The Millionaire Castaway

David Glasheen on facebook

 

Actually, this book has disappointed me. I had bought it because I know (of) David Glasheen and because I had expected a little more from a chap who has spent over twenty years all by himself on a desert island. You know, insights into why we are here and what life it all about.

Instead, as Somerset W. Maugham put it in his story, "German Harry", "If what they tell us in books were true his long communion with nature and the sea should have taught him many subtle secrets. It hadn't."

 

The Millionaire Castaway: The Incredible Story of How I Lost
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

 

Actually, the prologue about social distancing and the COVID pandemic, dated 7 April 2020, and added to the 2020 reprint after I had already bought it, is perhaps the best and most thoughtful part of the book.

In fairness to good ol' Dave, he may have done a better job and bared it all, had he written the book himself. Which he didn't; someone called Neil Bramwell wrote it for him, and in the retelling all that got lost.

Like Maugham's story, David's may end similarly: "I foresaw the end. One day a pearl fisher would land on the island and German Harry would not be waiting for him, silent and suspicious, at the water's edge. He would go up to the hut and there, lying on the bed, unrecognisable, he would see all that remained of what had once been a man."

David (or is it Neil?) closed the prologue like this: "Here's hoping this pandemic will bring out a little of the castaway in all of us." Not in me!

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Australian of the Year

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

 

To my shame I had never heard of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, an Aboriginal lady in Alice Springs, until her voice arose, loud and clear, full of wisdom and insight well beyond her years, from all those other voices. This was her message to all those keyboard warriors and change-the-date activists:

 

"Not once! Not one time have I seen The Greens or Labor speak out, not once have I seen you Indigenous cohorts speak out! Not once!

You have never spoken out about stopping the violence, stopping the alcoholism, stopping the child abuse and sexual assault.

No, you just want to talk about how ‘white man’ has somehow oppressed you. Oppressed you? Excuse you!

Most of you leading the pack are well-educated and had opportunities some of us only dare dream about.

You manipulate the mobs, especially the ones less educated or fortunate for your own selfish white hating-reasons! Shame on you! Shame, shame, shame!

I grew up in a violent alcohol-fuelled family filled with some of the most abhorrent acts committed upon my mother, upon myself.

My childhood wasn’t living; it was surviving from one day to the next.

I don’t remember a great Christmas, a birthday that didn’t turn violent, a night where I didn’t hide under my blankets hoping that he wouldn’t come into my room. That leads me to ask where were you? When I was 6 years old, yes SIX, I had my first nervous breakdown, I couldn’t take it any more, and my mind and body gave up, my soul withered and I was but a shell of my former self.

But where were you? Were you speaking up for me? Were you there to stop the real oppression, the real danger to my life? A lot of you were children yourself, but where were the older ones? The mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles? The politicians? The outstretched hand? No, you weren’t there!

Where were you when I watched my mother get raped and bashed until you couldn’t recognise who she was?

Where were you when he held us all hostages and tried to cut our throats? Where were you when I faced an onslaught of sexual abuse? Where were you when he chased us down and tried bashing my mother’s head in with a bull-roarer?

Where were you when almost every night in my house something violent happened? Where were you when he’d sneak into my room like a thief in the night to steal my childhood? Where were you the first time I tried to kill myself, aged 9?

There’s so much more and it would take me a week to write it down, but where were you?

You weren’t there and you still aren’t there!

Luckily for me, my grandmother was there.

Eventually my mother threw me away when I was sexually assaulted yet once again, this time by an 'uncle'.

There was more than one offender that hurt me. I lost count, now that's sad. Can you change all the dates I was hurt?

You cry and you scream about changing the date while there are children like me - little boys and girls - living the same life I did as a child, living in constant fear of violence and sexual abuse. No, white man didn't oppress me, white man didn't commit those repulsive, abhorrent acts.

White man failed me in that he failed to take me and my brother away from my mother. But we mustn't talk about the real issues affecting the indigenous community to this day! To this very day! Is it racist to speak out? NO!

You professional victims cry about a date while real victims suffer horrors only seen in nightmares or in a movie.

No, that’s not accurate ... the greatest horror writer on the planet would cringe if he heard my story, the story of children still suffering today.

You say its 'racist' to even speak of these issues ... it's not racism, it's realism.

I have no time for you and your virtue-signalling change-the-date crap. Your voice is only loud when you want to play the victim.

My grandmother, an indigenous elder, tried so hard to take me off my mother when I was a baby.

But no, the authorities wouldn't do that as it would be 'racist', so they left me to suffer. But I didn't let that stop me, I didn't let the abuse and poverty get in my way. Yes, I did become an alcoholic when I was 13 ... was easy to deal with the pain.

Then one day I woke up. I was 16. I decided I was not going to let the past destroy my future.

I swore to myself I would never turn out like my mother, but I did. For 3 brutal years I did ... for 3 brutal years I’d sent my babies away out of danger, so it was only me.

Was it 'racism' that drove the police and DOCS to threaten to take my babies if I didn’t leave?

Was it 'racism' that saw them drag him away so the kids and I could pack and flee?

No, that was humanity, that was addressing the issue. Racism didn't play a part. They didn't see colour ... they saw violence and terror. The only difference is there was no grog, no drugs. He did it because he enjoyed it.

So while you're sitting there with your privilege, screaming about changing the date, I'll be sitting here with no privilege except for what I've given to myself, and I'll be speaking out about the real issues and fighting for justice for myself and for every other child that is a mirror of me.

Personally, I'll keep the date. Some of the good memories I have is from that date.

You see, I spent most Australia Days with my nan ... she'd have BBQs where family and friends would get together and play cricket and laugh. Us kids would play and play ... I never wanted those days to end.

My nan always taught me that it was about unity not division. She taught me not to hate. She told me stories of old, passed down and from her own memories. She taught me not to hate the people of today for the sins of yesterday. My nan was all about love and, without her, I wouldn’t be the strong proud woman I am today.

On Australia Day, celebrate don't hate.

That's all I have to say. I’m getting too upset ... the memories of the past never fade to a living victim, a real victim, but we go on, stronger louder and prouder."

 

Australian of the Year? I know who would get my vote!

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I never got there in 1969 ...

Paul and Leah Waterston, aboard ESCAPE II, sailing to Pigeon Island

 

More than fifty years ago, I very nearly took a not-so-promising job on Pigeon Island - click here. A few years later, I took another job in the Solomons - click here. Much, much later I read Lucy Irvine's book "Faraway".

As I wrote elsewhere, I was sorely tempted to go to Pigeon Island but I was also concerned about my professional career and what "career" would there've been with something called "Pigeon Island Traders" located on one of the remotest islands in the South Pacific? Instead, I accepted another offer from a firm of chartered accountants in the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea - and I have never looked back!

It was not until now, more than fifty years later, that I had my first good look around Pigeon, thanks to Paul and Leah Waterston, an Australian couple, who in 2019 sailed through the Solomons, called in at Pigeon Island, met Ben Hepworth (Leah tells me, after reading my blog they even used my name as a reference), and uploaded this amazing video.

 

Drumming up business for Ben? Why not! He could use it! Click here
(if h4e241a@sailmail.com is hard to reach; try tavakie@gmail.com)
(for a brochure, click here)

 

What a buzz! I immediately messaged Lucy Irvine via her facebook page, giving her the link to the video clip (together with a sizeable donation to her "Lucy Irvine Foundation Europe, LIFE")). It's a small world, isn't it?

Now I need several more hours to go through all those other amazing "Sailing Catamaran Escape" video clips!

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A collection of "Sailing Catamaran Escape" video clips:
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5 Part 1
Episode 5 Part 2
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10
Episode 11
Episode 12
Episode 13
Episode 14
Episode 15
Episode 16
Episode 17
Episode 18
Episode 19
Episode 20
Episode 21
Episode 22
Episode 23
Episode 24
Episode 26
Episode 27
Episode 28
Episode 29
Episode 30
Episode 31
Episode 32 (above video)
Episdoe 33
Episode 34
Episode 35
Episode 36
Episode 37
Episode 38
Episode 39
Episode 40
Episode 41
Episode 42


Episode 43 Part 3
Episode 44
Episode 45
Episode 46
Episode 47
Episode 48
Episode 49
Episode 50
Episode 51
Episode 52
Episode 53
Episode 54
Episode 55
Episode 56
Episode 57

 

The ABC of Life

 

As for your ABC I gave up watching it a long time ago", wrote an old friend from my days in New Guinea who'd just moved up to Cairns. Okay, so that's ABC Television but what about ABC Radio National? I mean, I would've been dead without it a long time ago - well, brain-dead!

What other programmes are there on the radio that could compete with "The Philosopher's Zone", "Rear Vision", "All in the Mind", "Background Briefing", "Big Ideas", "Between the Lines", "Blueprint for Living", and many others? (see here) ABC Radio National is a 24-hour cerebral feast.

A bit like Hitler's "Volksempfänger" (look it up!), all the radios in our house are permanently tuned into ABC Radio National. And if I ever miss something I'm really interested in, there are always the podcasts. And then, at ten past ten, I enjoy my nightcap with Phillip Adams who's just celebrated his thirtieth anniversary of presenting Late Night Live.

I envy my friend his relocation to tropical Cairns, but pity him for missing out on the joys of ABC Radio National. Want me to send you a "Volksempfänger" permanently tuned into ABC Radio National, mate?

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How to celebrate Australia Day

 

There was a time, before the American fast food chains arrived in Australia, when we had locally-made hamburgers "with the lot". The burgers back then included the usual meat patty, cheese, sauce (barbecue or tomato) and for a burger to have "the lot" it had to have beetroot, egg, pineapple and bacon.

The egg was fried and runny and the beetroot and pineapple came straight from the tin. Lettuce, tomato, and onions might be involved, but weren't strictly necessary. The real Aussie burger was made at the local milk bar or fish'n'chip shop and was devoured while drinking a cold milkshake in a tall anodised cup.

It's Australia Day today and I'm going to celebrate with a real Aussie hamburger and a milkshake.

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Not to read it would be un-Australian

Read a preview - or go straight to the audiobook
(how did this audiobook, read by the author, get onto YouTube? Does it infringe
copyright laws? I don't know! But what a ripper it is! Enjoy it while it's there!)

 

 

Girt. No word could better capture the essence of Australia. In this hilarious history, David Hunt reveals the truth of Australia's past, from megafauna to Macquarie - the cock-ups and curiosities, the forgotten eccentrics and Eureka moments that have made us who we are.

Girt introduces forgotten heroes like Mary McLoghlin, transported for the crime of "felony of sock," and Trim the cat, who beat a French monkey to become the first animal to circumnavigate Australia. It recounts the misfortunes of the escaped Irish convicts who set out to walk from Sydney to China, guided only by a hand-drawn paper compass, and explains the role of the coconut in Australia's only military coup.

Our nation's beginnings are steeped in the strange, the ridiculous and the frankly bizarre. Girt and True Girt proudly reclaim these stories for all of us. As the author himself explains, "Girt is a narrative history of Australia from when people first started calling Australia home about 60,000 B.P. (Before Peter Allen) to 1824, when this great continent was formally given its current name. It selectively mines historical facts, ignores inconvenient truths, and is more biased than an unloved billiard table. In short, it is like every other Australian history book. The Herald Sun gave it a lovely review, which ended with the words 'a tad culturally insensitive.' I would like those words on my tombstone, please. I wrote Girt because I wanted to tell stories about Australia’s past through the distorted lens of the present and because I thought I could do that in a way that would make people laugh as they learned. "

 

Read a preview

 

And it's all here for you to read just in time for Australia Day, together with some very interesting audio recordings on ABC's Radio National.

Girt by sea and pissed by lunchtime and off on a long weekend!

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"Your coming here would give me a new lease on life"

The main street of Mount Perry, circa 1956, when it was still in its heydays

 

It is possible, I suppose, to construct hypothetical circumstances in which you would be pleased to find yourself, at the end of a long day, in Mount Perry, Queensland - perhaps something to do with rising sea levels that left it as the only place on earth not under water, or maybe some disfiguring universal contagion from which it alone remained unscathed. In the normal course of events, however, it is unlikely that you would find yourself standing on its lonely main street at six thirty on a warm summer's evening gazing about you in an appreciative manner and thinking: 'Well, thank goodness I'm here!'"

So wrote Bill Bryson in his book "Bill Bryson Down Under" in chapter 12 about Macksville, New South Wales. I took the liberty of quoting from it, only substituting Mount Perry for Macksville, both of which I know, Macksville because an old accountant-friend from my days in New Guinea had opened an office there, doing little more than helping cow cockies fill out unemployment claim forms, and Mount Perry because my best friend, also from my New Guinea days, had settled there sometime in the early 1980s when I was still working in Athens in Greece and started receiving letters from him postmarked "Mount Perry Qld 4671".

That was years before the internet, and I had no way of knowing where Mount Perry was or what it looked like. That eye-opening revelation was left until mid-1985 after I had returned to Australia and, unable to find work in Townsville in Far North Queensland, I moved down to Sydney and visited Mount Perry on my way south. By that time the last traces of some former mining boom had disappeared, the picture show had been closed for years, the local mechanic had just moved to Gin Gin, the only shop in town hardly ever saw a customer, and the post office which had postmarked all those letters seemed on the verge of closing. In fact, my friend who waited for me in town to guide me to his lonely plot of land, had parked in front of it, and his was the only car in the main street.

He'd sent me this photo while I was still working in Greece and after he'd just bought himself this small prefab on a five-acre plot. It was the sort of place where you went when you had little money and life hadn't been too good to you and you needed time to lick your wounds.

 

Noel's prefab on his five-acre plot. As he wrote on the back,
"It's as isolated as it looks, but plenty of crows and wallabies for company"

 

Following my return to Australia due to a misdiagnosed case of home-sickness, life hadn't been too good to me either, and I was also licking my wounds in Sydney when my best friend invited me to join him at Mt Perry. "Your coming here would give me a new lease on life" he wrote - words from a quiet, lonely man who had sought a refuge and become stranded. He had stayed away too long, and everyone had forgotten him. It was the nearest he'd ever come to admitting that his own home-coming after a lifetime in New Guinea hadn't worked out the way he'd hoped, and he was feeling lonely and in need of like-minded company.

My friend's cri de coeur - for that is what it was - never quite registered because, while I'd experienced my own bouts of loneliness which had always been cut short by the excitement of forever chasing work around the world, I still had another twenty-five years of work ahead of me.

As so often happens, the story had a happy ending for both of us: I left Sydney for Canberra where I was able to establish my own practice, and Noel could sell his isolated plot with "plenty of crows and wallabies for company" and resettle on the edge of Childers, within walking distance of shops and pubs and medical facilities, where I revisited him in 1990 to spend our last Christmas together before he passed away in 1995.

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P.S. So much has changed at Mt Perry since Noel left in 1986: the old gold mine reopened, the old cinema was restored to a motel and restaurant, and that bit of a cow paddock across the dirt road from Noel's old place is now a fully-fledged golf club. Why, they now even have their own Mount Perry Visitors Guide! Noel would have loved it!

P.P.S. And this is how Noel's place looks today: click here. How Noel would've loved to see these photos!

 

The poem of my life

 

A young man hiking through a forest is abruptly confronted with a fork in the path. He pauses, his hands in his pockets, and looks back and forth between his options. As he hesitates, images from possible futures flicker past.

Images of the young man wading into the ocean, hitchhiking, riding a bus, kissing a beautiful woman, working, laughing, eating, running, weeping. The series resolves at last into a view of a different young man, with his thumb out on the side of a road. As a car slows to pick him up, we realise the driver is the original man from the crossroads, only now he's accompanied by a lovely woman and a child. The man smiles slightly, as if confident in the life he's chosen and happy to lend that confidence to a fellow traveller. As the car pulls away and the screen is lit with gold — for it's a commercial we've been watching — the emblem of the Ford Motor Company briefly appears.

The advertisement I've just described ran in New Zealand in 2008. And it is, in most respects, a normal piece of smartly assembled and quietly manipulative product promotion. But there is one very unusual aspect to this commercial. Here is what is read by a voice-over artist, in the distinctive vowels of New Zealand, as the young man ponders his choice:

It is, of course, "The Road Not Taken" - routinely misidentified as "The Road Less Traveled" - by Robert Frost. In the commercial, this fact is never announced; the audience is expected to recognise the poem unaided. For any mass audience to recognise any poem is (to put it mildly) unusual. For an audience of car buyers in New Zealand to recognise a hundred-year-old poem from a country eight thousand miles away is something else entirely.

But this isn't just any poem. It's "The Road Not Taken", and it plays a unique role not simply in American literature, but in American culture — and in world culture as well. Its signature phrases have become so ubiquitous, so much a part of everything from coffee mugs to refrigerator magnets to graduation speeches, that it's almost possible to forget the poem is actually a poem.

A poem which almost everyone gets wrong. This is the most remarkable thing about "The Road Not Taken" — not its immense popularity (which is remarkable enough), but the fact that it is popular for what seem to be the wrong reasons. It’s worth pausing here to underscore a truth so obvious that it is often taken for granted: Most widely celebrated artistic projects are known for being essentially what they purport to be. When we play "White Christmas" in December, we correctly assume that it’s a song about memory and longing centered around the image of snow falling at Christmas. When we read Joyce’s Ulysses, we correctly assume that it’s a complex story about a journey around Dublin as filtered through many voices and styles. A cultural offering may be simple or complex, cooked or raw, but its audience nearly always knows what kind of dish is being served.

Frost's poem turns this expectation on its head. Most readers consider "The Road Not Taken" to be a paean to triumphant self-assertion ("I took the one less traveled by"), but the literal meaning of the poem's own lines seems completely at odds with this interpretation. The poem's speaker tells us he "shall be telling," at some point in the future, of how he took the road less travelled by, yet he has already admitted that the two paths "equally lay / In leaves" and "the passing there / Had worn them really about the same." The road he will later call less travelled is actually the road equally travelled. The two roads are interchangeable.

According to this reading, then, the speaker will be claiming "ages and ages hence" that his decision made "all the difference" only because this is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices (as opposed to what was chosen for us or allotted to us by chance). The poem isn't a salute to can-do individualism; it's a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.

With so many forks in my path, with so many opportunities gained and lost, with some fifty job relocations across fifteen countries, "The Road Not Taken" became my favourite poem ever since I discovered it ages and ages ago. During all this time it served me as a means of my self-deception before becoming the source of all my regrets as well as my comfort in old age. It's the poem of my life. Thank you, Robert Frost.

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Happy Australia Day!

The Founding of Australia. By Capt Arthur Phillip RN Sydney Cove, Jan 26th 1788
This preparatory oil sketch for a much larger historical recreation of the First Fleet’s first day in Sydney Cove was painted by minor British impressionist Algernon Talmage. It was commissioned by the founder of the Australasian Pioneers Club to celebrate the sesquicentenary of 1938. The finished painting was unveiled at the Royal Academy of the Arts exhibition in London in 1937. The painting depicts the moment Governor Phillip (in the centre of the painting) proposed a toast to King George III, on the evening of 26 January 1788, the day that the Fleet moved from Botany Bay to Sydney Cove.

 

In 1770 Captain Cook stood at a place which he named Botany Bay, after which he ran disastrously aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and finally, after making some urgent repairs, rounded the northernmost tip of the continent at Cape York.

On the evening of 21 August, almost as an afterthought, he stepped ashore at a place he called Possession Island, planted a flag and claimed the east coast for Great Britain.

Only seventeen years later, in May 1787, Captain Arthur Phillip set sail from Portsmouth at the head of a squadron of eleven ships - known reverentially ever after as the First Fleet - to start a colony in a preposterously remote, virtually unknown place that had been visited just once, briefly, and had not seen a European face since. After eight months they arrived at Botany Bay, which wasn't quite the kindly refuge they had been led to expect. Its exposed position made it a dangerous anchorage, and a foray ashore found nothing but sandflies and marsh.

To quote from Bill Bryson's highly entertaining book "Bill Bryson Down Under", "As they stood surveying their unhappy situation, there happened one of those coincidences in which Australian history abounds. On the easter horizon two ships appeared and joined them in the bay. They were in the command of an amiable Frenchman, Count Jean-François de La Pérouse, who was leading a two-year journey of exploration around the Pacific. Had La Pérouse been just a little faster, he could have claimed Australia for France amd saved the country 200 years of English cooking. Instead, he accepted his unlucky timing with the grace that marked the age. La Pérouse's expression when it was explained to him that Phillip and his crew had just sailed 15,000 miles to make a prison for people who had stolen lace and ribbons, some cucumber plants and a book on Tobago [don't ask; go to page 51 of the book], must have been one of the great looks in history, but alas there is no record of it. In any case, after an uneventful rest at Botany Bay, he departed, never to be seen again. Soon afterwards his two ships and all aboard were lost in a storm off the New Hebrides.

Meanwhile, Phillip, seeking a more amenable location, sailed up the coast to another inlet, which Cook had noted but not explored, and ventured through the sandstone heads that form its mouth. There he discovered one of the great harbours of the world. At the point where Circular Quay now stands, he anchored his ships and started a city. It was 26 January 1788. The date would live for ever as Australia Day."

I think Australians ought to be extremely proud that from the most awkwardly unpropitious beginnings, in a remote and challenging place, they created a prosperous and dynamic society. That is exceedingly good going. So what if dear old gramps was a bit of a sticky-fingered felon in his youth? Look what he left behind.

Happy Australia Day!

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P.S. As Mark Twain (who was not an Australian!) once said, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story", but 26 January became Australia Day because on that day in 1949 the Australian Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 was enacted and Australians could call temselves Australians and were allowed to travel with passports calling them Australians. Before that special day, all people living in Australia, including Aborigines born after 1921, were called 'British Subjects' and travelled on British passports. We all became Australians on the same day which is why we celebrate Australia Day on the same day! click here.

 

More on Trump

 

I know I did say "The last few words on Trump and on America - the less said, the better", but these are too good to keep back:

 

 

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Just another day in Paradise!

Click on image for close-up

 

This bend in the river is always popular with boaties who want to spend a quiet night on the river and wake up to dazzling sunshine in the morning, and this cute little cabin cruiser, built in wood along traditional lines, was no exception.

By the time I had cooked the porridge and had my breakfast on the jetty, he'd upped anchor again, and I was left in my little piece of paradise in total solitude as Padma had also gone shopping in the Bay.

I did my own "shopping" after last week's big sell-down. Pity I hadn't done a complete sell-off because today BHP is down as low as $45.25. I bought back in again to cover myself after Goldman Sachs had raised its target to $48.70. The broker says that "BHP’s portfolio is in a very strong position" and forecasts a "circa 65% increase in EBITDA and doubling of free cash flow (FCF) in FY21". That's good enough for me.

And so the day unfolds, as the sharemarket goes up and down and then up again, and the river ebbs and flows and ebbs again. Quite soon it's lunchtime which is followed by an afternoon nap which is followed by afternoon tea which is followed by dinner. Just another day in Paradise!

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P.S. but wait ... there's more: click here.

 

Will this time be different?

 

At a time when the world is at a crisis point, what with coronavirus, mounting conflict between America and the new superpower China, and - dare I say it? - climate change, you could be forgiven to think that the world's stockmarkets are in decline. You couldn't be more wrong!

Almost every day, both here and in the United States and around the world, the markets reach new highs. Once before I sold out completely. That was in the middle of last year, and I missed out on another big upswing. I bought back in again later, but again have sold down now (but not out), even though I may again miss out on another big upswing.

At a time when I suffer from too much age-induced insomnia already, I don't want to add to it by being exposed to too much of a financial risk.

Will a new boom sweep clean? Will this time be different?

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P.S. But wait ... there's more! click here. And there's plenty of literature on the subject, too - click here (to read the books online, SIGN UP - it's free!, then LOG IN and BORROW).

 

Where is Steve Gates now?

Steve arriving at Gizo in the Solomons in November 2011. Note the "PT 109 Gizo Yacht Club", named after the torpedo boat skippered by JF Kennedy which sank off Gizo during WWII

 

I first heard of Steve Gates, owner and captain of the Searunner 37 trimaran Manu-O-Ku, when I became involved with Villa Mamana on the tiny island of Telekivava'u in Tonga through its previous owners Joe Altenhein and Matt Muirhead - see here.

Steve had lived in Hawaii for 31 years, raised two children, and been building one-off epoxy composite boats in his own "Tradewind Island Boatworks" (a long name for a small company), before sailing to Tonga in late 2003 to become the paid caretaker of the very remote 40-acre private island of Telekivava'u in the remote island group of Ha’apai.

 

Sunset over the lagoon on Telekivava'u, August 2005

Steve's trimaran Manu-O-Ku anchored off Telekivava'u

 

Think of spending whole weeks at a time totally alone on an idyllic, pristine island with your yacht anchored in the lagoon ... no wonder, Steve sat it out for a whole three years. It was a wonderful lifestyle but, as he said, "security is overrated, and the nomadic lifestyle was calling ...", and so he sailed north to the Vava’u Group where he ran a charter business for the next 4½ years.

 

Guests' comments: "Looking for a great sailing experience ... we found a PARADISE and also a lovely friend! We went to Vava'u for a sailing trip to celebrate our honeymoon from 7th Oct to 11th Oct 2008. We chartered with Manu-O-Ku in the Vava’u groups and we had a fabulous experience! The islands are just what you want in a South Pacific island - crowned with palms, totally covered with beautiful foliage, and most are uninhabited. We swam, snorkeled, visited uninhabited islands, explored caves, enjoyed coconuts fresh off the tree. The azure waters were as warm as the welcome received by Captain Steve."

Steve Gates made this video clip on Telekivava'u in Tonga in 2005. As the island's previous owner, Matt Muirhead, wrote, "It was bittersweet to watch the video, knowing each tree intimately, but I'm a changed and better man for having had the experience."

 

For nearly eight years Tonga gave him an incredibly comfortable life which he lived "one moment at a time" and which he found very hard to leave. However, he did so finally in June 2011, first sailing back to the Ha’apai Group for a week to revisit the remote island he had lived on for three years, and then singlehandedly to Savusavu in Fiji where he arrived on July 1, 2011. On to Vanuatu in September, then the Solomon Islands in November. In February 2012 he made the 2000 nm passage to Palau in western Micronesia before finally arriving in the Philippines on New Year’s Eve 2012.

 

 

His trimaran is his only home. As he writes, "This lifestyle works for me, a nomadic self-reliant lifestyle, on the oceans, among islands, sailing your home, wandering the world yet sleeping in your own bed." Joe Altenhein, the creator of Villa Mamana on Telekivava'u, described Steve as "a nice man, doing what I wish I could do" --- and so think all of us.

 

 

He's been in the Philippines ever since, running his charter business "Manu-O-Ku Sailing Adventures" out of Port Barton, one of the last few untouched gems of the Philippines. It's a 45-minute flight from Manila to Puerto Princesa, and from there an easy ride to Port Barton, a sleepy fishing village, unspoiled and authentic, where life goes at its own pace and which Steve is in no hurry to leave. The nearest I myself ever got to Palawan was Boracay and, oh boy, am I itching to go again!

 

 

All that's been a few years ago. He was last heard offering sailing charters among the beautiful islands of El Nido and Coron in Palawan Province in May 2017. Since then, his website has gone off the air (although there's still an archived copy here). So where's Steve now?

Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S.
In memory of VILLA MAMANA
The story of Villa Mamana may turn grizzly
The end of an exquisite daydream
Eine Insel nur für uns