Welfare organizations in Hong Kong had been watching the progress of the fledgling colony and were quick to appreciate its value. The United Church of Canada donated $960, the Hong Kong Welfare Society put up $30 a month to pay families working on the island, and other agencies joined in—Church World Service, Catholic Relief Services and the Lutheran World Federation—sending cash, supplies and carefully chosen settlers.
When the first stone houses on the island were completed in 1955, Gus struck a note of triumph by giving them the high-sounding name of Villa Borghese—a salute to his Italian ancestors. Twenty families, comprising 100 persons, had entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of the plan, digging terraced gardens from the rocky hillsides and planting pineapples. Bamboo, banana, and pine trees were set firmly on the hillsides or in the sheltered hollow between Sunshine’s two highest hills. Refugee students, earning their tuition from welfare agencies, excavated a fish-breeding pond.
For the first time Gus was able to pay himself a salary of $36 a month, but as often as not in succeeding months he turned it right back into the kitty to balance his accounts. Periodic crises like typhoons, crop failures, and the death of valuable livestock regularly badgered the colony, but Gus contrived to ride them out.
In 1957, Gus was laid low by a serious case of tuberculosis. For six months he reluctantly remained in a chair placed on a sunny terrace in front of his house. From there he directed Mona in the management of the colony. Gradually regaining his strength, he recovered fully in two years and resumed active charge of the enterprise.
Increased aid from the outside enabled Gus to raise every worker’s daily pay to 70 cents. Sunshine Island lost its bleak look; besides its new stone buildings, it had over 800 fruit trees and 300 pigs, including 30 breeding sows. Roads had been chopped through its spiny ridges, knitting the whole project together.
Hong Kong’s government staff, satisfied that Gus was doing something solidly beneficial for refugees, furnished district officers, agriculturists, forestry and fisheries experts as consultants on various Sunshine Island jobs.
But the human dividends of Sunshine Island were far more impressive than its physical achievements. More than 700 men and women, including a number of drug addicts, had found new hope on the island. After working there for six months or a year and creating a small nest-egg from their savings, they applied their newly acquired skills to start their own farms on marginal land or get jobs in the city. A large majority of them are now earning their own living in the British colony.
Gus, having conceived Sunshine Island as a pilot project for farming marginal land, schooled a group of his “graduates” in a marginal-farm resettlement at Cheung Sheung, in the New Territories. Each new farmer received two acres from the Hong Kong government, plus a cow, farm tools and a small cash allowance. Practically all of them made the grade as independent farmers.
Activities expanded once more on Sunshine Island when the Hong Kong Junior Chamber of Commerce donated $2,500 to build a piggery for 30 animals, and 20 more sties were added to it in 1961. Papaya and pomegranate trees were added to the orchard. The island became a local attraction for visitors, with Boy Scouts and other youth organizations camping and swimming at a beach on the side of the island most distant from the farm area.
With the knowledge he paid a steep price for on Sunshine Island, Gus has set up marginal-farm projects at three more locations besides Cheung Sheung.