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. 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."
So begin's Tom Neale's book "An Island to Oneself", in which he tells of his years spent on Suwarrov Island, so utterly remote you have to be really lost to find it. But even there he occasionally needed to escape from the humdrum of everyday existence by taking a trip to Motu Tuo:
"I felt no guilt when I took a day off. Now that I had a really sturdy boat, this temptation was much greater. I began to make periodic excursions to all the tiny islets in the lagoon, and on one good day, with the wind in the right quarter, I actually covered the six miles to Motu Tuo, in two hours. Once there, the weather seemed so perfect that on an impulse I decided to remain on the islet for the night.
Though I am quite used to sleeping outside, a sudden thought now struck me. Robinson Crusoe had built himself a secondary residence some miles away from his stockade. Why shouldn't I do the same? What was to stop me having a "summer house" on Motu Tuo, so that, if I ever felt bored, I could sail or row over for a change of scenery?
I was seized with enthusiasm and spent all day building a rough lean-to out of coconut fronds. Then I speared some ku, picked some wild paw-paw and cooked supper of grilled fish and baked fruit on the beach in front of my new house, washing it down with coconut water in place of my usual cup of tea.
Only one minor incident ruined this idyllic expedition. I woke with a yell in the middle of the night as a sudden pain transfixed my leg so violently that it felt as though my calf had been slashed open with a knife. There was no moon, and I was without a lamp, but as instinctively I bent down to touch my leg I felt the sicky wetness of blood in the darkness and became aware of something moving and shuffling close beside my hand.
I had forgotten those damned coconut crabs! The cruel nip didn't appear to have done any serious damage, but I got no more sleep that night after washing my wound in salt water. And on my next trip to Motu Tuo, in self preservation, I took a saw, hammer and nails and made myself a bunk, from odd bits of driftwood.
Over the months (though I worked only when I felt so inclined) my shack on Motu Tuo became quite comfortable. It never had the permanence of my home on Anchorage, but I rigged up some shelves for crockery and pots and pans which I kept there, together with a spare hurricane lamp, some kerosene and two boxes of matches, each sealed in separate water-tight tins - a precaution I took in case I got doused when sailing over. On one occasion I stayed there a week, taking with me some more tools, and built a more permanent bed, and then re-thatched the roof and walls with pandanus which, if well done, will outlast coconut thatching by many years. I laid in a big stock of firewood and built a rough but serviceable cook-house just behind the shack. The only drawback was the complete lack of water which I needed for my evening cup of tea on the beach. The trouble was, I had nothing to serve as a receptacle in which I could store the rain, and though I toyed with the idea of scouring out an old oil drum and taking it over, I discarded the plan because I didn't relish the thought of drinking water which might have been uncovered for a month between my visits. In the end I compromised and carried bottles of water over each time I made the trip.
I loved my little excursions to Motu Tuo, for though it was not as beautiful as "my" island, it was surprising how pleasant a change of scenery could be.
Moto Tuo, where Frisbie had once jokingly suggested I should live, was almost as large as Anchorage, but the other islet like One Tree (where my back had seized up) and Brushwood were so small that I seldom visited them except for my brief trips in search of valuable flotsam.
And so time seemed almost to float on from week to week so effortlessly that had I not faithfully entered up my journal every evening, I could hardly have believed six months had already passed.
They were months which had seen great changes. The garden was now flourishing, I had pollinated the blossoms, re-thatched the veranda roof and repainted the inside of the shack. The fowl population had multiplied, the coconut crabs had been killed off. But during all that time I had never once seen a sail on the horizon, nor an aircraft overhead. I had been utterly alone, and utterly content."
We should all be so lucky that we love our place in the world so much.
