Why Isn't New Island on My GPS?

 

 

New Islanders claim there are too many nosy satellites!

When you look up the co-ordinates 98 degrees 5 minutes East Longitude by 35 degrees 40 minutes South Latitude, you'll likely find a blank area of the Indian Ocean. However, New Islanders know this to be roughly the location of downtown Putney, New Island's largest city. The rest of the world simply doesn't know...

A recently-retired CIA operative told me that satellite imagery is often edited in some parts of the world. Certain features in Area 51 in Nevada, and similar places in Russia, North Korea, China and Iran, come to mind. The governments there simply don't want us to see these places, so they are carefully deleted off printed maps, live-stream digital maps, and from your GPS system!

New Island was deleted around 1940 from most maps worldwide, except those classified for military use. (see previous post, "You probably Know This, But...") This policy has continued into our age of digital mapping, mostly from prior demands of the military, but also at the request of the people of New Island.

In 1992, when the island became independent, Island residents voted to keep the island "off the map". They would rather not have airliners coming and going, cruise ships docking, or private planes and boats showing up unannounced. Secrecy can save a lot of headaches!

How to Get Here

To travel to New Island, book a cabin (or deck space) aboard a Rudyard Line ship, either the Charles Ames or the New Ireland.  These vintage 50's-era cargo-liners were "donated" to New island in the early 1970s from Poland. They have been well-maintianed and recently restored. Usually the C.A. leaves the Port of Fremantle, Western Australia every Thursday at 3 pm; the N.I. every Sunday at 3 pm. Cabins or deck accomodations are available and all meals are local New Island cuisine.

This enjoyable means of passage to New Island is also the only way to get there!

 

The SS Charles Ames

The Rudyard Line office is on a quiet street not far from the Fremantle docks. Tickets, passenger status and shipping information are available by inquiring in person. Inquire locally as to the location; most Fremantle cabdrivers know where to go. (PS: see posts from July 2011 where I took the steamer to New Island.)

Ticket window hours are 9 to 3 weekdays.

Doors open one hour prior to ships' arrival, and 4 hours prior to departure .

 

 

A Better Picture by NASA

Another view I found of the island is this gorgeous photograph taken by a NASA astronaut/photographer on the June 1985 mission of the shuttle Discovery. Here you get an idea of the island's topography...

 

New Island from 450 Miles Up - taken above the southwestern coast looking northeast.

 

In the photo at left lies the sandy, relatively flat Sheffield Desert. Putney Bay fills the lower center, and Lake Riga is clearly visible to the right. TheWicklow-Blue Highlands, a vast plateau with an average elevation of 3,000 feet, dominates the upper center.

The island is an old piece of an ancient continent that the paleo-geologists call Gondwana. New Island's age explains it's limestone plateau as well as its generous beaches and sand dunes. Where there is a lot of sand, you know the place is old. It's climate is primarily Mediterranean, or similar to that of Southwestern Australia and California. The island's winters are rainy, with some snow above 2,500 feet. Summers are dry and mild, and the hotter areas are to the north. New Island is in the Southern Temperate Zone; indeed, the city of Putney is almost the same latitude south as San Francisco, California is in the north.      

Next: How to get here. 

You Probably Know This, But...

The Commonwealth of New Island is situated in the southern Indian Ocean, almost 1,000 miles west of Cape Leeuwin, Australia. I found this older satellite view of the island, quite by luck. The island has since been removed from these images, which brings up the story of the island's secretive history...



The one and only satellite image I know of that includes New Island.

Beginning in 1799, New Island's first European residents were shipwrecked convicts bound from Britain to Australia. Once they began to thrive on the island, they really didn't want the British to find them again. Their stricken ship had been blown far to the north of the favored shipping routes, which is why the island had evaded discovery. Then quite by chance, Fabian von Bellingshausen, a Russian explorer, found the island in 1821 and immediately claimed it for Russia, which effectively kept the 400 or so English-Irish pioneers free from the British penal system.

 

The Russians, in turn, felt the island was nobody's business, and declared it off-limits to other countries. This was fine with the now-established shipwrecked natives. The Soviet Navy later intensified the island's secrecy during World War II and the Cold War, effectively cutting off all communication to the island except via channels authorized by Moscow.  In the late 1950s, the American CIA joined with the Soviet KGB in a covert "partnership" whereby the island was kept off all maps of the area. It seems that both sides at that time were using the island for strategic military purposes, including a submarine base (Soviet Navy) and a missile tracking station (CIA). Satellite imagery was later (and still is) modified to create the appearance of  deep blue water in that part of the Indian Ocean. But once in a while someone blinks and the island appears briefly!

The good news is, since 1992 when the Soviet Union fell, the island gained its independence, and it now welcomes travelers form all countries.    Next: New Island From Space!     

The Letter from New Island

 

It was completely by chance that I found New Island, or, that it found me.

I had a hunch it existed, and roughly where, but there was no trace of it on any of my maps, or on GoogleEarth. Then I received a letter from the island's tourism department! (They still communicate with real mail...) It seems one of their employees had acquired a small drawing I had sold to an Australian resident, which then found its way to the island. Here is the letter:

 

Dear Mr. Mothes,

My name is Margaret Mullen, and I have come into possession of a drawing I believe you made. I am able to write to you because your name and address are on the back. The drawing is an exact rendering of my childhood home and my favorite old cargo trike. Were you there when I was a child? Have you ever been to New Island? Have you more drawings like this?

 

Please respond to my address where I work:

 

Attn: Margaret Mullen

Ministry of Trade, First Floor

15 Government Hill Mall

The Commonwealth of New Island 1005

 Yours Truly,

 Margaret

Enclosure: Copy of the drawing in question:

 

 An imaginary coastline I drew fourteen years ago that seems to be the

childhood home of Margaret Mullen.

Wow!

 

 

 

 

Me on New Island

OK, I've talked a lot about this island in the last 70-some postings. Now I'm going to take you with me all over the island. I'll fill you in with some of the background, but mostly we'll just wander around. 

 

My wind-blown self-portrait, at the Beltane site, a Celtic sacred place

on the island's southeastern coast.

 

To begin, I have been making drawings and paintings of beaches and coastal scenes for most of my life. The images originally came to me through a haze of dreams and memories that, for whatever reason, have been important to me. I felt these scenes were probably in the south Indian Ocean, mostly because it's a relatively unknown place, and also a region of the world where wonderful stories like "Dinotopia" originated. Also, the climate there is much like my home-land of coastal California.

I then realized I was wandering and drawing this place called New Island, and didn't know it until I received a strange letter...

It's wildflower season on New Island!

Red miandra, yellow poppies and serge cover this hillside near Brandonhead,

on New Island's southwestern coast

 

The wildflowers are blooming on New Island! This natural event is celebrated as the annual Wildflower Holidays, when people take time off just to hike in the hills and enjoy the colors for a day or two! The official dates this year are from October 6-20, so tell your boss you want some time off!

 

New Island's mild Mediterranean climate and isolation from the rest of the world's life-forms has allowed the evolution of many unique species of plants and wildlife. Red miandra grows in thick clumps on New Island's coastal and lowland hills, usually mixed with patches of yellow poppies and turquoise serge. A close cousin, night-blooming miandra, thrives in the cooler, drier highlands. The poppy is a ground-hugging drought-resistant variety similar to its California cousins. Blue or turquoise serge is also ground-hugging with tiny blue-green "buds" that cover the plant in spring.

 

The first New Island springtime must have been quite a spectacle for the early shipwrecked settlers.  While struggling to grow edible crops on this new place, the settlers foraged these and other indigenous plants for food, and learned early on the psychedelic powers of the little berries of the red- and night-blooming miandra. When red miandra berries (which are actually purple - the flower is a magenta-red) are brewed as tea or chewed, they can produce a near-delirious calm, but with an endorphin high. This lasts for about an hour before tapering off with no side affects afterward. No one thinks much about it, it's just a local custom.

 

 

 



House in Putney Completed

Travelin' Gal's stone-and stucco house has been completed! The view below shows the roof tiles being applied, and some of the windows are ready to install. Like all new Island houses, this one was custom-built with all indigenous materials. The tiles are of local clay, and the windows were made by the Samover Window Tribe in Portmore.

 

The view beyond is of Putney Bay to the west.

 

 

 

The completed house, below, as seen from the street corner. The lady with the baby buggy is very interested in what goes on in this house - the neighbors have been talking and something might appear in the The Putney Tattler, a local scandal/gossip sheet.

 

Putney has been restoring its elegant Russian streetlamps, imported in 1914 from St. Petersburg.

 

 

 

 

A Visit to Hopp's Store

Hopp's Store today.

Bernard Hopp opened his "Travelors' Conveniences" store soon after buying it at auction during the time of New Island's independence in 1992. It was originally a Soviet military outpost guarding the tracking station further up the road, on the northern coast.

At first he lived here very quietly, seeing perhaps one traveler every three days or so. After settling into the spacious quarters upstairs (There were still Soviet navy rations in the pantry!), he began to stock the old guardroom with groceries, camping and walking gear, candles, some tools, socks, underwear and tire repair kits.

Meanwhile he collected and read comic books. He loves them, especially Little Lulu, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. from the 1940s through about 1960. He also collected old Mad magazines from the '50s and '60s, then later the best underground comics such as the entire Zap series and anything by Robert Crumb - the best from the late '60s through the '70s. He has them all! After a while, Bernard put up a sign on his counter advertising comic books, with a few on display. Since then he has slowly become known as the go-to guy for comic books on New Island.

He sells a lot more groceries and sundries these days, since traffic has climbed to about six to eight vehicles a day, and they always stop.

Since our first visit, he has planted some ghost-gum trees, and he is proud of the new outhouse. The road people paved a few hundred feet in concrete to keep the dust down. We parked our solar-booster recumbent bike in the lot with a new Felix-hauler (by the building) and someones horse. We arrived today just after a rare desert thunderstorm, so everything was wet, and we expect wildflowers in a few weeks!

Hopp's Store is in the Sheffield Desert.

To get there, take the dirt road off of Route 3 at Davoo,

then proceed north about 21 miles and you'll see it.





Bernard Hopp's Privy

Bernard Hopp, owner and sole resident of Hopp's Store, needed a privy for his traveling customers, so he called on Faramond the Architect to design one. Water is scarce so a flush toilet would not work. Faramond came up with the His and Hers Privy shown above. It is built with pressed sand-and-cement blocks made from local dune sand. The doors, windows and clay roof tiles are all recycled. Local craftsmen did the job in about a week, not counting the pit. It is rumored that some ancient artifacts were found by the guy who dug the privy pit, but he has since disappeared.

Hopp's Store is the only settlement (pop. 1) in this part of the Sheffield Desert. Travelers on their way to the North Bight beaches and to Roger's Dreamland often stop in for refreshments. Bernard does what he can, but is often short on these. However, he has the finest comic book collection in this part of the world - just ask him for anything from vintage Disney, all the DC Superheroes, R. Crumb to obscure series such as "Animal Crackers". Bernard also owns the only known copy of  "Kaiser Spinks Comics". If he is not in the store should you visit, ring the hand-bell on the counter.

Hopp's Store with the distant ocean beyond, as pictured a few years ago.

The new privy is in the back by the burn barrel.

Below is Hopp's location in New Island's Sheffield Desert.