I just finished “An Island to Oneself” by Tom Neale. It’s an interesting story of one mans time alone (for the most part) on an island in the Pacific.

Tom started out as a sailor with the New Zealand navy, then lived for a while on a number of small islands in the area. At 50 (!) he decided to “chuck it all” and live on a deserted island. (I know how he feels, though it’s not quite deserted down here.)

He lived there from 1950-53, then back in the earlier 60′s, and finally in the late 70′s (altogether about 12 years, I think, though the books covers the first two visits only).

Unfortunately, the book is out of print, though the copyright ran out in 2001. Right now, it’s hard to find an etext of it, since Tom’s daughter is trying to get the copyright renewed and republish the book. For now, you can find a good HTML version at An Island To Oneself. Once the book is back in print again, I plan on picking up a copy.

One of Tom’s inspirations was the south seas author Robert Dean Frisbie. He wrote a number of books, all out of print. (I checked on getting a used copy–it’s running in the $1500 range!) I’m currently reading “My Tahiti” which can be found at My Tahiti.

How did I originally find out about these guys? Well, I was looking through the Boing Boing blog and discovered that the author, Mark Frauenfelder, moved to Rarotonga in 2003 with his wife and two (very) young children. They planned to stay a year, but sickness caused them to come back to the US after 5 months.

Unfortunately, there are huge chunks missing in his photo blogs (one minute they are there–then a month passes and they are back in LA). The text dispatches they did for the LAWeekley are also hard to find and very sketchy. The site indicates that they are working on a book, but I haven’t seen anything recently.

Rule of thumb: If you are going to move to a far away place, do not have young children. I think they could have made it as a couple, but making such a big leap with a newborn and her very young sister made things especially difficult.

Rule of thumb #2: If you want to move far-far away, start with something easier. It’s way too hard to make a leap from places like Chicago or LA to places that don’t have reliable power, healthcare, etc. Trust me. I’ve heard lots of stories.

Best to take it in steps, kinda like we are doing. First go to somewhere that’s tropical, but still has pretty much everything you need close buy. Then move out from there once you get used to things. For example, one person we know started out in the US, moved to PR, then to Vieques, and now wants to move to the Dominician Republic. Each step being a bit more off the beaten path. (Of course, he’s a bit of a hermit, but more in a Tom Neale way [Tom liked people] than in a hermit in a cave way.)