Erromango in Vanuatu: Sandalwood, Missionaries and a Rugged Interior

Sandalwood and its consequences

Erromango's nineteenth century was defined by sandalwood. European and Australian traders came for the timber, and the trade brought violence, disease and the collapse of much of the island's population — a sequence set out in traders and blackbirding.

The island is also where the missionary John Williams was killed in 1839, an event that shaped how Erromango was written about in Europe for a century afterwards. See missionaries.

The island now

Erromango is large, rugged and thinly populated, with kauri forest inland and a coastline of cliffs and river mouths. Dillon's Bay on the west coast is the main settlement.

Visiting

Flights serve Dillon's Bay and Ipota. Walking routes cross the interior, including to the kauri reserve, and are done with a guide.

The sandalwood century

Erromango held some of the richest sandalwood stands in the Pacific, and from the 1820s traders came for it. The wood was worth a great deal in Canton, and the trade brought firearms, disease and labour recruitment in roughly that order. Within fifty years the stands were exhausted and the population had collapsed — see traders and blackbirding.

The martyr island

John Williams was killed at Dillon’s Bay in 1839, and four further missionaries died on Erromango over the following decades. Nineteenth-century mission literature named it the Martyr Isle, and the label stuck for a century. A reconciliation ceremony was held in 2009 between the descendants of Williams and of the men who killed him.

The kauri

The interior holds stands of kauri, a species otherwise found in New Zealand and New Caledonia, protected in a reserve reached by a walk of several hours from the coast. The trees are large and old, and the reserve exists because logging came close enough to make it necessary.

Practicalities on the ground

Flights serve Dillon’s Bay on the west coast and Ipota on the east. Accommodation is village guesthouses. The island is large, rugged and thinly populated, and any walking inland is done with guides who know the rivers.

Language loss

Erromango once carried several languages. The population collapse of the nineteenth century took most of them with it; Sye and Ura survive, the latter with very few speakers. It is the clearest demonstration in Vanuatu of what the sandalwood and labour period actually cost, because the losses are countable.

Rivers

The island is cut by substantial rivers — the Williams River at Dillon’s Bay among them — which flood quickly after rain and are the main obstacle to moving inland. Crossings are timed to the river, and a walk that is straightforward in the dry season may be impossible a day after a storm.

Reconciliation

In 2009 descendants of John Williams travelled to Dillon’s Bay for a ceremony with descendants of the men who killed him. A section of the island was renamed as part of it. The event is cited in Vanuatu as an example of customary reconciliation settling something that had stood unresolved for 170 years.

Dillon’s Bay

The main settlement sits at the mouth of the Williams River on the west coast, named for the missionary killed there in 1839. It holds the airstrip, the store, the school and most of the island’s few hundred people. Ipota on the east coast is the second point of entry.

Walking and rivers

The interior is crossed on foot over several days, through forest and along river valleys, and the rivers govern everything. After rain they rise fast and drop slowly, and a crossing that was knee-deep in the morning may be impassable by afternoon.

A small population on a large island

Erromango is the third-largest island in Vanuatu and among the least populated. The emptiness is not natural — it is the direct legacy of the nineteenth century — and it is why the forest recovered as fully as it did.