Tom Neale was a New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

er who spent much of his life in the Cook Islands

Cook Islands

The Cook Islands is a self-governing parliamentary democracy in the South Pacific Ocean in free association with New Zealand...

 and 16 years in three sessions living alone on the island of Anchorage in the Suwarrow

Suwarrow

Suwarrow is a low coral atoll in the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It is about 1,300 km south of the equator and 930 km NNW of Rarotonga, from which it is administered....

 atoll, which was the basis of his popular autobiography.

Early life

Thomas Francis Neale was born in Wellington

Wellington

Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...

, New Zealand, but moved to Greymouth

Greymouth

Greymouth is the largest town in the West Coast region in the South Island of New Zealand, and the seat of the Grey District Council. The population of the whole Grey District is , which accounts for % of the West Coast's inhabitants...

 while still a baby and then to Timaru

Timaru

TimaruUrban AreaPopulation:27,200Extent:Former Timaru City CouncilTerritorial AuthorityName:Timaru District CouncilPopulation:42,867 Land area:2,736.54 km² Mayor:Janie AnnearWebsite:...

 at the age of seven. His parents were Frank Frederick Neale and Emma Sarah Neale (née Chapman). He decided to join the Royal New Zealand Navy

Royal New Zealand Navy

The Royal New Zealand Navy is the maritime arm of the New Zealand Defence Force...

 as a young man, but at 18 was too old to become an apprentice seaman, and signed on as an apprentice engineer instead. For the next four years, Neale travelled through the Pacific Islands on Navy ships, before buying his way out of the Navy to have greater freedom to see the islands for himself. He spent the next six years wandering from island to island, taking short term jobs on inter-island trade ships, clearing bush or planting bananas.

After a few months back in Timaru in 1928, Neale returned to the Pacific and settled in Moorea

Moorea

Moʻorea is a high island in French Polynesia, part of the Society Islands, 17 km northwest of Tahiti. Its position is . Moʻorea means "yellow lizard" in Tahitian...

, Tahiti

Tahiti

Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...

 until 1943, supporting himself with odd jobs and enjoying a private life. He was then offered a job as a relieving storekeeper in the Cook Islands; a job which involved running small shops in various islands while their normal keepers were on leave. As storekeeper he was also an advisor to the local communities. He met with the author Robert Dean Frisbie

Robert Dean Frisbie

Robert Dean Frisbie was an American writer of travel literature about Polynesia.-Life:...

 in Rarotonga

Rarotonga

Rarotonga is the most populous island of the Cook Islands, with a population of 14,153 , out of the country's total population of 19,569.The Cook Islands' Parliament buildings and international airport are on Rarotonga...

, and was entranced by his tales of the atoll of Suwarrow, where Frisbie had lived briefly. In 1945, Neale had the opportunity to visit Suwarrow briefly when a ship dropped in stores for the World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 coast-watchers living there. He decided that this was the place he wanted to live.

First stay on Suwarrow

It wasn't until October 1952 that he had an opportunity to book a passage on a ship passing close to Suwarrow, now uninhabited since the end of the war. The boat dropped him off with two cats and all the supplies he could scrape together on the islet of Anchorage, about a mile long and a few hundred feet wide. Neale had a hut with water tanks, some books and a badly damaged boat left over from the coast watchers. They had also left wild pigs and chickens on the atoll. The pigs were a liability as they destroyed vegetation and made planting a garden impossible. Neale built a hunting stand in a tree and speared the pigs over the course of several months. He planted a garden, domesticated the chickens, and repaired the boat. For the most part he lived on fish, crayfish, chicken, eggs, paw-paw, coconut and breadfruit.

Ten months after arriving at Suwarrow, Neale had his first visitors: two couples on a yacht, who had been advised of Neale's existence by the British Consul in Tahiti and asked to call in to check up on him. They stayed a couple of nights. The visitors gave Neale a new plan: to rebuild the pier which had been built on Anchorage during the Second World War, but which had been wrecked during a hurricane in 1942. It took six months of hard labour. Neale celebrated the end of the job by taking a day off. Within 24 hours, his barometer started dropping, and a major storm hit the islet. The following morning, the pier was gone.

According to his autobiography, in May 1954, over three months after the storm, Neale was on the other side of the atoll in his boat when he threw his anchor overboard, putting his back out. In agonising pain, he managed to make his way back to his hut where he lay semi-paralysed for four days. A couple of people on a yacht called in, not knowing of his existence, discovered him in pain and were able to nurse him back to health. When they left, they promised to send a ship back to collect him, and two weeks later, a ship sent by the Cook Islands government arrived to take him back to Rarotonga. According to Helm and Percival, Neale returned to Rarotonga in July 1954. The problem with his back occurred a couple of months after he went back to Suwarrow in 1956. Although Neale thought at the time his back problem was a slipped disc, it was actually arthritis.

Second stay

Neale wished to return to Suwarrow once his back was fully healed, but the government didn't want the responsibility for him. He married Sarah Haua (born c.1924) on June 15, 1956. They had two children, Arthur and Stella.

Only in March-April 1960 was he able to return to the atoll, this time with more provisions, having learned what were necessities from his previous stay. This time, he stayed for three and a half years before deciding voluntarily to leave in January 1964. During this stay, one of his visitors was by helicopter from a passing American warship; the helicopter could only stay half an hour before the ship was out of range.

Noel Barber

Noel Barber

Noel Barber was a British novelist and journalist. Many of his novels, considered exotic, are about his experiences as leading foreign correspondent for the Daily Mail. He had two brothers, Kenneth, a banker and Anthony Barber, Baron Barber.Most notably he reported from Morocco, where he was...

, a British author, heard of Neale's life on the island from a report by the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 and paid him a visit. Fourteen months later, his next visit was from an old friend from Rarotonga, who had heard rumours that he had died. Many months later another yacht called in, with a couple and their daughter. A squall hit the lagoon that night, the yacht's anchoring cable parted, and she foundered on a reef. Neale had the three castaways as guests for a couple of months. The castaways managed to signal to a passing ship with a mirror, and were rescued.

Neale decided after this to return to Rarotonga. This decision was due in part to a group of pearl divers

Pearl hunting

Pearl hunting or pearl diving refers to a largely obsolete method of retrieving pearls from pearl oysters, freshwater pearl mussels and, on rare occasions, other nacre-producing molluscs, such as abalone.-History:...

 who paid periodic visits to Suwarrow; he had found their presence increasingly hard to tolerate.

His autobiography, An Island to Oneself, was written with assistance from Noel Barber, who wrote an introduction to it, and deals with Tom's life up to his second departure from Suwarrow. The autobiography sold well and allowed Neale to fund a much greater store of provisions for his next stay.

Third stay

Neale returned to the atoll in June 1967. In 1964, while Neale was in Rarotonga, June von Donop, a former accountant from Honolulu, lived alone in his house on Suwarrow for a week, while her crewmates on the schooner Europe stayed on board their vessel. In 1965-66 Michael Swift lived alone on Suwarrow, but he was not familiar with survival techniques and had a hard time finding sufficient food. Many other visitors to the island during Neale's absence (one of them Chögyam Trungpa

Chögyam Trungpa

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the eleventh Trungpa tülku, a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of a radical re-presentation of Shambhala vision.Recognized...

's former student P. Howard Useche) had left messages for him.

Neale stayed there until 1977, when he was found ill with stomach cancer by a yacht and taken to Rarotonga. After treatment by Milan Brych

Milan Brych

Milan Brych is a controversial Czech-born cancer therapist.Born in 1939, Brych fled the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and arrived in New Zealand as a refugee. Claiming to have medical professional qualifications, Brych commenced work as a medical practitioner...

, he died eight months later. His grave is in the RSA cemetery on Rarotonga, opposite the airport.

Footnotes

1. . Neale's gravestone gives his dates of birth and death as November 2, 1902-November 29, 1977. His death certificate gives his death date as November 30. His daughter says the correct figures are November 6 and November 27.