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Maui Attractions Newsletter August 2011
Red Bottlebrush
Callistemon is a genus of about 25 or so trees and shrub species found in Australia and New Caledonia. Many are grown as ornamentals in sunny places and the plants are drought-resistant. Typically bottlebrush is pruned to form a hedge or is left untrimmed and used as a specimen or screen plant. It grows well in seaside gardens and is sometimes used as plantings for public buildings. The flowering is reduced in wet soil or during prolonged rain. The small grayish-green leaves look a lot like the leaves on a paperbark tree. They grow along the branches and are simple and opposite with the blade narrowly elliptic. There is a distinct marginal vein. The name "Callistemon" is from the Greek words meaning "beautiful stamens," which aptly describes the flower spikes which are made up of a number of flowers that have numerous red, bristle-like stamens ¾ to 1-1/4 inches long. The stamens give the inflorescences their typical bottle brush shape. In most varieties the flower spikes grow upright. On some, however, they hang like swaying pendants. They are usually red in color but there is a variety that is lemon-colored. Pollen, which occurs at the very tip of the flower stalks, can give the flower spikes a bright yellow flush. The plant flowers intermittently throughout the year, most heavily in the summer and in autumn. The many flowers are born in erect, terminal cylindrical spikes. The leafy sections on the branches alternate with the flowering sections. Leaves grow out of the tips of the flowering inflorescences. A corolla of five small red petals falls soon after the flower open. They are pollinated by birds who find the nectar irresistible. Each flower produces a fruit that is a small sessile, woody capsule about ¼ inch long, densely packed on the stem. The seedpods contain hundreds of tiny seeds. The seeds are usually not released from the dried pods for several years although in some species the pods release the seeds after about a year. Fire can sometimes cause the pods to release the seeds in some species. The hard heavy wood is useful, but not the reason these plants are so widely cultivated.
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Kahului Airport is a baby-boomer, a World War II baby. It's first incarnation was as N.A.S.Ka (Naval Air Station Kahului). Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor all the airfields in the Territory of Hawaii were placed under the control of the U.S. military and work began on making them war-ready. However, it quickly became apparent that the old Maui Airport at Puunene was inadequate for war-time needs and a new site was chosen for another large Navy air base. Construction began on the facility in 1942, after the purchase of some 1,341 acres of cane land. It eventually became known as the Kahului Airport under the jurisdiction of the Hawaii Aeronautics Commission once the war ended. In December, 1947, the Navy turned over the jurisdiction of the Kahului facility to the Commission, which assumed control "on a custodial basis pending formal transfer." But, despite firmly held plans to transfer all commercial airline operations from the old Puunene airport to the Kahului site, it was not until May 25, 1951, that the Commission took definitive action by remodeling and modernizing the old military base for civilian use. There was a lot of talking going on and negotiations between the U.S. military and the Territorial government got bogged down. A joint passenger terminal was constructed out of surplus materials. An old shop building was remodeled into an air freight building that included refrigeration facilities. New passenger protection fences, a rotating beacon and temporary runway lights were installed. Necessary obstruction lights were erected and the lighting tetrahedron repaired. Paving repairs to the three runways were made as needed and a new, more convenient entrance to the parking lot was completed. Three large two-story Quonset huts were remodeled into small plane shelters, one of which was turned over to the Hawaii National Guard for their use. Full commercial airline operations began in June, 1952 when a bill introduced in the U.S. Congress authorizing the Navy to grant title for the Kahului Airport to the Territory of Hawaii passed. (The actual transfer of title took a few more years to work its way through all of the talk and the red tape.) At the time the airport opened, it was served by Hawaiian Airlines and Trans-Pacific Airlines on a scheduled basis and by the U. S. military, the National Guard and Andrew Flying Service on a non-scheduled basis. Building, remodeling and improvements to the airport continued, of course. The latest, bigger and fancier Terminal Building complex was dedicated on October 17, 1990 and began operations shortly thereafter. (It is the third terminal building since the facility's rebirth as a civilian airport.) Kahului Airport is the state's second-largest airport, after Honolulu International. Its designated "International Air Transport Association (IATA) Location Identifier," the code that appears on your baggage tags and the radio navigational aids used by pilots, is "OGG." They say this distinctive "handle" honors Capt. Bertram J. Hogg (pronounced "Hoag"), an early aviator who spent 40 years flying island skies and logged 25,000 flying hours, mostly as a pilot for Hawaiian Airlines. Hogg flew the first amphibious Sikorsky S-38 planes that carried 8 passengers on interisland flights in the early days. Based in Lihue, on Kauai, he made the first interisland commercial flight after the Pearl Harbor attack in a DC-3 airplane to Maui and the Big Island on December 10, 1941. He logged his last commercial flight in 1968 in a DC-9 jet. Hogg died in 1992, at the age of 84. Major airports around the world are universally known by a three-letter code which is part of a system that was developed in the 1930's after the popularity of air travel meant that airports had to be more than just any old convenient field with a strong wind. The code was patterned after a two-letter one first developed by the National Weather Service in the 1900's to tabulate the data they gathered from various cities. Since the permutations of the combinations of three letters work out to 17,576 possible code names, it was thought that this code system would be adequate for identifying all the airports in the world. It wasn't. Eventually, all the three-letter combinations were in use and there were still more airports being built. Although an airport served by scheduled route air carriers or military airlift aircraft always has a three-letter code, the system was expanded, allowing numbers and four-digit combinations for the smaller airfields. New rules were developed that forbid the use of too-similar letter and number combinations unless the identified airports are more than 200 nautical miles apart. (Otherwise the baggage handlers and the pilots might get confused by the alphabet soup.) One benefit of the uniqueness rule is this: the "H" was dropped from the three-letter acronym for Kahului Airport to avoid confusion with the Honolulu Airport (HON). Otherwise, our airport might have been code-named HOG rather than OGG.
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STANDARD: There's a lot of fish in that pond. ** * * * * * STANDARD: My mouth is watering at the thought! * * * * * * * * STANDARD: You know, if you're caught you'll get arrested.
Pasteles Ingredients:
Instructions:
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Oopuola Gulch, 1900 We have all seen the T-shirts with the logo "I survived the Road to Hana". However, a person traveling by land from Kahului to Hana in 1900 would have considered it a dream highway. During the 1800's and early 1900's, there was first just a narrow trail available for the person making the trip. The trail was only wide enough for foot traffic or a horse or mule. This photograph has been identified, as having been taken in Oopuola Gulch, is located approximately five miles west of Keanae. In the same year the photograph was taken, the first steps were made to provide an eight-foot wide dirt road from Keanae eastward to Nahiku, which could be used by wagons. Since Keanae was east of Oopuola Gulch, improvement was not available to travelers. The Hana Highway was completed in 1926. The photograph shows the type of small swinging bridge that was a part of the old trail.
Photo from the archives of the Maui Historical Society/Bailey House Museum [ Top ]
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Red bottlebrush is native to eastern Australia but is widely cultivated in tropical to warm temperate regions for its spectacular red flowers. It belongs to the myrtle family and is closely related to the paperbark which has similar bottlebrush-shaped, cream-colored flowers. It can grow into an evergreen shrub or tree with furrowed bark that can reach up to 26 feet or more high. The ones here are usually smaller. It is sometimes called the crimson bottlebrush.
Kahului Airport
Braddah-Nics Lexicon