ROBINSON CRUSOE LIFE

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27988, 7 June 1956, Page 16

ROBINSON CRUSOE LIFE

GUARD ON CHRISTMAS ISLAND “The Press’ Snecial Service AUCKLAND, June 6. A lone Aucklander is leading a Robinson Crusoe life with 50 natives on a South Sea island, but, as happened to Crusoe, there is trouble looming—an H-bomb explosion is just around the corner. The Aucklander, Mr Charles Freeman, now an American citizen, was in charge of the proposed South Pacific Air Lines air base on Christmas Island until the British hinted that they wanted the island for nuclear tests. (A party of Royal Engineers left Singapore at the week-end to work on a secret project at the island.) Now Mr Freeman is by himself, guarding a pile of equipment until transport arrives to ship it back to the United States. He expects to be there at least three months more.

Mr Freeman was a radio operator in the R.N.Z.A.F. during the Second World War and afterwards worked for Tasman Airways in Fiji. His wife, also an Aucklander, and theii; two children live in Honolulu.

On most days Mr Freeman talks to his head office in San Francisco by radio and often to his wife and to radio amateurs in New Zealand. He says he is living well and that a solitary life is not so bad—except for the tinned food.

Last month an aircraft flew from Honolulu to Christmas Island to pick up the other staff members still there. Mrs Freeman packed a large bag of old-fashioned home cooking. Everybody was so glad to see one another than they talked and talked. The only trouble was that when the aircraft reached Honolulu again the bag was still on board. And the next plane is not for three months.