I love social history – how ordinary people lived, forgotten stories, ruins, relics, mysteries – Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) has the lot!
I have visited Christmas Island twice now. In 2016 I visited for the first time with my husband, some family and several friends. For them it was a very special and emotional trip. A return to their old home; the place where they had grown up. Some hadn’t been back in 31 years; others even longer. My husband and sister were very fortunate to be able to walk through the front door of their childhood home and explore inside. Their house in Settlement, opposite the CLA, had been converted into a museum; a plaque on it’s wall showing its opening date sharing the same day and month as my husband’s birthday!
For me, I was a newcomer. 30 years of hearing stories about Christmas Island made it feel familiar to me. Yet I carried no expectations other than to share the happiness of my travelling party returning to their young past.
What I didn’t expect was for the island to cast its spell on me almost immediately. I was mesmerised by the lush jungle, stunning land and seascapes and wildlife. The locals were lovely, and I made new friends. The hectic and chaotic outside world just melted away. I spent the next 10 days visiting and exploring and along the way discovering that the Island is also a very spiritual place.
The early history of the Island, coupled with ruins, old sites, an exciting find and stories from friends and family piqued my curiosity to an all time high. So on my return, I started researching for more information about this tiny dot in the ocean and sharing my findings with an online group of 390, mostly former and some current, Christmas Islanders.
After some time I realised that it was a shame that my findings were restricted just to the online group. I decided I had accumulated enough material to populate a small website so the information could be more widely available. And so, this is how “Christmas Island Archives” has come about.
Fran Yeoh
Perth, Western Australia
fran@christmasislandarchives.com
“Depiction of Christmas Island by Captain Daniel Beeckman 1718” image by Linn Borghuis
