This was a very hard place to live and not many have tried it. The Europeans tried to mine sulphur here, but in 1913 their camp was wiped out, either by a landslide or an eruption. No-one knows, because the tragedy was only discovered when the supply ship reached the island and found all the men gone, and their buildings wiped out. The miners either were buried by the eruption, or pushed into the sea where they would have been eaten by the sharks quite common in the area.
The only survivor was the cat, known as Peter. He was taken back to the mainland, where everyone wanted to breed from him. He sired many kittens and died at a great age, known far and wide as Peter the Great.
These logs get washed ashore in the storms. There are a few remains of a later mining effort from the early 1920's, but the business went bankrupt. Now no-one lives on White Island.