Desert island dream

Andrew Martin has been living totally alone on a desert island off the coast of Australia for over thirty years. It wasn't easy to set up a meeting with someone who has no telephone and only gets letters every three months, but we finally got in touch and he invited me to visit.

As the helicopter approached, I found myself looking down on the kind of place that people dream of. Percy Island, which is covered in tropical jungle, has golden beaches lined with coconut trees and is set in clear blue sea. When we landed, Andrew Martin was there to greet me, wearing only an old pair of swimming trunks and flip-flops.

As we walked to the house, I found out more about him. After visiting his sister in Japan thirty years ago, he travelled to Australia, where he bought a boat. While a friend was teaching him to sail, they stopped by chance at Percy Island, which was for sale for £16,000. Andrew, whose boat was worth the same amount, immediately decided to buy it. Originally he planned to stay for a few months and sell it at a profit, but he found that he wanted to stay. Now, even though he could probably sell the island for £20 million, he is not interested. 'It's too good to sell to a developer who is going to treat it as some kind of toy. To me it's like the most precious jewel in the world.'

After a forty-five minute walk through the dense jungle, we got to the house, where we were surrounded at once by dogs, chickens, geese and peacocks. The building was not much more than an old wooden hut with a tin roof. He showed me round, and gave me time to unpack. The room which he gave me had a marvellous view, but the first thing I noticed was the largest spider I had ever seen. I tried to stay calm, but I got really nervous when I also learned that the whole island was full of poisonous snakes. Andrew told me not to worry. He said that the only ones I was likely to meet were the boa constrictors that hung in the trees near the outside toilet.

Over the next few days, I began to see what it was really like to live on a desert island. Percy Island is as beautiful as any exotic holiday advertisement, but Andrew does not spend his time sunbathing and swimming; it is much too dangerous to go in the sea, which is full of sharks and stonefish. He has to work more than most people to provide the things he needs, and makes a little money by selling fruit to boats that come to visit from time to time.

He says he never planned to live alone, but 'it just happened that way'. Now he is used to it, and does not miss other people at all. What he enjoys is the feeling of being completely free. Nobody can tell him what to do, and if he does not like anyone who comes to the island, he asks them to leave.

On my last day, as I sat on the beach waiting for the flight back to the mainland, I was desperately looking forward to getting back to the comforts of modern life. It was a great relief when the helicopter landed and took me away. Soon Percy Island was just another green dot in the deep blue sea. To me, it did not feel at all as if I was leaving paradise; it was like being rescued from hell.