|
Post by NZBC on Aug 7, 2007 21:17:12 GMT 12
www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/prisons/the_leper_of_somes_island.htmby Kirsten Wong This is the story of a poor unfortunate. A middle-aged Chinese man thought to have leprosy was sent to live on an island in the middle of Wellington Harbour. No, not Matiu or Somes Island but its tiny northwest neighbour, Mokopuna. You can see it driving round the bays. A large cone-shaped rock partly covered in low-lying scrub. There is apparently a cleft in a rocky wall off a sloping beach of gravel. It was in this cleft that Kim Lee, a 56-year-old fruiterer from Newtown lived, and after a short three months, died. Not much is known about his life, except that he was living in Adelaide Road and, at the time of his death in 1904, had been in New Zealand 18 years.
|
|