After living in North America for nine years, I started asking myself the question why was I living over there when I could live in Australia.  I was really starting to hate the Canadian winters and I was starting to miss things that I took for granted when I lived in Australia.  Like body surfing and skin diving.  Even though I’m a pasty white boy, whose genetic makeup is more suited to hunting mammoth on the edge of glaciers, I grew up near the beach and I love being in the ocean (for longer than two minutes before I die). 

So on my way back to Australia in 1985 I stopped over in Tahiti.  I have to admit that my preconceived ideas about Tahiti were mainly informed by the old movie, “Mutiny on the Bounty”.  I guess I had some 18th-century fantasy in my head about cooperative young scantily clad Tahitian women in a tropical paradise.  I got to Papeete I was a bit surprised at how grubby and shabby it all looked. No grass huts anywhere and everybody was fully clothed.  This is not the first time in my life that my preconceived ideas have left me feeling cheated.  I knew that staying in Papeete wasn’t going to be pleasant.  So I asked around and some people suggested that I go to a Moorea, as it was much more spectacular and probably closer to what I was looking for.  They were right, bright green volcanic Moorea juts out of the ocean, all sharp, steep and angular, much more in line with what I had been expecting.

I stayed at the camp ground next to the Club Med, and one of the first things I did was go snorkelling for about six hours without sunscreen.  I spent the next two weeks in Tahiti, sitting in the shade, trying to ease the pain of my severe sunburn with alcohol.  Because of my stupidity in the sun and the pain that resulted, I didn’t see much of Tahiti or take very many photographs. I should’ve known better, after all I’m from Australia and I’d been sunburnt many times before. I guess all those years in a cold country had made me careless.

One day I was sitting in the shade of a tree that was about 100 m (about 100 yards) back from the beach, treating my pain with the usual cold Tahitian beer, when I saw three bare breasted Tahitian women on the beach.  Just like the postcards!  I stood up and I waved at them and surprisingly they waved back.  I held up my beer and pointed to it and then pointed to them, to which they waved me over to them. I just couldn’t believe that such a fantasy was about to come true. 

Making sure I didn’t look too eager I ambled over in a leisurely pace towards them.  By the time I was about 10 m (about 10 yards) away my naive anachronistic fantasy popped like a soap bubble as I noticed their thin hips, pronounced brow ridges and realised that they were transvestites complete with breast implants.  My pathetic need to be polite over-rode my freaked out and fragile little ego that wanted to flee in conflicted panic, so like a zombie I walked up to them and offered them a swig of my beer.  Gee, surprise surprise, they were really friendly and seemed most desirous of my company as they flirtatiously flicked their hair over their shoulders and gave me “come hither” looks with their eyes.  I felt like I was stuck and I wasn’t sure how to get out of the situation, but fortunately they only spoke French, so I nervously mumbled something like “here help yourself and see you later” as I handed them the beer and made a hasty exit.
 
I can remember thinking at the time, to myself, what a weird kinky little aberration of a tropical paradise that the transvestites were. I mistakenly thought that the French had brought some kind of old world cultural pollution to Polynesia.  The reality is that in Polynesian culture there is a tradition of feminine men known as “rae rae” (fa’afafine in Samoa) who aren’t necessarily homosexual but who do fulfil the female role.  Apparently being a rae rae isn’t seen as a trait to be discouraged, and they are considered to be part of normal Polynesian village life.  There is a distinction made between the feminine men who fulfil a cultural role and the transvestites who generally prostitute themselves.  Just like in most of the rest of world, prostitution is seen as a shameful profession in Tahiti.
 
So there you go, I did get a taste of some of the Polynesian culture, it just wasn’t what I was expecting.