The Perfect Job
The Perfect Job.
How effectively Queensland used the internet to advertise for the perfect job, ‘‘The Caretaker of Hamilton island’, a tropical paradise, amazing wild birds, thousands of tourists, climbing canoeing and sailing and a wage nearly comparable to your average mp’s + with the equivalent Grand Mansion to live in.
In fact the Perfect job came up here in the UK in January of this year, ‘The General Manager of the islands of Canna and Sanday’. It requires a different type of imagination to see it as perfect. It will not be damp humidity and barbies on the beach but wind you must fight and rain that lashes you into shape; a wage of £20,000 a year and possibly some form of accommodation.
Canna or Hinba as it was sometimes called is the ‘jewel’ of the Inner Hebrides. Owned and lived in by Polymath John Lorne Campbell, a Gaelic scholar who in 1981 decided to leave the islands to the National Trust for Scotland- on condition that his Philadelphia born wife Margaret Shaw, who amassed an extraordinary collection of wire and wax cylinder recordings of Gaelic song from the Outer Hebrides, were able to live on in the house for the remainder of her days, and the NTS would protect, preserve and conserve the natural and physical landscape, the archaeology and the Canna collections in perpetuity.
Over 30,000 people registered interest in working on Hamilton Island. Blogs and media hype had spread the word and fame and riches were promised to the lucky winner on chat show sofas around the world. He is from what I ascertain a very focused guy.
To the best of my knowledge their were only two serious contenders for the Canna job plus a one line comment on West World, the Small Isles blog, anticipating the advantages of another family coming to help on the island.
Why was this job so poorly publicised and why was managing an island off the west coast of Scotland not the perfect Job and something to celebrate?
Surely being the caretaker of an island off Queensland and becoming a sort of Blue Peter/ Daniel Craig character, running the show.
Will sailing, climbing and canoeing and the safe managing of tourists be done in a funny hat with corks dangling from its brim?
Canna is not just any island; there you will find the stones and grave of a King of Norway. Columbus visited and saw it as a suitable foothold on which to construct a chapel. Once answerable to the Popes, and then, a place where the religion of the Yellow stick, Creideamh-a’ bhata-bhuidhe had been enforced, a place where witches dwelled and a crazy wife once threw herself from the window of Coroghan prison to her death on the shore below.
Canna house contains an extraordinary collection of Gaelic literature, folksong and story, photographs, scholarly works, research papers as well as a fine collection of Lepidoptera[1] currently in the safe hands of Magda, Campbell’s friend and chosen archivist.
The garden is being steadily brought back to life by a capable gardener, an NTS employee, on a short-term contract.
The school has a clutch of year seven kids in it a schoolmistress. Secondary school children board over in Mallaig.
The Postmistress is Winnie McKinnon, Wendy McKinnon runs the shop and tea room, with a good reputation for its cakes and scones for summer sailors and ferry visitors. Tighard is the only guest house and is being creatively developed by a family who came to the island within the last five years.
To live well in a small community you must be a father or a mother, a gardener, generator maintenance man, builder, farmer, Pier master or fisherman all in one day
Happily the rats have now been eradicated and the puffins are more encouraged to breed now that their eggs are not a food source; the bird life is carefully monitored and the unique island mouse that was evacuated for the eradication period is now safely reinstalled.
The pier and the bridge to Sanday have been upgraded to take the roll on roll off Cal Mac ferry and the farm is in Geraldine and Murdo McKinnon’s good hands with some good pasture, excellent fencing, some 470 sheep and a fine herd of Highland cattle.
The restoration of the deconsecrated St Edwards chapel and one of the most significant landmarks on Sanday, envisaged as a Gaelic study centre by Margaret Shaw and opened just a few years ago by the Princess Royal faltered.
Was this because a builder from the lowlands, and an architect led to a result where there was, in March of this year, water flowing down the walls of the tower?
Huge amounts of public money poured into its restoration. Some excellent interior refurbishment and restoration was done but the building was derelict, a job uncompleted and a job cast aside five years later. Now you see an abandoned building site with piles of lime gravel blocking the main doorway, paths half formed, unwept floors and objects and bits of carving lying unsorted and all about and everywhere neglect and water running down the tower wall.
This was a building that faced the full force of winter gales through the Minch, where wind and rain sculpted and formed the shape of the hills and your heart and mind had to be strong to wind and rain.
Point Barn lies adjacent in a slight dip in the hill looking over the eastern shore. Coroghan Barn, another good stone building, and both crying out for wall plates and new roofs and the gentle stabilisation of foundations.
-A painter would celebrate the sublime, and awesome landscape of startling contrasts formed by the wind and the waves pounding on it for aeons. Sea, sky, hill, and machair, steep basalt cliffs+ and sea stacks circled by eagles and more sea and sky and buildings and punishment stones.
-A geologist or naturalist would enthuse about the strata of sedimentary rock interspersed with tertiary lava the, great buttresses of cliff the, tubular basalt teeth grinning on the hill face.
1,515 hectares of Site of Special Scientific Interest for its biological characteristics, the circling sea eagles, the machair and pasture with its hebrideen moths, wild flowers, corncrakes and heron, shearwater seal and otter and a hundred other species of offshore sea bird,
-An archaeologist or historian would revel at the thousand Neolithic field monuments, ruins of anchorite dwellings, remnants of pre 19th century townships, sheilings, sculpted crosses and ancient Gaelic English dictionaries, black and white photographs of Hebrideen folk and wire recordings of forgotten song and consider the fare of a dwindling Hebrideen community.
And a manager: -
Could a manager with energy and vision successfully integrate and help realise the dormant potential and encourage the development of a positive sustainable and exemplary community?
This is not a position for the unhandy or impractical individual but for an able communicator and administrator, a visionary, an intelligent fundraiser, a ‘man’ with a clear understanding of how to work effectively with groups, conversant with modern technology and willing and able to make intelligent and careful forward progress towards fulfilling ‘The Statement of Intent’ as put together by the Canna Property Group.
Reconnaissance would have you travel north from Glasgow on the Highland line and eventually onto the ferry out of Mallaig.
Approaching the snow capped peaks of Rum; you catch sight for the first time of what appears to be a whale emerging from the Ocean deep. It is Cannagh. As you pass along the east coast of Sanday past Point Barn nestling on the shore The controversial St Edwards stands, isolated, framed by sea and distant winter mountains. As you turn into the widening bay, the pier to your right, several white houses can be seen dead ahead and then you catch a glimpse of one larger stone house and as you come into port a sight of the tiny ‘rocket’ church. With water eddying back off the ferries retractable ramp, you step ashore and search the few watching faces for Winnie McKinnon, matriarch, Postmistress and NTS accommodation manager, responsible for, meeting foreigners.
You might consider ‘Fesmighar’ as a greeting and be hastened into the front seat of a land rover with a dog on your knee whilst all watch a forklift unload cattle food from a lorry that backed out of the belly of the ferry and onto the dock.
You would state your reasons for visiting to Winnie as you travelled with the dog with pointy ears beside you, first to Change House where Post would be put in a shed for distribution. The sight of Magda, burling down the road with a straw pannier on her back like a character out of children’s fiction would serve to emphasise the fact you were in a foreign land.
You would at last arrive at the New House, a well built wind proof residence put up by Murdo. Martin the bird watcher would be staying too but if it was still light he would be out on the hill spotting sea eagles.
Later, wandering right out of New House, you would pass by the road side another rentable NTS property, then Magda’s house and ponies before passing over the new wooden bridge to Sanday, where the road was less defined and formed part of the shore, on past the School House and Eilidh’s, Winnie’s and lastly Murdo’s cottages before turning up to St Edward’s, alone, empty and lifeless, a neglected bastion of power in the landscape.
Left out of New House took you through the Farm, a group of tidy sheds in good order where friendly inhabitants would draw you aside to fast learn about the intricacies of island politics then on past St Columba’s chapel past Wendy’s house, then Canna House itself before choosing either to ascend left to Tighard, walk right and along to the pier or carry straight on and up and over to Coroghan prison and Barn.
Clean and fortifying wind would have you seek sleep back in your warm lodgings and the promise of an early start in the morning.
Talk would centre on personalities or services that required care or feeding. There would be debate about the different ways justice should be judged.
In the bluster and rain of morning, you pass through the farm and head up the road to Tighard where good renovation and the development of the garden and orchard have begun.
You would learn over coffee about the bungling of the renovation of St Edward’s and you would learn about the difficulty of catering in low light kitchens.
You might follow the fence right up the hill past Margaret Shaw’s summerhouse at the top by a wood that surely has bluebells in May. Climb over the fence in the corner, past a three your old bull and using hands as well, ascend past a grill of basalt organ pipes and on up to the wild machair pasture on the top. Unsure of your foot, you tread carefully, alone in an elemental land of Brown grasses with a wind sometimes so strong your attention is forced awake and you pick your way carefully across to the vertiginous cliff edge on the other side. The Normandy coast inspired Courbet and Monet. Here the lack of humans the presence of beasts, the dramatic panorama of cliffs and stacks and the rich colour and texture of the views around you also inspire.
As you pick your way home back through pasture, surveying for possible locations to site traditional stone beehives, you yearn for spring sun that brings the meadow flowers back.
An interview with Magda the Basque archivist and guardian of the collection in Canna House would allow for talk about John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Shaw.
If you were fortunate and knew what to ask for, you might be shown some black and white photographs of children from Inishma’n, hair tangled in the wind.
You might be permitted a glimpse of a mid 19th century Gaelic- English Dictionary a delicious visual poem.
The morning you depart you wonder if the ferry will come but you look at the sea and know that force 5 wind and strong rain do not deter.
Passengers, the few remaining characters you have not met pile into the back of the land rover and with the dog in the front you are on the way.
After brief and formal thanks to Winnie McKinnon for allowing you to lodge in New House off- season, you pay, collect a letter to be posted on the mainland and descend quickly and discretely into the bowels of the ferry.
The issues of importance for survival are: fundamental services, fluent communication and resourcefulness.
The National Trust for Scotland is the Laird and there is scope and potential for development.
Could a manager integrate quietly and effectively into the community and work in an open and constructive way with relevant members of the community on NTS projects, foster fluent communication that allowed for constructive and staged development, through an Island Forum?
Could he pool intellectual resources and ideas to encourage community empowerment and identify areas for development with a Community/Trust Development Action Plan to serve as a guide for phased developments?
And develop existing links with HIE, the Hebrideen Trust, the European Regional/Scottish executive development fund, (Thistle groups) and also bring new influences and sources of fundraising to bear on the Island.
Establish links with Round Square Schools, United World Colleges, contact media companies, museums, Gaelic colleges, music colleges, operatic societies, poets, and musicians?
Link up with the Princes trust, with agriculture colleges and with Foundations skills development courses
Use Margaret Shaw’s songs and photos as a resource, whilst maintaining and nurturing links with the Gaelic colleges and Tobar an Dualchais.
Paradoxically, Climate change and credit crunch present these isolated island communities with an opportunity to prosper.
Should a small island community not aspire to be seen as an exemplar, a provider of ingenious solutions to sustainable agriculture, better energy and small-scale production solutions and a hub for clever education and good Gaelic and Hebrideen resources
Can we not honour the spirit of the vision statement and develop the idea of an exemplary sustainable community as a model of good practise for the 21st century?
Look at all the under used property and work out proposals to stabilise and secure the buildings requiring immediate repair and breathe life back into them.
Analyse traditional building practises, establish links with centres of expertise and use the resource of students and volunteers to develop buildings as part of their education, as challenge. - Thistle camps- United World colleges and International schools
Sell restoration as challenge and offer also the islands educational resource of literature, geology, archaeology, history and nature to schools and universities. (School for Scottish studies).
Use media to publicise new initiatives-
Establish work parties in the St Edwards centre to work on stabilising Point House and Coroghan Barn.
Contact artists and poets, writers and musicians and invite them to participate in bringing the collection alive. Seek links with Celtic connections and envision events at Canna House.
Communicate with natural historians and geologists, with designers of solar, wind or wave energy capturing devices to consider how viable alternative energy sources are to set up.
Look for sponsorship and grants.
Seek connectivity for the islands, websites, blogs and podcasts so that musicians’ and singers could access the sound recordings.
Negotiate with the Gaelic college in Skye to allow a young Gaelic scholar to cleverly present song, story, poem and anecdote over the Internet.
Encourage the gardens and land to grow towards productivity. Consider polytunnels and raised beds and the production of compost.
Encourage beekeeping and hives in the flower rich pasture in ‘traditional’ stone hives; verroa free varieties would be best. Traditional stone hives in the hill are better designed for the off shore climactic conditions
Encourage Natural Historians to record again the entomology, butterflies and Hebrideen moth so that records of development are updated.
And as to blue-sky thoughts on how Canna could be developed: maps for the tourists-local products in the tearoom, Canna honey, a Canna passport for the sailors, with a map on it with sites to see. Consider the viability of goat’s cheese or long rope mussel production or seaweed as a food or health product or run rigs fertilised by seaweed. Could Canna be used as a location to exhibit Sculpture or Land Art? or consider St Edwards and Christo’s symbolic uncovering of the Reichstag.
The job for a General manager for the Islands of Canna and Sanday was withdrawn the day before the interview.
The National Trust for Scotland hit by the downturn hesitates over its future and worries how they will keep all the wonderful properties open and accessible.
Will this not be the year when British people choose to explore their own country rather than jumping on a noxious cheap flight to eat fish and chips in Marbella or Morocco or the Dordogne?
What a great pity. Can you imagine being short-listed for what you see as the ‘perfect’ job; surely a richer and ultimately more rewarding and worthwhile challenge than being the caretaker of Hamilton Island… to have the dream dissolve away to nothing.
[1] Campbell specialised in the Hebrideen moths.
Written by JNBarclay