My new-found love for Jack McLaren's writings can not easily be indulged in, as his many books - with the one exception of "My Crowded Solitude" - seem to be out of print, and what's still for sale is usually very expensive.
Imagine therefore my surprise when I found his book "My Odyssey" available on archive.org. I was enthralled from the very beginning:
"I [too] had always wanted to go to the Islands. Like many a young man before and since I was intrigued by the idea of palm-shaded, coral-bound lands set in seas blue as sapphires, where promise of Adventure lay always in the middle distance."
And so, like Jack McLaren, I had lived and worked in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the Samoas, had travelled to Nauru, Fiji, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and Tonga, and had even lived and worked on the "Thirsty Island" Thursday Island, which he describes in chapter 12:
While Jack McLaren had done his wanderings wearing a pistol on his hip, I had done mine wearing a pen behind my ear, but there the difference ended! What a read; what memories! Thanks, Jack; thanks, archive.org!
