LIFE ON SUNDAY ISLAND

Otago Witness, Issue 3148, 15 July 1914, Page 39 (Supplement)

LIFE ON SUNDAY ISLAND

VARIETY OF VEGETATION. (From Our Special Correspo.voent.) AUCKLAND. July 3. “ OE, it’s not so monotonous as you’d think, ’ said the Sunday Islander, as he tilled his pipe with the excellent tobacco

that grows near his own door. “ We often have earthquakes. Yesterday we had one that made our knees waggle, and you could see that storehouse on piles there swaying about.” The Tutanekai, 600 miles from Auckland, to which port she was returning after her Cook Islands tour, had called at the Kermadecs to inform the lonely community of 13 people on Sunday Island that opportunity would he afforded then.

very shortly of returning to civilisation, which it was apparent thev desired to do. “ This is an old volcano, and it isn t dead yet,” the visitors were callously informed. “ Between 1858 and 1870 there was 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. Have one of our oranges ’’ —and he

passed over a huge yellow globe that the vi.itors, even though satiated with the fruits of the Copk Islands, and Niue and Tonga, found to be delicious. '* 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. I Beyond the forbidding lines of cliffs, where | the great Pacific roffers break ceaselessly, |

the precipitous hills are densely clothed in vegetation, the familiar pohutukawa piedominating. On the pasture in the val- , leys sheep have thriven, but to-day the island is given up to a multitude or j healthy goats, and to countless thousands of small Pacific rats, which lend variety i and excitement to the work of planting. I Over 50 years ago a mission ship which j called at. Sunday Island gave Mr Bell (the j first settler, who was landed there by a

whaler in 1878; a few Tahiti oranges. Mr . Bell planted the pips, and the trees have | spread, and to-day yield fruit which pro I bably has not its equal in the Pacific, i Similarly, bananas grow and ripen to perfection in this sun-bathed island, but— ■ although it is in the same latitude as Bris- | bane—the climate is not sufficiently tropi- ! cal to induce the cocoanut palm to | flourish. For 20 years Mr Bell and his family i

held undisputed possession of the island, : but when Mr Seddon was Premier of oew Zealand the island was apportioned be- : tween the Bells and a number of settlers I from New Zealand. The loneliness of the j life soon disheartened the latter, however, j and they returned to the haunts of their fellow men, and a year or two ago the Bells, with a family named Martin, resumed possession 'l*he belief that a Norwegian company was going to commence

whaling on a big scale in these seas gave the Sunday Islanders the hope that they would occasionally see a ship, and that they would have opportunities for trade, but the whaling enterprise came to nothing. The Sunday Island climate is idea!—pleasant and wonderfully healthy—and a minimum of work suffices to support life comfortably; but the appalling ! loneliness of life in this place—as one man j expressed it, “ the feeling that you can’t I

get away when you want to “—induced 4 majority of the residents to send a petition to the Xew Zealand Government by the Amokura when she called there four month; ago to be taken back to the dominion on the first opportunity. The Tutanekai was the first vessel they had seen since that time. The great variety of trees and plants which now flourish on .Sunday Island show that the magnificent volcanic soil would

grow almost anything, and stock could be raised there very successfully; but, for some reason, great seas 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 some danger. For this reason its commercial value is very small. However, it provides an idyllic Crusoe existence, and for that reason, probably, it will seldom be without inhabitants of some kind.

(Photos by Stuart.)