End Of A Dream
p. 29 · Read in the full issue
Sunday Island Needed for Aviation
SUNDAY ISLAND, in the Kermadec Group, north of New Zealand, is practically on the direct line between Auckland and Fiji, and, therefore, will have value in the future in connection with trans-Pacific airmails. This fact has spelled the end of a dream.
Some three years ago, a number of people, mostly in New Zealand, took shares in a syndicate which was to trans form Sunday Island into a Pacific Para dise, with a colony living a happy, free life, isolated from the worries of civilis ation. However, New Zealand found that it wanted Sunday Island as a meteorological station, to report weather for aeroplanes. The island has been taken over, the syndicate has broken up, and a portion of their money has been returned to the shareholders, Sunday Island is a beautiful and fer tile place, hilly, with green meadows al ternating with luxuriant forests. It has a comparatively cool and pleasant situ ation, and many attempts have been made during the last 50 years to estab lish colonies there. But almost invari ably each colony has been finally de feated by the thing which originally at tracted it —namely, isolation. There is no harbour there —not even a sheltered an chorage. The island is right in the path of great seas, which sweep in from the east or west, and it is rarely that a ship may lie off the coast and land a boat.
Sunday Island has shown that the majority of people, who believe that they crave that kind of existence, become deadly sick of it in time and will use every effort to get back to association with their fellow men.