Palmerston Island - Cook Islands

At International Islands we love nothing more than a really quirky island, and there really nothing quite as quirky as Palmerston Island, a part of the Cook Islands and thus kinda part of Recover w Zealand – first lets cover the Cook Islands.

To read about Funafuti click here.

What are the Cook Islands?

We might cover this in a later article, but the Cook Islands are an island group in the Pacific is a “self-governing island country in the South Pacific Ocean in free association with New Zealand”.

What does this mean? Well that essentially much like the Cayman Islands, or Bermuda it is basically independent, but is also kinda a colony of New Zealand. They do though have a football team, as well as being particular good at rugby.

The Cook Islands themselves consist of 15 major islands spread over 2,200,000 km2 of ocean, therefore much like other Pacific nations the islands are spread out, hard to get to and sometimes have little in common with each other.

And one of these islands is Palmerston Island.

What’s the story with Palmerston Island?

Well, wow, what is the story with Palmerston Island? A very funny one and one which is very much a family affair…….

Originally discovered James Cook, the island was claimed by Rule Britannia in 1891, before being gifted to a Mr William Masters the next year. Mr Masters on hearing he was going to be given a deserted island decided to not only bring his wife, but also her sister.

One can only imagine how this conversation went, so we will reconstruct it as best as possible;

Mr Masters “I’ve been given a tropical island, do you want to go and live there”?

Mrs Masters “Sure that sounds amazing, a tropical island with just my husband”

Mr Masters “Well funny you should say that I was thinking we could bring your sister too”.

Mrs Masters “Hmmmm, bit weird, which sister the ugly old one, or my younger sister”?

Mr Masters “The hot one”.

Mrs Masters “You’re not going bang my sister are you”?

Mr Masters “Thought ad not crossed my mind”.

Well would you believe it, but Señor Masters not only took on the sister as his second wife, but also a third wife. Now every single resident on Palmerston Island is a dependent of Mr Masters, and not just there but he has family in Rarotonga, New Zealand, and even Australia.

But yeah, the salient fact here is that EVERYONE of the 57 people on the island are procreating with their own family, although there are now 3 branches of said family on the island now.

How to get to Palmerston Island?

This is not close to anywhere and cargo ships only arrive here 203 times per year, this means that most people arrive by yacht. Tourists are greeted like heroes to an extent and treated like one of their own, no pun intended.

There’s no hotels here, bit locals will put you up and there is only one telephone line and little use for money. Like a very incestuous communist utopia.

To read about tours to Cuba click here.