FAREWELL TO DUNK ISLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19215, 2 January 1926, Page 4 (Supplement)

FAREWELL TO DUNK ISLAND.

LAST OF THE BEACHCOMBER.

To every lover of wild life, to every naturalist, actual or potential, to every inan or womar. fretted by tho carking fares of a complex civilisation, to all these Dunk Island, despite' its unbeautiful name, must ever bo an enchanted realm, •mother "purplo land" made famous by the Australian Hudson, E. J. Banfield, the iournalist who, jaded by overwork fbut not, as is commonly known, a suffoier from phthisis), in 1897 left the mainland of Queensland for this tropic isle vhero ho remained with his faithful wife, emd their devoted servant Essie, till his death twenty-five years later. For his earlier books "Confessions of a Beachcomber," "My Tropic Isle," and •"Tropic Days," tho demand steadily inwcascs md to these "Last Leaves from JDunk Island (Angus and Robertson), forms a fitting pendant

In an appreciative and admirably written introduction Mr. A. H. Chisholra tells of the hordes of visitors from overseas ■who, victims of illusion, imagined that to go "s-Dunking" was a short cut to the Elysian fields. But the "Beachcomber's" was no lotus-eating existence. ."Some of us had dreamed of the isle as a kind of insular Arden with Banfield as its banished duke. That ho fitted the part to the extent of being exempt from public haunt and finding good in everything is true enough; but ho was far from being an easy-go:,ng philosopher. His briskness, indeed, was a little bewildering in the light of preconceived notions. One expected to loiter, perhaps to laze, in the company of a kin-spirit, who had ample time to stand and stare; but one found that to laate on Dunk Island meant to do to alone." The dominant thetne in "Last Leaves" is the big "blow" of 1918, that terrible cyclone which destroyed coral reefs 300 years old, tore up trees that had been noted by the explorer Dalrymple as far back as 1873, did incalculable harm to bird-life, yet was not altogether maleficent, for by turning forest into jungle it converted a dry surfaco into moist, sweet-smelling soil. From the extraordinarily sympathetic studies of black fellows, of birds, of dogs, and of weather there is no need to quote. Tb« enthusiast will hasten to read them for himself, others will not be interested.

"Now the Beachcomber, liko his Scottish prototype, ' lies where ho longed to be.' They buried him in his own tropic garden—looking over the isle of I'urtaboi, in Brammo, the Bay of Butterflies. Beside that grave the blue and yellow sunbirds of his delight flit among scarlet hibiscus flowers; the swamp pheasants . . . boom in the rioting grasses; and the scrub-fowls . . . clatter inquiringly through the watches of the tropic night. 'A cairn has been raised above the grave, and on it are words of Thorean, words which the Beachcomber both loved and -lived: If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which ho hears."