My Fortune but Found New Riches Living on a Deserted Island
The book is dedicated to David's daughter Erika Ruby (10/2/78 - 20/3/13) who died an untimely death on the mainland at Lockhart River just across from the island
-o-
Click here for a preview
Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl 'Will you marry me?' The girl said, 'NO!' And the guy lived happily ever after and rode motorcycles and went fishing and hunting and played golf a lot and drank beer and scotch and left the toilet seat up and farted whenever he wanted.
That's David Glasheen in a nutshell - well, apart from not being able to ride motorcycles or play golf on tiny Restoration Island - , looking as if he had been marooned since Captain William Bligh beached his boat there after the 1789 HMS Bounty mutiny (he named it Restoration Island, because the day he and his men rested there was the anniversary of the restoration of Charles II to the throne and perhaps because the stay on the island did restore them but the locals call it "Resto").
David Glasheen hasn't always lived like this. In his earlier life he lived in Sydney where he had built a multi-million-dollar mining company, Carpenters Investment Trading. But he lost most of his family's wealth - around $37 million in today's money - in the stock market crash of 1987. Shortly after, his marriage broke down. He was "wounded, seriously wounded". He arrived on Restoration Island after hearing about it through a friend — and never left.
He says his more-than-two decades on the island have repaired him.
"We all need restoration at some point in our lives and that's what's happened to me ... I'm mentally supercharged," says David, who has written - well, ghost-written - about his life in "The Millionaire Cast-away", which I've just ordered from QBD Books - and so can you! David says a major motivation to write his book was "to try and repair my family relationship ... because they're really complicated and messy".
I had first heard about David during my trip to Thursday Island in 2005 - click here - and spoken with him over a pretty crackly phoneline a couple of times. As he told me then, he had moved to the island in 1997 with his new girlfriend, but with no hot water or even a bath, she found it tough and left with their young son, and David was advertising online for love, offering the ultimate sea change for the right woman who doesn't like shopping or neighbours. But that wasn't his only trouble: his former business partners also wanted him to leave the island, and had won a court case to have him evicted, hence his reaching out for help.
That was then. Fifteen years later, David is still there and likely to see out his final days on Restoration Island. "I live in heaven — why would you leave heaven?" he says. "I'm literally born again by being up here."
And David, being every bit bit a ladies' man - "I've got an eye for the ladies, so I guess I would do anything to meet the right partner" - is still looking for a lady-friend to join him. Well, David, I hope you won't get killed in the crush! If you do find your Miss Right, make sure her first name isn't 'Always'! Wouldn't it have been better to whittle down the candidature to deaf-and-dumb lobotomised nymphomaniac cooks with poor vision and a Florence-Nightingale complex?
I have ordered my copy of his book "The Millionaire Castaway" and shall waste no time in reading it (interpret that whichever way you like).
P.S. Three more Dave-links on YouTube: here and here and here.
P.P.S. If you want to write to David (he's always grateful for some reading material!), his address is David Glasheen, Restoration Island, CMB 52, Cairns Mail Centre 4870, Australia.
