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australasia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area (or 29.4% of its land area) and, with almost 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population. |
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| Mauke (from ma uke, "Uke's Land"; also known as Akatokamanava) is one of the Cook Islands.
Mauke is half as big as Rarotonga in circumference. It is 18 kilometres (11¼ miles) around compared to Rarotonga's 32 kilometres (20 miles). The topography, however, is quite different. Mauke consists of a central volcanic plateau which climbs to a maximum height of about 30 metres. It is surrounded by a raised, fossilised coral reef – 'makatea' – which ranges from about 100 metres from the shoreline to about 1000 metres inland. There are no rivers so rainwater which falls inland drains into swamps on the inner rim of the 'makatea' and thence underground to the lagoon, similar to Mangaia. The lagoon is very short and you get a good close-up of spectacular waves smashing on the surrounding reef.
The central south area of Mauke is quite open. If it were not for the occasional coconut palm, the landscape could almost be rural European. The old airstrip was in the interior and the tropical hardwoods which previously flourished there were cleared to make way for the runway. Now it looks like an overgrown paddock and cattle graze on it.
There are no sealed roads; they are topped with crushed coral sand, much like Rarotonga's roads in the 1950s before the advent of international jets, resort hotels and tourists. As in Aitutaki, there are no dogs. However, wild pigs are prolific. Even the ubiquitous wild roosters are well adjusted compared with their dysfunctional cousins in Rarotonga who start crowing at 10pm and go right through the night as well as most of the next day.
Mauke is a garden island, extremely verdant and fertile with magnificent hardwood trees in its interior. These forests are where the 'maire' bush is found growing wild, Maire leaf ei the source of a thriving export industry to Hawai'i where the leaves are used to make welcoming 'leis' – garlands. Each week, the island gets an order from Hawaii and the women head into the interior at the weekend to pick enough 'maire' leaves to be airfreighted out on Monday. The island also boasts the largest banyan tree in the world - a fact verified by a professor from Leeds University in England who is one of the world's leading experts on the banyan.
The village roads are tidy and well-maintained with low white coral walls at the front boundary of the houses. On the way in from the airstrip at the north-west corner of the island the first village is Kimiangatau. Just before the small hospital lies the derelict house of Julian Dashwood, the flamboyant English writer who arrived in the Cook Islands in the 1930s. He worked in Mangaia and Manihiki and eventually moved to Mauke where he married a local girl and ran a store.
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