To reach the extraordinary home of "King" Kai Hansen, owner, lord and master of remote Goat Island Lodge, you must take a two-hour drive from the city of Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory, followed by an hour-long boat ride through crocodile-infested swamps.
Hansen was born in a tiny country town in Denmark, a fine-furniture maker by trade. He moved to Australia at the age of 20, then worked in construction. And then came Tracy. Not a lady, but Cyclone Tracy, an enormously powerful and destructive storm which ripped through Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974. "After that, there was so much work and good money to be made, so I got stuck here", Hansen said.
"I've been on the island for over twenty years and lived in a rural area for 25 years before that. It was all good there, but then they put in a supermarket and traffic lights around the corner. I'm a country boy, I don't want bloody traffic lights. That's for city people! In those days I still lived together with my darling wife, we sat around having drinks and she said, 'I'll buy an island and there will never be any traffic lights.' The next day there was an advert in the paper with an island for sale, this one, the only freehold island in the Northern Territory."
Now in his 70s, it seems "King" Kai is throwing in the frypan, as Goat Island is for sale at a 'mere' one-and-a-half million dollars - click here.
If you're handy with a frypan, Hubert, why don't you go and buy it? "King" Kai promised to chuck in the infamous frying pan for nothing.
