One of my many regrets is not having stayed longer on Thursday Island. The year was 1977 and I had come down from New Guinea to work as an accountant on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait in Far North Queensland.
I've always been drawn to remote and isolated places, and there were few as remote and isolated as Thursday Island. The location suited me perfectly and I should've been set for at least a couple of years before ambition and wanderlust would've got the better of me again.
However, I was working under the dick-tatorship of a former missionary-type who, having discovered the difference between a debit and a credit, had passed himself off as an accountant and then became the manager - and my boss - of what was then the Island Industries Board.
Had it not been for his reign of terror, I might have stayed longer, much longer, maybe even forever, as, according to 'Banjo' Paterson's "Thirsty Island", 'the heat, the thirst, the beer, and the Islanders may be trusted to do the rest.'
Of course, professionally speaking, I would have signed my own death warrant because Thursday Island was a dead-end, whereas I went on to bigger and better jobs in the Solomons (again!), Samoa, Malaysia, Australia, New Guinea (again and again!), Saudi Arabia, Greece ...
It was a case of Thursday Island versus the World, and the world won!
