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.