LIFE ON SUNDAY ISLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 156, 30 June 1914, Page 8

LIFE ON SUNDAY ISLAND.

VARIETY OF VEGETATION.

COMPENSATIONS FOR LONELINESS.

"On, it's not so monotonous as you'd think," said the Sunday Islander, as ho filled his pipe with the excellent tobacco that grows near his own door. '• Wo often have nirtliqunkcs. Yesterday wo had o-ie thai made our knees waggle, and niii could wo thai storehouse on piles there swaying about."

I The Tutanekai, 600 miles from Auckland, to which port she was returning .after her Cook Islands tour, had called at the Kerinadecs to inform the lonely community of 13 people on Sunday Island that opportunity would he afforded them very shortly of returning to civilisation, which it was apparent they desired to do, "This is an old volcano, and it isn't dead yet." t-ho visitors were callously informed. " Between 1868 and 1870 there wag an eruption, and one of the three lakes in the crater threw out boiling mud and steam, which killed all the vegetation along those hillsides. But the trees soon sprang up again. Anything will grow here. Rave one of our oranges "— and he passed over a huge yellow globo that the visitors, even though satiated j with the fruits of the Cook Islands and Niue, and Tonga, found to bo delicious, j " We often hear subterranean rumblings, and there is a hot belt, marked by steam holes, right across the island," added the speaker. Sunday Island, seven miles long and five across, is not unpleasing in appearance. Beyond the iorbidding lines of cliffs, where the great Pacific rollers break ceaselessly, tho precipitous hills arc densely clothed in vegetation, the familiar po'hutukawa predominating. On tho pasture in the volleys sheep have thriven, but to-day the island is given up to a multitudo of healthy goats, and to countless thousands of small Pacific rats, which lend variety and excitement to tho work of planting. Over 30 years ago a mission ship which called at Sunday Island gave Mr. Bell (the first settler, who was landed there by a whaler in 1878) a few Tahiti oranges. Mr. Bell planted the pips, and the trees havo spread, and to-day yield fruit which probably has not its 'equal in the Pacific. Similarly, bananas grow and ripen to Perfection 'on this sun-bathed island, but, although it is in the same latitude as j Brisbane, the climate is riot sufficiently j tropical to induce the cocoanut palm to j flourish. „ „ , . . ' ' For 20 years Mr. Bell and his i family held undisputed possession j of the island, but when Mr. Seddon was Premier of Now Zealand, the island was apportioned between tho Bells and a num- j bor of settlors from Now Zealand. The loneliness of tho life soon disheartened the latter, however, and they returned to the I haunts of their fellow men, and a year o* two ago, the Bells, with a familynamed Martin, resumed possession. The belief that a Norwegian company was going to commence whaling on a big scale in these seas, gave tho Sunday Islanders tho hope that they would occasionally sec a ship, and that 'they would have opportunities for trade, but the whaling enterprise camo. to nothing. The Sunday Island climate is pleasant and wonderfully healthy— a minimum of work suffices to. support life comfortably; but the appalling loneliness of life in this place—as one man expressed it " the feeling that vou can't get away when you ' want to"—induced a majority of the residents to send a petition to tho New Zealand Government by the Amokura, when she called there fonr months ago. to bo taken tack to tho Dominion on the first opportunity. The Tutanekai was tho first vessel they had seen since that time. The great variety of trees and plants which now flourish on Sunday Island show that tho magnificent volcanic soil would grow almost anything, and stock could bo raised thoro very successfully; but, for somo reason, great peas pound on its rockbound coast on four days out of five, and a boat can land there, even on the fifth day, only with difficulty and somo danger. For that reason, its commercial value is verv small. However, it provides an idvllio ('moo existence, and for that reason, probably, it will seldom be without inhabitants of some kind.