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Islands have long held a deep, abiding fascination. Everyone who has grappled with getting along with their fellow human being understands the phrase ‘can’t live with them, can’t live without them’. Everyone has at some time mused on what life would be like on a remote deserted island, alone with only the sound of the gentle wash against the sunbleached sands.
Perhaps it’s because so few have dared make this daydream a reality that such men as Tom Neale and his book An Island to Oneself take on an almost mythical role in our collective consciousness, as though they carry upon their shoulders all our yearnings for a simple, solitary life in tune with the tides of nature.
This is how he starts his story: "I was fifty when I went to live alone on Suvarov, after thirty years of roaming the Pacific, and in this story I will try to describe my feelings, try to put into words what was, for me, the most remarkable and worthwhile experience of my whole life."
Despite his long stretches of solitary living, Tom claimed he never felt lonely. The few times he wished someone was with him, he wrote in his memoirs, were "not because I wanted company but just because all this beauty seemed too perfect to keep to myself."
Tom Neale's book still fires the imaginations of all those who have dreamt of a simple life of solitude on a remote deserted island. It may be true that no man is an island, but it is also true that many a man has desperately wished it were so.
Tom left his beloved island in December 1963. As he writes in the postscript to his book:
"I realised I was getting on, and the prospect of a lonely death did not particularly appeal to me. I wasn't being sentimental about it, but the time had come to wake up from an exquisite dream before it turned into a nightmare. I might have lingered on the island for a few more years, but soon after the Vesseys left, a party of eleven pearl divers descended on Suvarov - and, frankly, turned my heaven into hell. They were happy-go-lucky Manihiki natives, and I didn't dislike them, but their untidiness, noise, and close proximity were enough to dispel any wavering doubts I might have had. Then, when I heard that more natives might be coming to dive for a couple of months each year in the lagoon, I resolved to leave with the divers. I did so - and I have not regretted the decision. I am back in Raro now, and you know, having proved my point - that I could make a go of it on a desert island and be happy alone - store-keeping doesn't after all seem such a monotonous job as it did in the years before 1952. I have a wealth of memories that no man can take away from me and which I have enjoyed recalling in these pages. I hope you have enjoyed them too".
That's where the book ends but not Tom's fascination with his island to which he returned a third time, in June 1967, to remain there for ten more years until a visiting yacht, the "Feisty Lady", informed Rarotonga that Tom is seriously ill. The schooner "Manuvai" evacuated him from the island in March 1977.
He died on this day 44 years ago in Rarotonga where he lies buried at the RSL Cemetery. I leave the last words to Tom: "I chose to live in the Pacific Islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally, when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking ..."
