My Tropic Isle | Page 2

who does
not dance or sing, or drink to toasts, or habitually make any loud noise,
or play cards or billiards, or attend garden parties; who has no political
ambitions; who is not a painter, or a musician, or a man of science;
whose palate is as averse from ardent spirits as from physic; who is
denied the all-redeeming vice of teetotalism; who cannot smoke even a

pipe of peace; who is a casual, a nonentity a scout on the van of
civilisation dallying with the universal enemy, time--can such a one, so
forlorn of popular attributes, so weak and watery in his tastes, have
aught to recite harmonious to the, ear of the world?
Yet, since my life--and in the use, of the possessive pronoun here and
elsewhere, let it signify also the life of my life-partner--is beyond the
range of ordinary experience, since it is immune from the ferments
which seethe and muddle the lives of the many, I am assured that a
familiar record will not be deemed egotistical, I am scolded because I
did not confess with greater zeal, I am bidden to my pen again.
An attempt to fulfil the wishes of critics is confronted with risk. Cosy
in my security, distance an adequate defence, why should I rush into
the glare of perilous publicity? Here is an unpolluted Isle, without
history, without any sort of fame. There come to it ordinary folk of
sober understanding and well-disciplined ideas and tastes, who pass
their lives without disturbing primeval silences or insulting the free air
with the flapping of any ostentatious flag. Their doings are not
romantic, or comic, or tragic, or heroic; they have no formula for the
solution of social problems, no sour vexations to be sweetened, no
grievance against society, no pet creed to dandle. What is to be said of
the doings of such prosaic folk--folk who have merely set themselves
free from restraint that they might follow their own fancies without
hurry and without hindrance?
Moreover, if anything be more tedious than a twice-told tale, is it not
the repetition of one half told? Since a demand is made for more
complete details than were given in my "Confessions," either I must
recapitulate, or, smiling, put the question by. It is simplicity itself to
smile, and can there be anything more gracious or becoming? Who
would not rather do so than attempt with perplexed brow a delicate, if
not difficult, duty?
I propose, therefore, to hastily fill in a few blanks in my previous
sketch of our island career and to pass on to features of novelty and
interest--vignettes of certain natural and unobtrusive features of the
locality, first-hand and artless.

This, then, is for candour. Studiously I had evaded whensoever possible
the intrusion of self, for do not I rank myself among the nonentities--
men whose lives matter nothing, whose deaths none need deplore. How
great my bewilderment to find that my efforts at concealment--to make
myself even more remote than my Island--had had by impish perversity
a contrary effect! On no consideration shall I part with all my secrets.
Bereave me of my illusions and I am bereft, for they are "the stardust I
have clutched."
One confessedly envious critic did chide because of the calculated
non-presentation of a picture of our humble bungalow. So small a
pleasure it would be sinful to deny. He shall have it, and also a picture
of the one-roomed cedar hut in which we lived prior to the building of
the house of comfort.
Who could dignify with gilding our utterly respectable, our limp
history? There is no margin to it for erudite annotations. Unromantic,
unsensational, yet was the actual beginning emphasis by the thud of a
bullet. To that noisy start of our quiet life I meander to ensure
chronological exactitude.
In September of the year 1896 with a small par of friends we camped
on the beach of this Island--the most fascinating, the most desirable on
the coast of North Queensland.
Having for several years contemplated a life of seclusion in the bush,
and having sampled several attractive and more or less suitable scenes,
we were not long in concluding that here was the ideal spot. From that
moment it was ours. In comparison the sweetest of previous fancies
became vapid. Legal rights to a certain undefined area having been
acquired in the meantime, permanent settlement began on September
28, 1897.
For a couple of weeks thereafter we lived in tents, while with clumsy
haste--for experience had to, be acquired--we set about the building of
a hut of cedar, the parts of which were brought from civilisation ready
for assembling. Houses, however, stately or humble, in North
Queensland, are sacrificial to what are known popularly as "white ants"

unless special means are taken for