Simbo is an

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

Western Province Western Province or West Province may refer to: *Western Province, Cameroon *Western Province, Rwanda *Western Province (Kenya) *Western Province (Papua New Guinea) *Western Province (Solomon Islands) *Western Province, Sri Lanka *Western Provinc ...

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands, also known simply as the Solomons,John Prados, ''Islands of Destiny'', Dutton Caliber, 2012, p,20 and passim is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 1000 smaller islands in Melanesia, part of Oceania, t ...

. It was known to early Europeans as Eddystone Island. The islanders have their unique language spoken nowhere else.

Geography

Simbo is actually two main islands, one small island called Nusa Simbo separated by a saltwater lagoon from a larger one. Collectively the islands are known to the local people as Mandegugusu, while in the rest of the Solomons the islands are referred to as Simbo. Simbo has an active volcano called Ove as well several saltwater lagoons and a freshwater lake.

2007 Earthquake and Tsunami

On April 2, 2007, Simbo was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami which is now known as the

2007 Solomon Islands earthquake The 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake took place on 2 April 2007, near the provincial capital of Gizo on Ghizo Island, in the Solomon Islands. Its magnitude was estimated at 8.1 on the scale, and 7.8 on the scale. The tsunami that followed the ...

. A 12 m tsunami destroyed two villages, Tapurai and Riquru, on the northern side of the island. Even though the tsunami hit the villages just minutes after the earthquake nearly everyone in the villages ran for safety before the waves hit. Their astonishing response was probably due to a combination of deep ecological knowledge of the coastal waters as well as an uncanny capacity to sense the impeding danger.

In popular culture

Some of the historic cultural practices on Simbo are referenced in ''

The Ghost Road ''The Ghost Road'' is a war novel by Pat Barker, first published in 1995 and winner of the Booker Prize. It is the third volume of a trilogy that follows the fortunes of shell-shocked British army officers towards the end of the First World Wa ...

'', a novel by

Pat Barker Dame Patricia Mary W. Barker ( Drake; born 8 May 1943) is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. She is known for her Regeneration Trilogy, p ...

about

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. The author used the research of

Arthur Maurice Hocart Arthur Maurice Hocart (26 April 1883, in Etterbeek, Belgium – 9 March 1939, in Cairo, Egypt) was an anthropologist best known for his eccentric and often far-seeing works on Polynesia, Melanesia, and Sri Lanka. Early life Hocart's family had r ...

and the psychoanalyst

William Rivers William Halse Rivers Rivers (12 March 1864 – 4 June 1922) was an English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist known for treatment of First World War officers suffering shell shock. Rivers' most famous patient was th ...

References

Islands of the Solomon Islands Western Province (Solomon Islands) {{SolomonIslands-geo-stub