Island at the edge of the world

huge tanks or bladders.

Traditional homes still heat their water in a ‘‘copper’’ – a drum with a fire fuelled with roseapple wood – but that practice is dying out with modern appliances. Islanders hoard everything useful and recycle 85 per cent of their rubbish. The rest is burned.

‘‘We have changed in our lifestyle,’’ Warren says. ‘‘We have embraced outside influence. But some of us are quite staunch in keeping some of our traditions going.’’

The island might be connected through technology, but physical distance is still a major problem. There is a resident doctor, and a well-equipped medical centre, but with no airstrip, evacuation is by sea only. In dire emergencies, islanders have made the perilous journey in their open-deck long boats to Mangareva.

‘‘Don’t get sick is the first rule,’’ Simon Young says. ‘‘Be very careful, extra cautious and don’t have an accident. You are talking days, rather than moments, to get to a hospital, and that’s not good.

‘‘You even have to go off for dental work because we don’t have a dentist. We are waiting for Star Trek for teleportation.’’ lifestyle. Brenda Luptonchristian’s first husband was in the Royal Air Force, so for years she lived in military bases around Europe. She misses only Black Magic chocolate boxes.

‘‘There you are in a confined space, here you are free,’’ she says of the island where she was born.

‘‘You don’t have retail therapy, or 24-hour service, but it is a beautiful, free place. It is the freedom of not having to lock things up. Or to go fishing. I live on the ocean, just about, because I love fishing.’’

Menzies gets her culture fix when she visits Auckland.

‘‘I’ve got grown children and grandchildren in New Zealand, and my mother is still alive so I have always made a point of being able to get home and see family.

‘‘And so then, I do the cafes, and the dinners and the art galleries and everything that I need to do to soak that up.’’

But she loves returning. ‘‘It is the smell of the island. It is nature and it just has a particular fragrance. As soon as you get on land you are smelling that feeling of being at home.

‘‘It is so beautifully quiet and, when the lights go out at 10pm, all you can hear is the sea. We can hear a whale’s tail slapping if the wind is blowing in the right direction.

‘‘And we have the most beautiful dark skies here. It is really something to come home to.’’