Gowrie-Smith’s looming mortality has convinced him to sell. “I am now 74, and the death of my ex- wife late last year and dealing with all the paperwork and probates in different countries made me realise that I have a responsibility to get all my affairs in order,” he said. “More so, I bought these islands with the intention that they would be a legacy asset to hand down to my children and grandchildren. But none of them has demonstrated love for them or assuming all the responsibilities and obligations that come with them.” A 2003 report by Conservation International notes the reefs around the Conflict Group are home to 418 scleractinian (hard) coral species – more than half of all known coral species on Earth – in addition to 954 species of molluscs and 798 species of pelagic fish. The islands are also an important nesting place for the critically endangered hawksbill
A manta ray cruises in the gin-clear waters of the Conflict lagoon
turtle, the endangered green sea turtle and the conservation- dependent hammerhead shark. This almost unprecedented ecological wealth is attributed to the fact that so few people have ever lived here. The first documented human presence dates back to 1895 when Sir Henry Wickham – the bombastic British explorer who fathered the worldwide rubber boom by smuggling 70,000 rubber seeds out of Brazil – signed a colonial lease on the
atoll for £1 per year. Back then, writes Pulitzer-nominated historian Joe Jackson, the Milne Bay area where the Conflict Group is located was a place of “appalling roughness and disrupted character [where] tribal warfare and cannibalism were not only part of life but a central part of some tribes’ religion”. Yet this mattered naught to Wickham, who, dreaming of a carefree island life and the spoils of the South Sea, spent a decade on the Conflicts stumbling
from one harebrained venture to the next: farming sea sponges, harvesting the Chinese aphrodisiac bêche-de- mer, breeding oysters for mother-of-pearl shell and poaching sea turtles. Every one of these schemes fell wayside to the tyranny of distance and eventually saw Wickham’s long- suffering wife Violet jump ship and return to the UK without him. He died in London in 1846, destitute and alone. Starting in the 1920s, the Conflict Group was sold by freehold
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