On a 1916 map of Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island, an interesting place name, ‘Arthur’s steps’, arouses curiosity, and begs the question, who was Arthur?
Part of a 1916 map from the UK Hydrographic Office.
Is this a surname or a first name? The steps are still visible today, and fishermen on the Island, both past and present, have walked, and still walk, them. As they are located close to Tai Jin House and the government flag staff, it is likely they were named after a District Officer, though this remains open to correction if not the case. Sure enough, there are two possible contenders:
Image courtesy of Ruth Roberts.
The first was Arthur Walter Bailey, who was the District Officer from 1904 to 1907.
The second was James Startin Wills Arthur, Acting District Officer between 1911 and 1912.
Therefore, if the steps are indeed named after either of these two men, they date between 1904 and 1912; at the very least, they were in existence by 1916. This is quite exciting, as it makes these steps more than 100 years old, harking back to the early colonial days on Christmas Island.
Back then, the District Officer had a choice of routes down to Settlement: he could use a boat to reach the beach at Flying Fish Cove settlement, with a ladder of some sort assumed to have descended to the water’s edge, or he could take the steep track/road down the hill, hemmed in by cliffs on one side and a sheer drop to the sea on the other.1
According to David Powell, Arthur’s Steps were used by the District Officer to travel from the DO’s house (which became the Administrator’s House when Christmas Island became an Australian Territory, and has since become Tai Jin House) to the area where the cantilevers are, via launch. This was the case until a new road to the house was built in the 1950s (replacing an older one), with Kevin Lourey the engineer in charge of its construction. Powell was employed as a surveyor on the Island from 1958 to 1975. He became the first Conservation Officer for BPC, then the PMCI in 1975 and returned as a consultant to Elders, the Union and Asia Pacific Space Station between 1984 and 1999, drawing on his extensive knowledge of CI geology, geography, flora and fauna.
1. For more history of this road, once little more than a track in the early 1900s, see History of the Tai Jins’ Houses.