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In a successful bid to escape yet another Sydney winter, my good lady wife, Fran and I again travelled to the island of Éfaté in the republic of Vanuatu.
It was my second visit to Port Vila, and Fran's fourth - (she had been before and soon after the apocalyptic Severe Tropical Cyclone Pam).
However, never before had we both ventured outside Vila, so this time it was different.
You can't keep an old journalist down, so in the late evenings, I jotted down with an old fashioned pencil in a battered notebook some observations.
The following is an account of some of the things I saw and heard, and what I was told and shown.

Ian Craven, Sydney, 31 August, 2017.