Ok - I’ve started a fresh theme using composer create-project roots/sage your-theme-name , then ran yarn and yarn start and am still getting the refresh issue - so disregard the site repository in the last post. I’m kind of at a loss as to what to try now. I suppose I will just keep going - i can still get work done 
I found the same issue over at https://github.com/jhipster/generator-jhipster/issues/8275
I tried downgrading browser-sync to 2.24.4 and the other solution of moving to port 9000 like they did, but it still goes into the refresh loop.
I also tried different browsers on iOS - no change.