Jan Adams and Marg Neale arrived on the Island with their families to take up teaching positions in January 1982. They lived the Christmas Island experience for three and four years respectively and set about recording the recollections of earlier residents of this isolated island territory. These stories formed the basis of the Island's first social history book We Were the Christmas Islanders'' published by Marg in 1988.

The wealth of historic photographs collected will continue to be preserved in further books. Marg has since worked as an artist, writer, lecturer, and entrepreneur in the arts while Jan works as a secondary college counsellor. Both continue to maintain a fascination with the Island. Their research has uncovered stories of mutiny, murder of Mandors, a corpse in a Carley float and a man with three gravestones. These intriguing stories and others are told in Christmas Island the Early Years.