Why French Polynesia beats Bali for Aussie travellers
I have seen nothing like this islet, anywhere. It is reminiscent of a world lost in time, where the slow passage of time itself is a nostalgic pleasure.
At a cemetery on Hiva Oa I met a Frenchman named Jacob who’d travelled to this, the second largest of the remote Marquesas Islands, to place a jar of Parisian air on the grave of his idol Jacques Brel. A kind of Francophone Leonard Cohen and sometime actor, Brel was a cult figure among the French intelligentsia. He washed up at Hiva Oa in the 1970s, spent his last years in this eerily remote idyll, and is buried a few metres from the more famous – if not infamous – artist Paul Gauguin.
On the day I met Jacob I was with a crowd from the Aranui 5, a hybrid cargo-cruise ship that tootles around French Polynesia delivering everything from toilet paper to livestock. Roughly 70 per cent of the 180 passengers were French, the remainder a mix of English, Dutch and German speakers. But I was, I suspect, one of the few Anglophones at the Atuona cemetery on Hiva Oa as the low clouds opened up and the equatorial rain drew a curtain across the plaque beside Brel’s grave, which reads:
Passerby
Man of sails, Man of stars
This Troubadour enchanted our lives
From the North Sea to the Marquesas Islands
The poet, from the blue of his eternity
Thank you for your visit.
I felt a great surge of affection for Jacob, his sentimental adventure to the South Seas – solely, he assured me at that moment, to visit Jacques Brel – and his wit. A few days earlier an English speaker had asked him, as we struggled up a hill, if he enjoyed walking. “I only enjoy talking,” he shot back.
With a long jaw and a penetrating yet kindly gaze, Jacob was rather proud of his resemblance to John Cleese, and he spoke perfect English with a soft-sand tone. One night, as the ship pitched and rolled across the Pacific, he opened up on a more elaborate reason for travelling so far from home. For sure, he adored “Maitre Brel”, but he was also nursing a broken heart after separating from a woman who, in his words, was “the love of my life, who I’m unable to love”. And that, just as much as the homage to Brel, struck me as in some senses universal and in others particularly French.
I felt perfectly at home with this group of largely middle-aged French travellers. On the walk up the hill to the cemetery I’d been practising my bad French with a Parisian woman travelling solo, and we were soon joined by a couple from Provence who were happy to school me in their rubbery southern dialect.
When the heavens opened I offered a French translation of our idiomatic saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs.” They exchanged quizzical looks and Gallic pouts and informed me of the rather more logical French equivalent: “It’s raining ropes.” The next day, explaining my refusal to join a Polynesian dance class, I confessed to having “deux pieds à gauche”, or two left feet. This caused all sorts of consternation. “Was I a football player?” The French version of dancefloor ineptitude, they insisted, was “I move like I’m in clogs”.
About a decade ago I started travelling to this vast oceanic French enclave, or “semi-autonomous territory” in bureaucratese. I’m never less than astonished by the beauty of the islands and the lack of attention they receive from fellow Australians who prefer Bali as a winter getaway.
A total of 1.5 million Australians head for Kuta, Legian, Seminyak and Canggu each year, turning the Bukit Peninsula into a blend of the paradisical and the squalid. In contrast, as few as 4000 of us venture on any given year to Tahiti and its more beautiful, less sullied islands. Go figure!
Travelling to Tahiti is a solid day – eight hours in the air plus an hour-long stop at Auckland – but the inevitable crush at Denpasar International Airport evens things up. Arriving in Bali, the visitor is hit with grinding queues and a visa bill; at Faa’a International Airport it’s a ukulele band, a sashaying Polynesian dance and a floral “hei”, or lei.
The Faa’a airport chorus is a genuine prelude to what’s in store. For however long you spend in these islands, music, song and dance will keep you company. In Papeete, on the nights bookending the Aranui cruise, I found a place on the port city’s main street that served the freshest seafood – Vini Vini started as a fishing operation and still has its own working fleet. As traffic whooshed past I tucked into poisson cru, frites and southern French white wine as a Tahitian version of the Buena Vista Social Club – five old guys with guitars, floral shirts and ukes – cycled seamlessly through an epic repertoire of songs in French and Tahitian. No Jacques Brel, though; Jacob would’ve been disappointed.
After four trips to French Polynesia’s five archipelagos, I hunger when home for its almost ridiculous beauty, its witches’ hat peaks and crystalline waters. And its soundtrack.
The most surreal of the islands must be one of the most far-flung and least visited. Raivavae, more than 700km south of Papeete, is an islet in the Austral Islands spliced by a craggy peak, circled by an opaline lagoon. I spent an afternoon on its chalk-white Motu Piscine, sloshing around in water of such intense unreal blue it looked to have been dyed.
While there’s virtually no tourist infrastructure on Raivavae, (just a few family-run cabins), that doesn’t dampen the warmth of the welcome. The islet is a rare find. I’ve seen nothing like it, anywhere. Tahitians think of the island as Bora Bora 50 years ago, a world lost in time where the slow passage of time itself is a rare and somewhat nostalgic pleasure.
I suspect that one reason Australians skew to Bali over Tahiti is that we’ve turned the former into an Aussie colony, while the latter is a French – and by definition somewhat snooty – playground. And French requires work, as do the French.
I can forgive the French many quirks for one national trait that we share: a love of elsewhere. We are both nations of adventurers; my adopted home of Tasmania is sprinkled with the traces of French explorers and inflamed by “almost French” fantasies. Jacques Brel took the search for a distant refuge to extremes, washing up in the Marquesas. Jacob travelled around the world to honour that spirit, and by placing a jar of “fresh Parisian air” on Brel’s tomb he also, he told me, hoped to unite “north and south”. A nice gesture.
He’d also travelled across the seas to mourn a hopeless love, and pour out poems as the ship churned across the ocean. “Il pleure dans mon coeur,” I said after he told me his sad story. Tears fall in my heart. To the well-known line from Paul Verlaine, he replied with a sigh and a smile: “Aha. So you know.”
Checklist
Getting there: Return flights with Air Tahiti Nui to Papeete from Australia’s east coast cost from $1600 when booked in advance.
Stay: In central Papeete, the Maitai Express hotel is around $370 a night.
At sea: The 254-passenger Aranui 5 offers regular 12-day round-trip cruises from Papeete delivering freight to the six inhabited Marquesas Islands – Hiva Oa, Nuku Hiva, Ua Pou, Ua Huka, Tahuata and Fatu Hiva – with picturesque pitstops at Tuamotu atolls including Fakarava, Rangiroa and Makatea, as well as Bora Bora in the Society Islands. There are 20 voyages to the Marquesas Islands in 2026, priced from $8181 per person twin share. Aranui 5 will also make four voyages to the Austral Islands in 2026, with round-trip cruises from Papeete departing on February 14, March 28, September 12 and October 24, 2026.
The special 13-day voyage visits all five inhabited Austral Islands in the south of French Polynesia – Tubuai, Rurutu, Rimatara, “Bora Bora of the south” Raivavae, and Rapa Iti – with calls at Raiatea and Bora Bora on the return leg. An Aranui 5 cruise includes shore excursions such as guided hikes, visits to archaeological sites and local feasts; a weekly laundry service; three meals per day and French wine with onboard lunches and dinners. Aranui 5 also features the first tattoo studio at sea. aranuicruises.com.au
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout