Sunday Mail, Brisbane,
18 June 2000

LEE MYLNE sets off on the trail of Gauguin but finds it has gone cold

Two days after arriving in Tahiti, I’m told the tiare flower I’ve tucked behind my ear sends the opposite signal to the one I’d intended.

It doesn’t matter; the hotel is packed with honeymooners and the second looks I’ve attracted are from the staff…because I’m eating alone.

The evocative scent of the tiare lingers in the memory long after you’ve left French Polynesia. Along with the sound of the ukulele, it assaults your senses and stays with you from the moment you arrive in Tahiti’s capital, Papeete. For Australian visitors, that’s usually in the middle of the night.

Papeete, as the first port of call, does little to excite the imagination. This – apart from the beauty and friendliness of the locals – is not the Tahiti of our dreams.

The resorts are luxurious, but the town itself is nondescript and it’s hard to imagine what so enthralled Tahiti’s most famous resident, the artist Paul Gauguin.

I take a “Gauguin tour” to learn more, but come back a little disappointed. I’ve seen the dock where he arrived in 1891, the back-street hospital where he was treated for his ailments and the school which stands on the site of his former home.

Leaving the city, things look more promising. In the Fern Grotto Maraa, where Gauguin reportedly often swam with is mistress, families laugh and splash and about an hour later we’ve arriving at the Gauguin Museum. The museum explores the artist’s life and travels in displays of documents, photographs, letters, and household objects…but holds none of his famous paintings. The handful of works by Tahiti’s best publicist is limited to woodcuts, carvings and lithographs. Where are the fabulously colourful images of Tahitian women, the intimate scenes of village life that we expect of Gauguin and which adorn the books, postcards and t-shirts at the museum’s tiny shop?

A display of small reproductions shows that all the works are in overseas galleries, well beyond the financial reach of Tahiti.

Disappointment soon evaporates as my discovery of the Society Islands continues with a visit to Bora Bora, one of the most famous and glamorous of the 118 islands of French Polynesia.

Here, the deep, rich blues of the lagoon and the brooding presences of Mt Otemanu are postcard perfect.

Many of the hotels are on motu (tiny atolls off the main island) and the best choice of room is an over-water bungalow. My bungalow at Le Meridien features a large glass panel in the floor, revealing the vivid colours of tiny fish swimming below.

Bora Bora’s huge lagoon sparkles with light and changing colours. A day on the water is a must, and we are guided by young French Polynesians who regard it as their backyard.

Skimming the water in a motorized outrigger canoe, the boys wearing colourful pareus and woven head-dresses, strumming their ukeleles, seems like something from a movie. Shark feeding turns out to be a tourist trap, but a swim with the gentle manta rays leaves us wanting more.

After a day’s sun, we turn to the hills on a 4WD tour to discover the remnants of marae (meeting places), fragments of rainforest, ruins of US army activity during World War II, galleries where local artists work and spectacular views of the lagoon.

Back in Papeete, I decide Tahiti’s fabulous black pearls are beyond my budget.

I’ll have to make do with a tiare flower for adornment. And for the record…a flower behind your left ear is for married women, the right signals you’re available.