For teacher Janet Irwin there really is non-such like it in the world as Nonsuch Island.

She is the daughter of Dr. David Wingate, former Government Conservation Officer, and spent much of her childhood on Nonsuch Island with her sisters Karen and Rosalyn.

Mrs. Irwin now teaches English in the Czech Republic and has just self-published a book about her childhood called ?Nonsuch Summer? under her maiden name ?Janet Wingate?.

?It was really special growing up on Nonsuch Island,? said Mrs. Irwin during a recent visit to the Island to see her family and launch her book. ?It is a very special place. It has touched everyone who has ever lived there. Nonsuch is almost like a little land on its own. You can see Bermuda all around you, but it is its own special place.?

When the family first moved to Nonsuch in the early 1960s the island had been ravaged by the cedar blight and there were no trees.

?It was just a bare island,? she said. ?You could see all the buildings clearly. We were just watching it grow up. It was really magic.?

When she was very small the Wingates lived on Nonsuch all year round, but when it was time for her and her sister Karen to start school, they moved to the mainland during the winter and lived on Nonsuch during the summer.

The downside to living on a small island during the summers was the lack of companionship.

?It was very lonely when we were small,? she said. ?We had to invite friends out specially.?

However, because Nonsuch Island was a conservation project there were always interesting visitors to keep the Wingate children stimulated.

?We always had visitors, visiting birders, visiting scientists, visiting turtle people, Oxford Scientific films came out,? she said. ?They used to study plankton and stuff like that in the water. Endless streams of really interesting people were always out there. We had a parrot woman and someone interesting in bluebirds. I don?t know why the parrot woman came because there aren?t any parrots naturally in Bermuda. People would sometimes come with their children.?

Mrs. Irwin started writing ?Nonsuch Summer? five years ago. It is geared for children. She tried to find a mainstream publisher but with little success.

?After that, when I decided to come out this summer, my husband and I thought, we have to do it,? she said. ?This is the time. We went through the book and my husband did all the graphics for it and designed the cover.?

The book looks at all sides of Nonsuch, even the spooky side.

?I don?t know if Nonsuch Island is haunted,? said Mrs. Irwin. ?At night we used to walk down to the beach past the mortuary and past the cemetery. I used to think maybe, but if it was, it wasn?t frightening ghosts. I never felt frightened on Nonsuch, unlike our house on the mainland that had real ghosts.?

During the summers on Nonsuch Island, life was pretty basic. The Wingate children swam in the morning, afternoon and evening and at any point in between. Sometimes they explored the island or helped their father with his projects.

?We use to help dad with his work,? Mrs. Irwin said. ?When dad introduced the baby herons on the island we use to collect crabs to feed them. We caught them with gloves. At that time the crab population was huge. It was so bad that when you walked along the path at night you couldn?t avoid stepping on them. You crunched on them. It was a horrible sound. Crabs were becoming a problem, even on the mainland, that is why we reintroduced the heron.?

The crabs were kept in an old marble bath. Their legs and pinchers were ripped off, and they were cut in half and fed to the baby birds on a plate.

?It was pretty horrible, in fact,? said Mrs. Irwin.

Nonsuch Island was once used as a training school for wayward boys, and Mrs. Irwin thinks she can remember them being on the island sometimes in the summer, even though the camp was moved to Paget Island before she was born.

When Mrs. Irwin?s father, Mr. Wingate, was just 15 years old, he helped with the rediscovery of the cahow.

?There were two men, one of them was Bermudian and one was a visiting American,? Mrs. Irwin said.

?They had the idea that cahows still existed because a couple of specimens had turned up by the airport. They planned a hunt on the islands around Nonsuch to see if they could find it.

?Dad was 15 at the time and they knew he was interested in birds and he had been in contact with Louis Mowbray. He went along and they rediscovered the cahow.?

When Mrs. Irwin was a child, her father would often disappear on night-time cahow watches.

?Because they are a nocturnal bird he?d have to go out at night,? she said.

?My poor mother would be left worrying about him. She would be left with us children on Nonsuch.

?There were no cellular phones, or any way for her to keep in contact with him. Usually the cahows come out in the stormiest weather possible, so of course he was out there in storms.?

She said her father loves hurricanes and storms, and they were often on Nonsuch during bad weather in the summer.

?My father just loved hurricanes and would stay out there through thick and thin,? she said. ?One year, I remember that the ceiling fell in our bedroom. It fell all around, but my baby sister was in her cot, and nothing happened to her. Nothing landed on her. My father said he remembers taking me outside during a hurricane when I was two in 1963. There was a piece of dead cedar roaring around in the wind, and he thought we were going to get hit, but we didn?t. I don?t remember any really devastating hurricane. I have been away for all the later ones.?

She said her father is carrying on with his conservation work, much as before, despite his retirement.

?He is still involved with the Bermuda Audubon Society,? she said.

?He still helps with the conservation work, but he tends to do more of the tough work. There is a lot of invasive species of plants in the marshes and ponds. There are a lot of invasive species of plants in all the marshes that shouldn?t be there, because they strangle the native plants. After Hurricane Fabian he did a lot of restoration work back in Spital Pond because that was pretty badly damaged. He loved his job. His job was his life. Now that he is retired he can?t stop. he still goes out and checks on the cahows sometimes.

?Nonsuch was his idea. In the early days he didn?t have any help. He was the conservation officer. He had no assistants. He used his own boats. He had no truck. It was literally his concept and his idea. It has been terribly hard for him to hand it over.?

However, she said that the current conservation officer, Jeremy Maderios seems to love the cahows ?almost? as much as her father.

?We went back to Nonsuch Island this summer,? Mrs. Irwin said. ?It was strange. It is different now, because dad has retired and he is not the conservation officer anymore. The house is occupied by the new conservation officer, Jeremy. It was a little strange for me.?

I remember various hurricanes coming near and causing stormy waves.

?Nonsuch Island Summer? is available in Bermuda stores now.