Castaways

In the South Pacific there is no such thing as a deserted island. They may be the most isolated in the world but every one of the region's 20,000 islands has been colonised - from New Guinea, home to birds-of-paradise and the tribe whose brutal initiation ceremony turns young warriors into 'crocodile' men, to Fiji, French Polynesia and Hawaii. This is the story of the ultimate castaways - from saltwater crocodiles and giant eels to crested iguanas and weird frogs - who succeeded against all odds to reach islands thousands of miles apart. It has been estimated that an average of one species every 60,000 years makes it to Hawaii. Incredibly, many of these colonisers made it to these islands on the back of the most violent forces of nature, like cyclones and tsunamis. The voyages of the South Pacific's first people, the Polynesians, were no less remarkable, and were some of the greatest acts of navigation ever undertaken.