Christmas Island

June 19, 20, July 11–14, 2014

Getting here proved difficult. A storm broke out just as we were about to land. We circled in the air for an hour and a half, drawing paper clips in the sky and hoping for the weather to clear up, but in the end we had to turn around and go back.

Three weeks later, I flew here once again. In the meantime, they had decided to patch up the landing strip. But then the tropical rains came. And the patch didn’t harden. Our plane plowed a furrow through the newly-repaired segment as it landed, and the airport was subsequently shut down for three days until the local workers found a more reliable material for the patch.

Christmas Island should have been named Crab Island.

There are crabs everywhere here.

Along with pleas not to run over the crabs.

Signs with information on crab-related road closures are set up in every conspicuous location. Once a year, during the crabs’ seasonal migration, all the roads on the island are shut down for several days.

The license plates feature a crab.

Fifty-four crab road fatalities in May. An irreparable loss.

A cartographic analysis of the fatalities’ geographic distribution across the island.

A bumper sticker urges people to rake crabs out of the way rather than turning them into crab cakes.

Those who travel to remote corners of the island take a rake with them.

Road closed ahead due to crabs.

You can find metal grids on the road in many countries (see Iceland, Namibia or the Falklands), but they’re there to stop cattle. On Christmas Island, the grids are there to prevent crabs from crawling further down the road.

There are even special bridges so that crabs can cross the road without risking their lives. You won’t find anything like this anywhere else.

You walk into the forest—and see crabs.

Lots of crabs.

And, sometimes, birds with intense eyes.

The main settlement on the island is called The Settlement.

From a capitalist perspective, the most valuable thing about the island is its phosphate deposits (the same goes for Nauru). The phosphate is excavated from open pits and then loaded onto ships via a special terminal, which is the largest structure on the island.

Sometimes the loose phosphate is packed in bags before shipping, which means less dust in the city. But the bagged phosphate costs more, so not everyone buys it.

Christmas Island uses standard European trash dumpsters.

Special triangular anti-parking islands on both sides of the crosswalk.

The post office.

A post box.

Electricity meters.

Many ethnic Chinese live here.

There’s an old Chinese cemetery.

There was once a railway for the phosphate mine workers.

Now you can barely see the rails in the grass.

Everything grows over quickly here.