Острова Вавау: история и география тонгского архипелага

Island group of Tonga

Vavau is an island group, consisting of one large island (ʻUtu Vavaʻu) and 40 smaller ones, in Tonga. It is part of Vavaʻu District, which includes several other individual islands. According to tradition, the Maui god created both Tongatapu and Vavau, but put a little more effort into the former. Vavau rises above sea level at Mount Talau. The capital is Neiafu, situated at the Port of Refuge (Puatalefusi or Lolo a Halaevalu).

In Polynesia, it is said that the islands were created by the god Maui, who reached into the bottom of the sea with his magic hook, caught something on it, and pulled it up to the sea surface, and it became the islands of Vavau.

Don Francisco Mourelle de la Rúa, commanding the Spanish frigate Princesa, was the first European to come to Vavau, which he did on 4 March 1781. He charted Vavaʻu as Martín de Mayorga, naming it after the incumbent Viceroy of New Spain. Captain James Cook had known about the islands a decade earlier, but the people in Haʻapai had told him it would be no good for him to go there; they told him there was no harbour. They may have told him this to dissuade him from going there; but Cook heeded their advice. As it turned out, Mourelle found excellent anchoring, in Vavau, which he desperately needed, because he had failed to find a harbour at the last two places he had tried to land, Fonualei (Bitterness island) and Late. He gave the harbour at Vavau the name Port of Refuge, although his original port of refuge had been the bay on the west coast of the main island, near Longomapu. Twelve years later, in 1793, the Malaspina Expedition visited the area for a month, following up on Mourelle's investigations, and formally claiming the islands for Spain. Whaling vessels were among the first regular Western visitors to the islands. The first on record was the Fanny, on 17 June 1823, and the last was the Robert Morrison, from July through September, 1883. These vessels came for water, food, and wood and sometimes they recruited islanders to serve as crewmen on their ships. They stimulated commerce and were significant agents for change on the islands. In 1839, the Tuʻi Tonga (chief), George Tupou I, instituted the Vavaʻu Code in Vavau.

The Vavau island group is spread out across an area that measures about 21 km from east to west and 25 km from north to south. Vavau had 13,738 inhabitants at the 2016 census, 5,251 of whom lived in the capital, Neiafu. The islands in Vavaʻu District, outside of the Vavaʻu Group, are uninhabited. The main island of ’Utu Vava’u, at , is the second largest island in Tonga. Vavaʻu is a coral reef with cliffs in the north rising to above sea level. On the south side, the island group is dispersed into many small, scattered islands and waterways. The largest of the waterways, the fjord like Ava Pulepulekai channel, extends inland from the harbor of Neiafu (the capital). The north coast of ’Utu Vava’u island is a raised platform of coral cliffs. The southern coastline is low and irregular, and opens out into a network of channels, bays, and islets, forming one of the best protected natural harbors in the Pacific. ’Utu Vava’u is also home to the ʻEneʻio Botanical Garden, which is Tonga's only botanical garden.

Vavau's climate is by far the warmest in Tonga (apart from the Niuas, which are the northernmost islands in the kingdom). Its warm climate and fertile soil makes it a haven for growers of vanilla, pineapple, and other tropical fruits.

Vavaʻu is home to 262 species of plants, 11 species of lizard, 38 species of bird, and 41 species of terrestrial snail.