LONELIEST JOB

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 March 1939, Page 8

LONELIEST JOB

CARE OF BIRD SANCTUARY. LONDON, January 25. The Swiss Family-Robinson kind of story gets an up-to-date twist in the latest news of the quest of the National Trust for a warden to live on the Calf of Man (writes Stanley Baron). In the book, you remember, it was Mr. Robinson who decided he wanted no more civilisation. And what Robinson said, in the dutiful eighteen hundreds, -went. But the Calf of Man will be an affair of woman. So strongly do the National Trust feel on the. subpeet that after going through more than a thousand applications and reducing the list to two or three, they have decided to send the final candidates, with wives, over to the island to see conditions for themselves. And how the wives will react will probably settle the choice. Mr. D. M. Matheson, secretary to the. National Trust, said yesterday:—“We came to lhe conclusion that it wouldn’t be fair to send anyone out without making doubly sure that he knew what he was in for. “The job (looking after 615 acres of bird sanctuary and running a farm) will probably be one of the loneliest in Britain. ’ It isn’t the husband we worry about so much as the wife.

“None of the candidates, so far as I know, has lived alone on an island before. We think we have the right three in the last selections. So the question is now: ‘Can Mrs. Robinson stand it?’ ” A National Trust official is to be put at the disposal of the candidates who have been chosen to see the island. He will guide them round and observe their reactions. Bui the making of the final decision depends upon when the candidates can get across. They will go separately—and the currents which cut off the isle from the Man mainlainland, sometimes for weeks at a time, are amongst the worst in Britain.