compared with 17,000 tonnes of crude palm oil only last year. Next year, they expect to produce over 28,000 tonnes of crude palm oil and 3000 tonnes of palm kernel oil. This level of production will exceed the levels achieved in the pre-tension era. With the world price for palm oil having stabilised at around US$1000 per ton and demand strong, the long-term outlook is very positive.
The benefits to the Solomon Islands and to local communities of GPPOL’s success are obvious. Nationally, the company contributes $15,000,000 USD to revenue and this is expected to climb substantially over the next 10 years. Locally, around 2200 people are employed by GPPOL, and a rapidly growing number of local farmers are participating in an outgrowers’ scheme, which allows them to sell the fruit from their own small oil palm holdings to GPPOL and to receive interest-free loans for equipment and fertiliser, and training, to develop their holdings.
A notable feature of GPPOL’s approach has been to work closely and collaboratively with the local landowners. Landowners have a direct 20 percent stake in the company, compared to two percent under the previous owners. In addition, the company now leases the land directly from the original landowners and a royalty payment is made for every tonne of fresh fruit bunches that is processed at the oil mill. Some of the benefits are taken by landowners as cash to distribute to their communities, while a significant proportion also goes into community facilities such as schools, clinics and the like.
Tetere Beach
We complete our walk by continuing on to the Tetere beach, where we admire the great sweep of sand in both directions, and the islands in the distance. Brock takes us to visit a memorial cross just up the beach from his beautiful home. It is a moving reminder of a different era. It is in memory of four Austrians, part of an expedition in 1896 on the vessel the “Albatross”, who attempted to climb Mt Tatuve, a spectacular flat-topped peak which we can see clearly in the interior ranges. The story goes that the group paid a heavy price in disregarding local advice that the mountain was tabu to white people and should not be climbed. All four were killed, with two of them eaten. Our last stop, also near the beach, is to see an extraordinary assortment of some 40 Amtracks, a type of small army tank, left behind by the Americans in 1945. These rusty relics, some grown over by spreading tree trunks and roots, are a stark reminder of the momentous events played out on Guadalcanal during the World War Two.
Conclusion
From Tetere Beach, we make the easy drive back to Honiara. We reflect on the range of interesting experiences we have had in such a short time, and on how far the region has come in five short years. Restoration of stability and the rule of law; productive relationships between the private sector and local landowners to make best use of the region’s considerable resources; hard work by local communities; the growth of transport, telecommunications and other services; and a fruitful partnership between government authorities and donor organisations, have all combined to provide an increasing measure of prosperity and hope for a bright future. It is a good story and one well worth being more widely known.