I'm intrigued whenever I read about people, fictitious or not, who have boldly taken the course of their lives into their own hands as did a learned gentleman in Australia in the 1930s who clearly foresaw that a great war was about to break over the world.
He had no desire to participate in this foolish war, but he had to conclude from his studies that Europe was going to explode and that the resulting fires would involve Africa and much of Asia. With extraordinary clairvoyance he deduced that Australia, left unprotected because the military men were preoccupied with Europe, would surely become a temptation to Asia and would probably be overrun.
Wishing to avoid such a debacle, he spent considerable time in determining what course a sensible man should follow if he wanted to escape the onrushing cataclysm. He considered flight into the dead heart of Australia, but concluded that although he could probably hide out in that forbidden region, life without adequate water would be intolerable. Next he contemplated removal to America, but dismissed this as impractical in view of the certainty that America would also be involved in the war.
Finally, by a process of the most careful logic, he decided that his only secure refuge from the world's insanity lay on some tropical island. He reasoned, "There I will find adequate water from the rains, food from the breadfruit and coconut trees, and fish from the lagoons. There will be safety from the airplanes which will be bombing important cities. And thanks to the missionaries, the natives will probably not eat me."
Fortified with such conclusions, he studied the Pacific and narrowed his choice of islands to the one that offered every advantage: remoteness, security, a good life, and a storm cellar until the universal hurricane had subsided.
Thereupon, in the late summer of 1939, one week before Germany invaded Poland, this wise Australian fled to his particular South Pacific refuge. He went to the almost unknown island of Guadalcanal --- which, as we now know, saw some of the bloodiest fighting in WWII.
I lived and worked in Honiara in 1973 and again in 1977, and although I crossed the Matanikau River many times, climbed Bloody Ridge, swam at Red Beach, and even ventured as far as Cape Esperance where at the time a tall Swede was building the Tambea Resort (another shattered tropical dream as it was torched during the 1999 riots; I hope the Swede was by that time back in Sweden and spared to witness it), I never concerned myself much with the Battle of Guadalcanal - until now.
Back then, if I wasn't deeply involved in my work, I was breasting the bar of the Guadalcanal Club or sailing my CORSAIR dinghy off the Point Cruz Yacht Club, but that's another story which you can read here.
