All my life I have had an inexplicable fascination for islands, the smaller the better, the sort where one can stand at a particular point and view the sea in every direction. Such a place was Legendre Island off the North West coast of Australia. Legendre was and is, small, barren and uninhabited. I lived there alone for two months in the nineteen seventies.

                        At the age of twenty one, I set off for Australia, a ten pound pom with no idea what to do on arrival. After a month of trying various jobs, none of which I was any good at. I answered an advert in the classifieds, within a week I was on a plane to the Pilbarra region of Western Australia, nine hundred miles from Perth with little if anything between the two.

                        This was the time when the region was being developed; construction was taking place at a frenetic rate, building the mines, townships, railways and ports. This was the Klondike of the twentieth century.

                        It was here that I learned the art of concrete, which was to remain the work staple of my life. This was also the place where I experienced the first of those ludicrously improbable incidents with which my existence has been littered.

                        Life in the Pilbarra was tough, twelve hours a day, six days a week, but, on the seventh day we boated. Everyone owned or knew someone who owned a boat, and come Sunday we would be off to the islands. The Dampier Archipelago is a series of uninhabited islands, pristine and untouched, each one surrounded by white sandy beaches, as for the sea, it is an intense turquoise colour with an incredible clarity, one can see right down to the sea bed, a distance of forty or so feet.

                        All work and one day off a week was not my preferred career option, I was starting to get restless. Something had to give, and it would have to be the job, gainful employment is all very well, but it does not do to let it dominate ones existence, this is where Legendre Island comes into the tale.

                        I decided to go and live on an island, alone. Legendre was my destination of choice. It was about fourteen miles from the mainland, one and a half miles long and shaped like a Bronze Age axe head, tapering to a narrow spit of sand. The first thing I needed was a boat, I purchased a dinghy approximately the size of a bath tub, then it was off to Robinson Maybery land.

                        Obviously my boat was not up to negotiating the distance between the mainland and what I had already made up my mind was paradise, fortunately, one of my friends, who was working hard at becoming as daft as I was, owned a boat with an outboard motor. David towed me out to Legendre. Take it from me, laying in the bottom of a small dinghy, clutching the sides while being bounced up and down, is no gentle experience. By the time we got to the island I as black and blue.

                        We unloaded the boat, nothing fancy, potatoes, onions, noodles, a pot and a primus stove plus some bedding. That accomplished, David returned to the mainland, promising to come back in two weeks with more of the same. By this time I was too weary to do anything other than sleep. I put an aluminium sheet on the beach, this was my damp course, and on that went the sleeping bag with me in it. Thus ended my first day.

                        The effects of total isolation were almost immediate, on awakening, I noticed tracks in the sand around the groundsheet. Snakes. Now if there is one constant in my life, it is an absolute, petrifying fear of snakes, back in England I would not ever walk through a field for fear of encountering reptiles, and here I was surrounded by physical evidence of some of the most venomous creatures on the planet. Strangely, the sight of these tracks did not worry me, for the first and only time in my life, my fear of reptiles was in abeyance. It was as if I had acquired an acceptance that the snakes and I were sharing this desolate spit of land, and we would respect each other. Here I was not living with nature, I had become an integral part of it.

                        Mobile phones had yet to be invented, there was no communication with the outside world, it was solitude, pure and unadulterated, I had never been so happy in all my life. Here, there was the freedom to do exactly as I pleased within the confines of my little realm without reference to any other being.

                        I rapidly came to know this cosy world intimately, roaming the beaches and interior completely naked, there was no point in wearing clothes as they would only get dirty and there was no means of washing them. My basic supplies were supplemented by fish, lobster being my favourite. At the wide end of the island were a series of ponds, these were exposed at low tide. At night I would go to the ponds with a spear and a Tilly lamp, the crustaceans would be attracted by the light, then all one had to do was  on of the creatures and take it back to the campsite for dinner, believe me, it tastes different to the lobsters served up in fancy London restaurants.

                        I cannot write this without mentioning Percy. Now, Percy was a Galloping Goanna, a giant lizard, he was about four feet long. I first encountered him as he was pinching my grub, an activity he so enjoyed that he made a regular practice of it. We became quite friendly; I did not begrudge Perce his share of my spuds, after all, I could go fishing, he could not. There was no water on the island, but I countered this deficit with an old bush trick. Dig a hole about three foot square and three deep, place a pot in the bottom, cover the hole with polythene, seal the edges and place a stone in the centre of the polythene. As the temperature drops during the night, the condensation gathers in the pot, giving enough water to live on.

                        One commodity I had in abundance was books. I can live without many things, but not books, those I must have. One of the volumes I took with me was a biography of Palmerston, a very interesting read, but it had one unfortunate consequence for me. The book described Palmerston’s favourite breakfast as being mutton chops and Port wine. For nearly two weeks I was driven nearly crazy, lusting after the noble lords preferred breakie. Well, you can’t have paradise and Port wine. On the subject of books, I intended to address what I felt to be a yawning gap in English literature, a volume penned by yours truly. I had brought plenty of paper with me, but I was so busy telling myself what a brilliant writer I was going to be that never found the time to actually do any.

                        Walking along the beach one morning, I saw a boat on the horizon, this would be David and the girls coming out for one of their periodic visits. I put some clothes on, after all, it is frightfully common to receives one’s guests while buck naked, it’s just not the done thing. Unfortunately, the girls had to work that day, so it was just David and Harry. David would return and come back with the girls the following day, Harry would remain with me, he had brought with him the last of the moonshine which I had stockpiled in the bike shed back on the mainland.

                        A night on the moonshine has predictable results. Harry and I awoke with stupendous hangovers, and if that was not bad enough, a storm had brewed up, the seas were heaving and the wind made life on the beach distinctly uncomfortable. Harry and I concluded that not even David would be lunatic enough to take a boat out in this weather, so I suggested we go to the other side of the island where there would be shelter, there we spent the rest of the day. When we returned to the campsite that evening, we were confronted by some clothes, a hand bag, and a letter in a bottle from my girl friend Lee. So David had been mad enough to come out. The letter said they had gone off in the boat to catch something to eat, Perce had been at the spuds again.

                        David and the girls did not return, we not unduly worried, David was quite capable of going fishing then deciding on the spur of the moment to go home instead. The following morning the storm was still raging, Harry was feeling lethargic and disinclined to move, so I went off on my own. Once away from the wind I shed my clothes; there I was dancing along the beach while spouting the Winter of Discontent, when down comes a helicopter. The pilot beckoned me over then announced that he had come to rescue me. I tried pointing out that I did not want to be rescued, but the fellow just would not listen, there was nothing for it other than to get into the contraption.

                        This is what had happened, David’s boat had capsized and they were swept out to sea, when he and the girls did not return as expected a search was instigated, later that day they were sighted sixty miles down the coast on Delambra Island. We collected Harry from the campsite; he at least had his clothes on. We were taken straight back to the mainland. That was the last time I saw Legendre.

                        Since then I have racketed around the world, everywhere from Baghdad to Siberia, I even wrote that book eventually, it was published in 2004, but nothing has ever compared to my time on Legendre, will I ever see it again? Dear God I hope so.