WILLIS ISLAND.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20092, 22 November 1930, Page 9

WILLIS ISLAND.

A LONELY WIRELESS STATION. (From a Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 4. Mr M. Aahby, wireless operator, returned this week to Sydney from Willis Island, a 30-acre strip of sand on the edge of the Coral Sea, where a radio station is maintained, to send warnings of cyclones to towns and. shipping on the North Queensland coast. The only human inhabitants of Willis Island from May to November are two wireless men. Tlicy do not even see a ship, as the island is well off the beaten track. They are usually relieved after six months, but Mr Ashby's companion is staying on for a further period of sis months. Of course, tho redeeming virtue of a period on Willis Island is the fact that a man ha 9 no means of spending money, and his salary accumulates for the whole period of his stay. From November to May is the cyclone season, and the relief party Includes a meteorologist, who thus increases the population of the island to three. He makes the observations which enable tho wireless men to give shipping a few hours' warning beforo a gale arrives. Mr Ashby was greatly impressed with the bird life on Willis Island. "For tho past seven years," he said, "flocks of mutton birds have commenced landing on the island on cither August 25th, 26th, or 27th. They settled in thousands, and laid their eggs on tho ground, which was soon honey-combed with holes a foot or more in depth. It was impossible to walk without falling into a hole. All night long they kept up nn awful wailing, like unhappy ghosts." On May 3rd, when Mr Ashby landed on Willis Isan-', the place was swarming with terns. A cyclone swept the island five days later, and the birds all flew away, leaving their chickens to die in a 74-mile-an-hour gale, and rain which fell at the rate of 10 inches in three hours. The turtle season was just coming oil when Mr Ashby left on October 25th. Thousands of shellbacks were playing about the reef, and soon al the female of the species would come ashore and lay from 100 to 200 eggs each in the sand.