Tom Neale – 16 years on an island

Tom Neale was a regular guy, born in New Zealand in 1902, and lived a normal life. He was always interested in survival and bushcraft, so when he was offered the opportunity to become a stand-in storekeeper he jumped at the chance.

Neale’s job was to travel to various islands within the Cook Island region and stand in for store owners while they were on holiday or had to leave for a while for whatever reason. This allowed him to see some of the places he’d always wanted to travel to, it also led to him meeting a man named Robert Dean Frisbie, an author who told Neale about an island called Suwarrow that he claimed to have lived on for a short while.

The stories enticed Neale so much that he wanted to see the island for himself, so in 1945 he booked a trip on a passing supply ship and had a chance to see the island in person, immediately falling in love with it and deciding this was the place he wanted to spend his life.

In October of 1952, Neale was finally ready to make the move to Suwarrow, and he also heard that it had been uninhabited since the end of the war 7 years ago. He arrived on the island with all the supplies he could gather, as well as 2 cats. Upon arrival, he came across the remains of the Coast Watchers camp, which consisted of a badly damaged hut, an old boat, and some water tanks.

The previous inhabitants of the island also left chickens and pigs which had gone wild by the time Neale arrived. Normally such animals would be helpful in a survival situation, but wild pigs can be very destructive. They dig up anything they think they can eat with their noses and after Neale planted a garden several times, the pigs came right along and wrecked it.

(A satelite view of Suwarrow, made up of a series of mini-islands)

Neale stored his seeds and built himself a raised hut, standing off the ground by several feet. Over the course of the next few months he speared the pigs and lived off their meat, then when they were all dead he planted his garden and survived mostly off seafood, chicken meat and their eggs, and various local fruits such as coconuts, paw-paw and breadfruit.

The sea provided the most variation, since there was a large amount of shallow water around the island, oysters, crab, and lobster were often on the menu, and the region was also home to a wide variety of fish.

His stay went well in the beginning, with no major injuries or mishaps, and he even had visitors 10 months after he arrived. A couple was sent from the British consul in Tahiti to check up on Neale, and after spending a couple of nights they went back to report all was well. They also gave Neale a task, which was to rebuild the pier that had been wrecked during a storm in 1942, and since he wasn’t exactly pressed for time, he agreed.

It took Neale 6 months of hard work to make the pier, but only 1 day after it was completed a storm hit the area and destroyed it, after which he didn’t try and build it again.

In May of 1954, Neale injured his back by throwing an anchor from his boat, and after being able to make it back to his hut, he lay there almost paralyzed for 4 days. Luckily for him, a passing yacht stopped at the island, and the couple on board found Neale and stayed with him until he was able to walk again. After they left they notified the Cook Island Government who sent a ship for Neale 2 weeks later.

He had developed very bad arthritis in his back and decided to stay in Rarotonga for a while to see if got worse. While he was there he married a woman named Sarah Haua and had 2 children with her. But even though he had a new family, he couldn’t forget about his island and returned in April of 1960, but this time taking an extensive range of supplies.

This time Neale stayed for just over 3 and a half years before making the decision to return to Rarotonga due to a huge influx of Pearl divers to the area, which ruined the tranquillity of his home. This time he stayed in Rarotonga for 4 years before going back to Suwarrow in June of 1967.

He lived on the island for 10 years before being taken ill with stomach cancer and returned to Rarotonga for treatment. He died 8 months later and is now buried in the RSA cemetery in Rarotonga.