Jake and family feel at home among people and penguins

1:25pm Friday 8th February 2008

WHEN I was emailed Jake Downing's phone number, I thought it was wrong.

There were only ten digits. This can't be right, I decided. The Falkland Islands are 8,000 miles from Darlington. You need 11 digits to phone Richmond and that's barely ten miles.

I'd phoned Bangladesh a month before and that number was longer than Pi. Dialling it took longer than the conversation - half way through, I needed a thimble.

But then, unlike Bangladesh, the Falkland Islands don't have 150m people. They have - according to the 2001 census - just 2,379.

Jake Downing, from Masham, is among their number. When I phone his office in Stanley - the Falklands' capital, twinned with Whitby - I ask him to describe the view.

"I'm in my office, which is in the jetty visitor centre, by the harbour,"

he said. "It's a bit windy - it usually is - and the sea is rolling in."

Yet almost 26 years after the Falklands War, the islands' colourless image persists. Soldiers yomping across rocky, deserted fields, cold, South Atlantic seas bashing grey, charmless settlements.

Mr Downing, 33, disagrees. But then, he is general manager of the Falkland Islands Tourism Board.

"It's great here," he said. "Really, really good. We have managed to do some sightseeing, as well as the job. The wildlife is amazing, absolutely amazing.

"There are penguins everywhere.

It's unbelievable, especially how close you can get. You go up to them and they just wander round you.

"Molly, my two-year-old daughter, loves it. She shouts after the penguins, saying Hello' and Come here for a cuddle'. They're about the same height, but I think she scares them off."

Mr Downing was born in Lowestoft, the most easterly town in Britain. Living on the edge is clearly innate. He has lived across the UK and spent five years in Masham, where his mother, Jenny, still lives, in The Avenue, before moving to London.

He had lived in New Zealand for four years, working for Tourism Auckland, when he saw an advert in the New Zealand Herald.

"It was only a small advert, but it tempted me," he said. "I talked to people, talked to my friends and it excited me. I applied for it, but it was also advertised in The Times, so there was some competition. I was interviewed by phone, it went well and I was offered the job."

His fiancee, Wendy, from Surrey - Mr Downing proposed on the Falklands - was unsure. Not surprising, considering she is due to give birth.

"She was saying Do they have hospitals, do they have midwives?',"

Mr Downing said. "But I was assured everything would be fine, so we decided to have another adventure."

Mr Downing's arrival was big news. Before he touched down, he made the Penguin News, the Falklands' weekly, A4, black-and-white newspaper.

"Living in Stanley, everyone is so friendly. It's a small community, so everyone knows you. I appeared in the paper before I got here, so they knew me before I knew them.

We got here on the Saturday and started work on the Monday, but on the Sunday someone stopped me in the street and said You're Jake Downing'. The locals have been so friendly. As soon as we arrived, people phoned Wendy, asking her round for coffee."

The Falklands' population is small, but its two main islands and 200 smaller islands cover more than 12,000 square kilometres.

That's just smaller than Yorkshire - North, South, West - and East Riding. With few tarmac roads, a sturdy vehicle is essential.

You wouldn't get far in a small hatchback.

"Stanley is tarmaced, but when you get up to the airport it's shingle.

Some key destinations are only accessible off-road. We haven't got stuck yet, but people tell us you haven't lived until you get bogged (stuck in the mud)."

He's still 8,000 miles from home - and still in the wrong hemisphere - but, after two months, Mr Downing feels more at home in the Falklands than in New Zealand. The islands are a British overseas territory - along with Gibraltar, Bermuda and the Pitcairn Islands, among others. They use pounds and pence and have red phone boxes.

"We're more isolated than in New Zealand in terms of location, but I feel much closer to England," said Mr Downing. "I walked into a pub soon after I got here and thought This is an English pub'. It really made me feel at home.

"When we got to our house, the lady had left us some Waitrose coffee. You can buy Waitrose products here - it's all imported. We get British Forces television, so we watch the Six O'Clock News, and all the dramas."

But Waitrose coffee alone does not create a tourist trap. Otherwise, we'd all take our holidays in Leighton Buzzard. Being tourism manager for a set of far-flung islands famous only for a war, can't be easy.

"There are two distinct markets - cruise ship passengers and landbased passengers," says Mr Downing. "Cruise ships come in from mid-October to the end of March, stopping on the way from South America to Antarctica, or on cruises round the bottom of South America.

"The other visitors fly in. Historically, there has been a big British market, but there are also Dutch and Canadians."

Tourists can fly with the RAF, from Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, via Ascension Island, for about £1,600.

The alternative is to get to Chile and fly with LAN, the Chilean airline, from Santiago.

"We're compiling a strategy for the next four years. We want more people here, want them to stay for longer and do more while they're here," Mr Downing said. "We also want people to come back. A lot of tourists are repeat visitors."

He will stay for at least two years until his contract expires. The next tourism manager, they hope, will be a Falkland Islander.

After that, Mr Downing expects to return to New Zealand, or come back to England.

"We really don't know what the next move will be," he says. "At the moment, we're just enjoying being here."