At last we came among the Coral Islands of the Pacific and I shall never forget the delight with which I gazed at the pure, white, dazzling shores, and the verdant palm trees, which looked bright and beautiful in the sunshine. And often did we three long to be landed on one, imagining that we should certainly find perfect happiness there!"
"The Coral Island" by R. M. Ballantyne is a book I read in its German translation, "Die Koralleninsel", when I was a young boy. It changed the course of my life by opening up a world of travel and adventure. I visualised myself living in a tropical paradise, eating coconuts and having amazing adventures from which I always emerged victorious.
I knew from a very young age that I wanted to go there, but it took me another fifteen years to realise my dreams when, in the dying days of 1969, I flew from Australia to New Guinea to take up the rather prosaic employment of audit clerk in a firm of chartered accountants in Rabaul.
The years that followed gave me many adventures on Bougainville Island, in the Sepik District, and the country's capital Port Moresby, followed by employment in the Solomon Islands and Western Samoa, even though not all was "pure, white, dazzling shores, and verdant palm trees", but often more like William Golding's "Lord of the Flies".
The last time I was in the islands was in 1982 which is a lifetime ago. I have since settled in the 'Deep South', and while sometimes I still hanker for the islands, the past is exactly that and the present is what it is.
