Money Puzzles Them On This Island -- Mrs. Botha with son Gough and baby Jennifer. When young Mr. and Mrs. Botha opened a general stores, everyone flocked to buy - for there wasn't another shop for 1,500 miles around. And not only were most of the customers experiencing their first shopping thrill many of them were spending money for the first time. For in lonely Tristan da Cunha, Britain's dot of a colony in the gale-swept South Atlantic, money didn't Company arrived to set up a local crayfish industry. Even if they'd had money, there would have been nowhere to spend it on the island, where people paid for work down with three meals a day. November 22, 1950.