True isolation is very hard to find these days. Go backpacking in the Himalayas, and there'll be an internet café waiting for you at the end of the track. Take a boat down the Amazon River, and you'll still have reception on your mobile phone.
There's still reception in "Melbourne" but I won't take my mobile phone with me when I go there. I go there to relax or read or write, with the only disturbance being an occasional soft-footed thump-thump from a nearby mob of kangaroos moving from one grazing spot to another.
If I'm not immediately taken back to my time on Bougainville Island where we all lived in "dongas" on Loloho Beach, then I'm reminded of it when I open my eyes after a short nap and look at the photos on the wall. "Millionaires Row Dongas" says one of them, and "A quiet day at Loloho Camp 6 beach" the other. We'd never heard the word "donga" - which is Australian slang for a portable, modular building - but we all used it from the day we got there. "See you at my donga after dinner!"
Photo courtesy of Roy Goldsworthy, now residing in Malaysia
We were happy without telephones, newspapers, and only a scratchy radio reception, but there was almost a riot on that night the "boozer" didn't open because they had run out of beer. Life was so simple then!
