A NEW LIFE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26776, 20 May 1948, Page 4

A NEW LIFE

LONELY CHILDREN

DOG ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE

HAZARDOUS EXPERIENCE

Little John Biss, the three-year-old son of Mr and Mrs H. T. Biss, and his sister, Alison, aged one, will soon be playing with other children. Their life on lonely Dog Island apart from civilisation has ended with the transfer of their parents, the lighthouse keepers there, to a lighthouse at Nelson. John Biss is the boy about whom an article appeared in the Daily Times recently. He was then on his first visit to the city and was amazed at all he saw, a little disturbed by his first sight of a dog, and equally upset by his first experience of a tram car. It was then that he came to the notice of Tramways Motorman G. Withrell, who took an immediate interest in the boy who was growing up apart from civilisation, and organised a scheme to supply books and magazines to the remote lighthouses around New Zealand. Mr Withrell was one of the first people to meet Mr and Mrs Biss and the two children when they arrived in Dunedin yesterday. They had crossed from Dog Island to Bluff in the morning and travelled to Dunedin later in the day. Although the little girl may not in later years recall that eventful crossing yesterday morning, John will not soon forget it, and neither will his parents. The sea was raging when, in wind and rain, the pilot launch from Bluff hove to about 300 yards out from the rocks and shingle of the Dog Island beach. A dinghy eventually reached the island and the luggage and blankets were first taken off. These were thoroughly drenched by the sea by the time the launch was reached. The dinghy returned for Mrs Biss and the children, but the storm showed no signs of abating.' Little Alison was wrapped in an oilskin and thrown down from the rocks to a man in the dinghy. She was caught safely. John was wrapped in a blanket and also thrown safely. The seas then caught the dinghy and dashed it against the rocks, but the boat came off again without mishap. With difficulty, Mrs Biss reached the dinghy and her husband, the last to leave, was in the sea up to his chin before he, too. climbed into the boat. “The landing from the John Wickliffe had nothing on this,” Mrs Biss told a Daily Times reporter last night. Her great-grandfather, the Rev. T. D. Nicholson, arrived in Otago by the John Wickliffe 100 years ago, but Mrs Biss is firmly of the opinion that a trip in a dinghy on the Otago Harbour even then would have been 1 preferable to that from Dog Island yesterday morning. Although hazardous, the trip from the island had been well worthwhile, both Mr and Mrs Biss agreed. A new life lay ahead for both of them, but more important was the new life for the children.