To His

Markham Returns To His Ruined Plantation

THE following appeared in the

Sydney “Sunday Sun ,” in Feb

ruary. A photograph of Mr. Mark ham, one of a group of returning Solomons residents, is published on

the front cover of this journal.

PR more than 35 years, Harry Mark ham worked to build a Garden of Eden on a Pacific island In the Solomons.

In February, 1942, he left it at 20 minutes’ notice because the Japs were coming.

In Sydney this week, almost penniless, 71-years-old Markham decided to returp to his tiny kingdom by taking a job as able seaman on a ship sailing for the Islands.

One of the most colourful figures the Pacific has known, Markham went to the Solomons at 30 as mate of a labour recruiting schooner. Soon he began trad ing on his own. He sold out profitably, established himself in New Georgia, at Marovo Lagoon.

Besides his prosperous coconut planta tion there, he planted avocado pears from Mexico, cherries from Brazil, plums from Madagascar, lichee nuts from China, mangoes from Colombo and Singapore, all Queensland’s edible fruits. He sur rounded his bungalow with colourful shrubs, set in a 40-acre lawn of evergreen clover he imported from Japan.

Markham’s Garden of Eden has figured in many books on the Pacific, including Oso Johnson’s latest “Brides in the Solo mons.”

Markham has learned the garden is now a ruin. His £4OO beauty-lined road way is pitted with bomb-holes, his bunga low battered in savage fighting between the Japs and liberating Americans.

Markham’s diary (90,000 words, written over 30 years) has been scattered. Books from his library (including autographed copies from his friend and visitor Jack London) have been found, bloodied and battered, on the bodies of dead Japs on several Pacific fronts.

To make an airstrip, the Americans who drove out the Japs cut down 3,500 of his best palm trees—and copra to-day is worth £lB a ton in Fiji.

Markham says an official has told him not to expect compensation from the) British Treasury. Markham grinned and took it, applied to Admiral Nimitz for compensation from the American Govern ment. He hopes for a favourable reply soon, isn’t dismayed that he will get no copra profits for nine years. He will be 80 then.