Life on De Witt

For a time, Vermont was chic, and Alaska and Spain were favorite places to get away from it all. Nowadays those who really want to drop out head for Tobago, Sardinia and Pago Pago. One potential hideaway that until now has been completely ignored, however, is De Witt Isle, five miles off the southern coast of Tasmania* in the savage, blustery "Roaring Forties." Its assets are 4,000 acres of jagged rocks, tangled undergrowth and trees twisted and bent by the battering winds. Local fishermen call it the "Big Witch," and settlers have avoided it like the plague, but bandicoots (ratlike marsupials native to Australia), wallabies, eagles and penguins think De Witt is just fine.

So does Jane Cooper, 18, a pert Melbourne high school graduate, who emigrated there with three goats, several chickens and a number of cats brought along to stand guard against the bandicoots. Why De Witt? "I was frightened at the way life is lived today in our cities," says Jane. "I wanted to be alone, to have some time to think and find out about myself."

For a while, the world outside continued to plague her: the Tasmanian state government insisted that she leave for her own safety and complained that she was trespassing on a flora and fauna reserve. But local officials backed her up, and the state finally relented.

The furor brought an unwelcome influx of journalists, whom the opportunistic local fishermen charged $280 per round trip from a Tasmanian port. But now the interest has ebbed, and Jane has been left alone to write poems and start work on a book, play the flute and dive for crayfish and abalone to supplement her diet of cereal, canned goods and homegrown vegetables.

Old and Young. Her solitary life isn't easy. "Dear God," she wrote in her diary on her first day ashore, "how I love this island . . . but I don't know if I'm strong enough to stay. I found myself walking along the rocks crying."

Then her mood began to change: "Damn it, I'm going to conquer this island. I won't let it beat me . . .1 had been feeling so sorry for myself that I was unaware of the beauty that surrounded me." Recently she sent a letter home via the local fishermen, who stop by occasionally to deliver supplies and make certain that Jane is all right. In the letter she wrote: "I feel very old and very young. I'm more determined than ever to stay here." She reports she has learned to bake bread and saw and split firewood. For a while, she had human company: a male friend spent ten days on the island to help her build a wooden shack. Now, she is alone again.

De Witt still has plenty of disadvantages. The cats so far have not much impressed the bandicoots, which occasionally scamper across Jane's face at night and persist in digging up the vegetable seeds she has planted in a small garden. But she has made a friend --a penguin named Mickey Mouse --and she is beginning to feel that "this is my world and my life . . . it is so beautiful here I can't imagine Melbourne any longer." To millions of citybound Australians, Jane has become something of a heroine, but most apparently want to share her adventures vicariously at best. So far there has been no mass exodus to lonely offshore islands--including little De Witt, which still has a population of only one.

* A large, populous (395,600) Australian island-state southeast of the mainland.

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