CRUSOES OF SOUTH SEAS

Evening Star, Issue 18690, 19 July 1924, Page 7

CRUSOES OF SOUTH SEAS

ISLANDS OF. ROMANCE. [By Tnos. Dokbauton, in the Sydney ‘Sun.’] To-day the island of Juan Fernandez, on which Alexander Selkirk, tbo prototype of Robinson Crusoe, lived alone for four years, has a wireless station, and ■does a brisk business in exporting crayfish to the markets of Valparaiso. But there are still Crusoos of desolate kies scattered around the coasts of Australia, north, south, east, and west. Most of them have a Man. Friday oi two, or some kind of human companion ship. But occasionally a man retires_ t< an island to live the true Crusoe life, Thus an old “ hatter," now dead, lived alone for many years on Deliverance Island, in the western part of Torres .Straits. There were all sorts of legends, probably quite wrong, about hie reasons Tor living this solitary life. It was alleged that lie was the Archduke Johann oj Austria, and various other eminent persons. But he did not look like it. Deliverance Island is a lonely spot in these times, though in the early days of pearling in tho Straits the luggers used to work the banks near Die island a good deal. On one occasion during Crusoe’s term there uo vessel visited the island for seven years. Usually at least one vessel a year called there. There was uo Friday on Deliverance Tflland, but another Crusoe had a whole tribe of them. He was a man of good education, who was alleged to have Bean an officer—some said a major—in tho British Army. For some unknown reason he went “ bush,” and settled down on an island in the Buccaneer Archipelago, off the even now little known north-west coast of Western Australia.

There he became a kind of chief of tho local tribe of aborigines. Perhaps hie habit of command gained him the supremacy amongst the simple inhabitants of those parts, who still swim from island to island in droves, men, women, and children, as they did over two centuries ago, when their amphibious _ dexterity aroused the wonder of Dumpier. Few white mini ever visit this wild coast, and 1 the very existence of this white chief of an aboriginal tribe k known only to a stray adventurer or two who have penetrated into ‘the labyrinth of islands and reefs, separated by narrow- channels, through which tho tide rashes with great force, which make up the Buccaneer Archipelago. A few years ago ho was still living there with bis dusky followers. Perhaps he la etill alive.

Recent explorers have brought back word of another Crusoe in the iar northwest. He is a Frenchman who has established himself on one of the islands which abound on that Mast. He, too, lias his men Fridays in the shape of aborigines. _ He is, however, more in touch _ with such rudiments of civilisation as exist in those parts than the recluse of the_ Buccaneer Archipelago, who has cut himself off entirely from the men of his own color. The Frenchman, though he lives very much in the same manner as the natives, has not altogether given up the ways of his kind, and ho trades to tom® extent in trepang and other commodities, which furnish him with the means of supplying his very modest requirements iu the way of the necessities and luxuries of civilisation. One of tlie weirdest stories of a wild white man—a story without an ending--is told in a book written by the wife of a former Governor of Western Australia. She says that the magistrate m charge, about 1880, of a district in the north-west was fond of shooting, and ofleu made excursions along the coast for that purpose. Returning one evening to hie camp on an uninhabited stretch of coast which was seldom visited by any other white man except himself, ho saw in the dusk what he topic to be a huge sea bird sitting on a cli by the shore. He fired; but the thing gave an awful groan such as no bird over uttered. When the horror-stricken magistrate reached it he found that he had killed a white man. ONE MORE MYSTERY.

The man was practically nakod, and had apparently been living a Crusoe hfu for a long time. There was nothing which could give any clue to his identity, and inquiries completely failed to throw any light on the mystery. There had been no ■wreck, ae far as could be learned, from which he might have been a survivor. All that the magistrate could do was lo have % body buried and try to forget. Assuming that the story is true —ana in spite of its weirdness it does not seem the sort of story that would bo invented—it adds one more to those mysteries of the bush which occur in all parts of Australia. Usually they are mysterious disappearances. Mon go out some fine day and vanish off the face of the oat’Ui ns -completely find inexplicably ns if the ground had opened and swallowed them up. In this case a man appears from nowhere, and no one is able to account for him. Away up near the head of the Great Australian Bight are the islands of St. Peter and St. Francis, which mark the farthest point reached in 1627 by the first vessel to sail along the southern coast of Australia—the Golden Seahorse —which carried Peter Nuyts, whoso name was long given to the chores along which ho had sailed. TWO OXFORD MEN. Lying off an almost uninhabited coast, and with their shores washed by the huge seas of the Bight, the > islands are nearly as remote from civilisation now as they were when Nuyts set eyes on them three centuries ago. Yet they have not one Crusoe, but two —two Oxford men who have settled down in thin remotest corner of- the Antipodes, in a place even further removed from the rm?h and fret of modern life than the quietest cloisters of the most aloof Oxford College. , _ _ All the world knew the late E. JBanfield, who lived with only hla wife and dog on Dunk Island, off the Queensland coast But far away to the north, off that lonely stretch of coast that runs for 300 miles from Cook town to Somerset, there livc-s—if, indeed, he etill lives —■ a true Orusco. Ho is a returned soldier who settled with n mate on one of the ir,lands that dot theee seas. The mate became ill and died, and. after ho had taken the body to Cooktown be returned to bis lonely island, doubly lonely tlirough the loss of the mate who ‘had chared the life there.