Schoolteacher Christine

Is Back From

A ”Watery Grave"

Attractive, blonde 24-year-old schoolteacher Christine Bertaut returned from the dead in May. Christine had been given up for lost when she had been missing for almost a month in the remote Santa Cruz group of the Solomons. She had drifted off from Pigeon Island, in the Reef Islands, after falling asleep in a canoe, and four days later had ended up safely on Utupua, 75 miles to the south east. The islanders’ radio was out of order and nobody could tell the authorities where she was. The official search for her was abandoned after a week. When she was eventually found, her mother, Mrs. L. K. Bertaut, of Putaruru, New Zealand, who had been receiving hundreds of letters of sympathy, said, “It’s a miracle!”

Christine has been on Pigeon Island, in the Reefs, for two years, as governess for the children of Tom and Diana Hepworth, of Pigeon Island Traders. The Hepworths, from the UK, for many years sailed through the Pacific and the pages of PIM in their converted trawler Arthur Rogers, and 11 years ago settled on Pigeon Island, gradually transforming it from a lump of coral covered in bush into a pleasant homestead. Tom is storekeeper, bookkeeper, maintenance engineer, postal agent, savings bank officer, etc.

Christine originally came for a year, but liked it so much that she stayed on. The Hepworth children spend the mornings and after noons with her in her “schoolroom”, which is part of her leaf house “residence”. And she spends a lot of time with them “out of school”.

The photograph above, shows her in the schoolroom with the children Ross, Tasha and Bressin. Dress is pretty informal for schoolteachers on Pigeon Island—as is life generally.