Suwarrow’S Lone

Philosopher

Tom Neale and Tom-Cat Take Up Residence

From Our Auckland Correspondent. jIfHEN the Cook Islands trading ™ vessel Mahurangi moves out f Avarua Passage, Rarotonga, bound orth, sometime in September, the assenger list will include Tom Jeagle and a tom-cat off to re-settle lie storied isle of Suwarrow (Nor lern Cooks).

It seems that Tom Neale, well oown in Tahiti and in the Cook [lands, has, for some considerable me, cherished an ambition to live lone on the Cook’s loneliest atoll.

Lately the Administration granted im permission to go there, at his wn risk, and accepting no re tonsibility for the hurricanes, ghosts, sritonitis, and home-sickness that ay beset the lone philosopher.

There will be no means of com unicating with the outside world, cept by smoke signal; and iwarrow’s nearest neighbour, Mani ki, lies over 200 miles away.

It is said that boobies have been ained as message-carriers. As iwarrow has a rookery where veral millions of boobies are >miciled, along with an even larger imber of terns, and as Tom will ive time to spare, he may be able work out something along those tes, if need be.

Well-wishers down at the Raro nga jetty, speeding the new un ncial Resident Agent on his way, ill tactfully avoid the subjects of urder, shipwreck and hurricane, all which are closely associated with e history of Suwarrow; and, In ead, confine the conversation to e possibility of finding doubloons or ests of Mexican dollars, some ousands of pounds’ worth of which ve been harvested from Anchorage let in the days of long ago.

As told in PIM (February, p. 41), e NZ Meteorological Service with ew its three-men native observer iio operator staff from the atoll k'eral years ago, owing to the avy cost that would be involved erecting a new hurricane shelter =h enough above sea-level to safely rbour the staff.

Islands vessels bound for Raro iga to Pukapuka can conveniently 11 at the atoll, if they have obtained ior permission from the Resident

•mmissioner in Rarotonga.

That permission was given for a

tom-cat to settle there seems strange, in view of the fact that Suwarrow is a declared bird sanctuary. How-

ever, one cat doubtless will make only slight inroads on That enormous bird population.