The Ogg family bought the ruin of Port-na-Luing in 1965. This extract from John Ogg's book 'A House in the Hebrides' tells of the early days of access and rebuilding.

The walk from Breachacha to Port-na-Luing made a pleasant break in the day's work when the weather was fine, but it was an unpleasant and tedious business pushing down the groceries and other things in the wheelbarrow in a high wind and driving rain. What we really wanted was a four-wheel drive vehicle that would take us all the way down to Port-na-Luing. Eventually we discovered one of the early models of the short-wheel base Land Rover. The canvas hood had seen better days, the body was a bit dented and needed repainting, but the man in the garage in Warminster assured me that it was mechanically in good condition, and I bought it.
I had never driven a car of this sort before, and I was quite amazed how it would travel over the most appalling terrain with no trouble at all. I drove it to work at Salisbury Infirmary and with fiendish delight left it in the car park outside the hospital next to a Rolls Royce belonging to one of my more affluent colleagues! After a few days I had absolute confidence in the machine and Doreen and I decided to drive it up to the Glasgow Docks and have it shipped over by cargo boat in time for our next holiday. This, of course, also provided us with the opportunity of taking up a number of things which would otherwise have to go by rail.
Along one side of the back of the Land Rover we stowed a folded bed, and on the floor a mattress. Two four-foot long asbestos pipes fitted nicely onto each of the back seats, and each pipe was stuffed with blankets. Three fifty-gallon plastic water tanks nested into one another and took up most of the remaining room, but we discovered that by taking off the canvas roof the refrigerator, without its legs, would slip into the top water tank. Obviously the refrigerator could not go up empty, and having packed in a hurricane lamp, there was quite a lot of room still left. It would be a nice idea, I felt, to get together a collection of books, so that eventually anyone staying at Port-na-Luing would find something of interest to read. In forming the nucleus for my Coll library I felt rather like the people on the B.B.C.'s `Desert Island Discs' programme, who are severely limited in their choice of gramophone records and have to concentrate on quality rather than quantity. Quite by chance my first three were all by authors from the western hemisphere: the Complete Works of O. Henry, several novels by Stephen Leacock and Thoreau's "Walden." The last is one of the most delightful books I have ever read and I find it remarkable that it is so little known. Trollope's Autobiography, also little read today, was wrapped up with Thoreau. There followed Murray's excellent "Guide to the Hebrides", Alasdair Alpin MacGregor's "The Western Isles", Eric Linklater's "Prince and the Heather", Gavin Maxwell's book about seals, Rutley's Minerology, a book on fishing, and from the New Naturalist Series "Climate and the British Scene" by Gordon Manley, "Natural History in the Highlands and Islands" by Fraser Darling, "The Sea Shore" by C.M. Yonge, "British Mammals" by Matthews, "Wild Orchids of Britain" by Summerhayes and "The Sea Coast" by J.A. Steers.
The refrigerator was just about full to capacity but we found room in the freezing compartment to push in a few Blackwood's Magazine and some paperback novels, and Doreen somehow found space for several bird books in one end of an asbestos pipe.
Thus loaded, the machine - with its bulging canvas sides - and the refrigerator making a prominence in the hood, looked rather like a portly old gentleman wearing a top hat, and the orifice in the back flap, which had once served as a window, gaped more widely than ever, and gave rather a melancholy appearance to anyone approaching the vehicle from the rear. In sheer devilment I drove the Land Rover to the hospital again and parked next to the Rolls Royce! Next morning we left at six o'clock but we could not travel faster than about forty miles an hour and at this sedate pace it was possible to enjoy the scenery. By Carlisle, the posture produced by the bucket seat was beginning to do curious things to my back and I had to make frequent stops for a stretch and a brief walk. We were soon lost in Glasgow, but were tremendously impressed by the efforts of everyone to try and show us the way to the docks. Perhaps we looked rather pathetic, but I am quite sure that, had there been room, some of those kind people would have climbed in and personally directed us. At Glasgow Central Station we got a sleeper back to London: both of us were asleep before the train left and we did not wake up until we reached Euston.
On the following day the seamen went on strike and some pessimists predicted that everything would be pinched from the Land Rover in Glasgow Docks, but much later we discovered that not a thing was missing. The Prime Minister solemnly addressed the Nation, and told us all that no good would come out of the strike, but, in fact, after weeks of negotiation, the men of the British Merchant Navy were promised better pay and conditions. Having on occasion seen the crew's quarters in various merchant ships, my sympathy was largely on the side of the seamen. Our Mercantile Marine was justly honoured and praised in time of war, but with the peace had been sadly neglected by successive Governments.
The crew of the `Claymore' were on strike: the only vessels running a regular sevice to the Hebrides were frigates of the Royal Navy, and they were only taking essential supplies. We wondered how on earth we would be able to get to Coll. We telephoned Alastair Oliphant at the Hotel, who cheerfully told us that we would have no trouble at all. We would be able to get to Grass Point on Mull in a motor-launch from Oban, and a bus would take us on to Tobermory. There Guy Jardine would pick us up in his yacht.
Oban Docks were reminiscent of the day I had called in there on board an armed motor fishing vessel during the war. Corvettes and a mine-sweeper were moored alongside the deserted ferry-boat, and the streets seemed to be full of sailors. I had a chat with one of the ship's officers in a hotel bar, and explained that I had a crate of crockery, a window-frame, a few gallons of paint and a couple of rolls of foam rubber mattresses, which I would be grateful if he could take to Coll. He was sympathetic but adamant: under no circumstances, he explained, could they carry anything but food.
At dawn on the following day we clambered into a motor-launch, which was already pretty well filled with passengers, mail bags and provisions for Mull. The skipper was a lady of indeterminate age, continually smoking a cigarette, who piloted her craft with the nonchalance of a nurse pushing a pram.
It was dead low water at Grass Point on Mull, and the top of the jetty was about twelve feet above the gunwales of the launch. An elderly gentleman, on his way to hospital on the mainland, was sitting on a packing case, and we were asked to help him aboard, since he was unable to climb down the rocks. It was evident that he was in a fairly advanced stage of heart failure, and it took some time to lower him into the boat. Eventually we got him comfortably seated under some tarpaulin. A man on the jetty helped to unload our belongings, and we passed up crates of bread and groceries. He turned out to be the local grocer, and gave us a lift to the bus stop.
It was still early in the day when we arrived at Tobermory.
We found Guy buying provisions, and he explained that there were five other passengers for Coll, but that they were unlikely to turn up for a while, since the pubs were still open. In fact, they seemed to stay open for most of the afternoon, and it was after four o'clock by the time we set off.
The evening was blisteringly hot, without a breath of wind. The yacht's auxiliary motor had seen better days, and it took nearly four hours to get to Coll. Guy cursed our slow progress, but for us it was a splendid beginning to our holiday.