Norfolk Island’s Message in a Bottle

Norfolk Island truly sounds like a South Seas paradise, despite the first murder there in 149 years that landed the small Australian dependency on your front page (“An Island Full of Suspects,” Aug. 30). I applaud the Norfolk Islanders for choosing not to allow cell phones, on the grounds that their use is antisocial. Equally antisocial, in a larger sense, is the Norfolk Island practice, according to your article, of dumping all its trash, including old cars, from a cliff into the Pacific Ocean.

As someone who shares the same ocean, I don’t want to meet up one day with some Norfolk Island garbage washing up in Santa Monica Bay. Surely the Canberra government, responsible for the island’s external affairs, could set up a small dump on the island and monthly barge service to ship the trash for environmentally prudent processing on the Australian mainland.

Rufus Baker

Santa Monica