MODERN CRUSOE

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVII, Issue 62, 8 February 1939, Page 1

MODERN CRUSOE

LIFE ON A LONELY ISLE “IDEAL EXISTENCE.” SYDNEY, January 27. After a three years’ Crusoe existence on a tiny island near the Barrier Reef, off the Queensland coast, Noel Wood, a young Adelaide artist, has returned to civilisation. He is in Sydney to exhibit 50 paintings, but when that is done he intends to go back to his island and live alone for the rest of his life. Three years ago Mr Wood bought half the island, which is a mile square, from a London chemist for £3 an acre. The chemist bought the island from Mr Ivan Menzies, Gilbert and Sullivan star, who had intended to start a colony for under-privileged boys. Mr Wood arrived at the island with provisions to last two months, an axe, a saw, and six fowls. “The fowls ate so many centipedes that their eggs tasted like centipedes, so I had to give up eating eggs,” said Mr Wood. “When the provisions gave out I turned to coconuts, pineapples, bananas, pawpaws, oysters and fish, and have lived on them ever since. My hair grew so long that I had to tie it with a string. After a few months alone on the island I became so unused to company that I would run away when I saw any vessel approaching. After I had been there two years, friends of the man from whom I had bought half the island came to live there. But they keep at one end of the island, and I live alone at the other.

“I abhor crowds, noise, clothes, and anything that spells civilisation,” said Mr Wood. “I believe I have discovered the ideal existence in a world that has gone mad. There is no need to wear clothes. I have my own swimming beach —the most beautiful I have ever seen. I never hear or read of the rantings of dictators or rumors of war. Everything is sublimely peaceful. And I don’t pay income tax.”