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The Islander
The extraordinary adventures of the man who wanted to be Robinson Crusoe
Everyone dreams of life on a desert island: Gerald Kingsland dared to go and find one. Over the last seven years, he has tried three times to live as Robinson Crusoe once lived: on a tropical island, self-sufficiently, with at most one companion.
His first attempt was Cocos Island, three hundred miles north of the Galapagos Islands in the mid-Pacific. Forced by the government of Costa Rica to live with their official police patrol, and later to help with a budding tourist industry, he was nevertheless able to taste the joys and dangers of island life. Accompanied for part of the time by his three young sons, he explored an island which offered ghosts, buried treasure, tropical disease and high adventure.
His next island was Robinson Crusoe
Island, off Chile in the South Pacific. Accompanied this time by a young Girl Friday, Ann Conroy, Kingsland spent frustrating months trying to get to uninhabited Alexander Selkirk Island while retracing the steps of the real Robinson Crusoe on the island named after him, helped by the friendly Chilean islanders.
His third island was Tuin in the Torres Strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Completely uninhabited and much smaller than the other islands, Tuin also turned out to be desperately short of water. Kingsland and his wife Lucy Irvine nearly died and were dramatically rescued by nearby islanders from Badu, where Kingsland soon became a much-respected member of the community.
Lucy Irvine published her bestselling account of their life on Tuin, Castaway, in 1983. Gerald Kingsland has written an altogether different story about his remarkable life as an islander.
Everyone dreams of life on a desert island: Gerald Kingsland dared to go and find one. Over the last seven years, he has tried three times to live as Robinson Crusoe once lived: on a tropical island, self-sufficiently, with at most one companion.
His first attempt was Cocos Island, three hundred miles north of the Galapagos Islands in the mid-Pacific. Forced by the government of Costa Rica to live with their official police patrol, and later to help with a budding tourist industry, he was nevertheless able to taste the joys and dangers of island life. Accompanied for part of the time by his three young sons, he explored an island which offered ghosts, buried treasure, tropical disease and high adventure.
His next island was Robinson Crusoe
Island, off Chile in the South Pacific. Accompanied this time by a young Girl Friday, Ann Conroy, Kingsland spent frustrating months trying to get to uninhabited Alexander Selkirk Island while retracing the steps of the real Robinson Crusoe on the island named after him, helped by the friendly Chilean islanders.
His third island was Tuin in the Torres Strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Completely uninhabited and much smaller than the other islands, Tuin also turned out to be desperately short of water. Kingsland and his wife Lucy Irvine nearly died and were dramatically rescued by nearby islanders from Badu, where Kingsland soon became a much-respected member of the community.
Lucy Irvine published her bestselling account of their life on Tuin, Castaway, in 1983. Gerald Kingsland has written an altogether different story about his remarkable life as an islander.
- GenresTravelNonfiction
256 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 2, 2015
This is the "male" side of the Castaway story, and it does provide his version of the tale. For anyone who hasn't read the original book or seen the Oliver Reed movie from the 1980s, it's about a man who decides to live on a deserted island for a year. He advertises for a female companion and ends up with Lucy Irvine, a complete stranger to him. The two of them end up living their adventure on an island, where they bicker and need help when food starts to run out.
This isn't fiction, it's a real-life tale that truly shows Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus. I really enjoyed reading Kingsland's version as it also explains his background and what he was looking for on the adventure, which was really different than what she was looking for on the island.
Read the book then see if you can download the movie (British, 1987). I'll bet you will want to at least take a vacation, but perhaps not on a deserted island.
Book Season = Summer (look for water)
This isn't fiction, it's a real-life tale that truly shows Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus. I really enjoyed reading Kingsland's version as it also explains his background and what he was looking for on the adventure, which was really different than what she was looking for on the island.
Read the book then see if you can download the movie (British, 1987). I'll bet you will want to at least take a vacation, but perhaps not on a deserted island.
Book Season = Summer (look for water)
November 17, 2020
The Islander - Gerald Kingsland's answer to Lucy Irvine.
I started this book wanting to find out about Gerald. To find out if he really was the kind of man Lucy Irvine wrote about in Castaway. Unfortunately nothing could have persuaded me further than reading it from his own pen that he was indeed 'that' kind of man.
'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man must be in want of a wife.' Jane Austen. Well this man certainly did, so he advertised for one. It isn't clear from either account how he sold his idea to marry and maroon themselves on an island to Lucy. The marriage was to satisfy Australian authorities more than anything else and something they had to do in order to proceed. I think however for him it meant more and he wanted a wife in EVERY sense.
His folly I believe was choosing a 24 year old wife when he was 50 plus. Her folly was sleeping with him before they embarked upon the experience and then realising she just wasn't attracted to him.
He fills the book with all of his castaway island experiences, of which there are two before Lucy. He seems to exult in passing sexual experiences which I believe are a direct answer to Lucy's account of him in Castaway. He does impress me greatly with his accounts of shark fishing but other than that... I found his previous attempts at life as Robinson Crusoe boring.
The reason I have and do label him as a pig is because his account of Lucy is as a go getting, empty headed, nitwit. He does compliment her for certain things though, he even admits to her writing skills in her diary.
But you will never tell me that someone who wrote a far longer, more intuitive, introspective and beautiful account like Castaway was empty headed.
Lucy tells us regularly that Gerald lacks get up and go and it's very telling that he had a contract to write a novel at the outset of the experiment and she didn't. Yet she managed to publish an account of Tuin 2 to 3 years before he did.
I feel his narrative tries to swallow hers and very much that he trivializes and yet in a way idolises her. I am much less sorry for him now that I have read his own account.
Unfortunately, though she exposed him for the old fashioned, chauvinistic husband and lazy man that he was, he exposed himself in a much crueler manner to me as a selfish, bigoted man with few finer feelings. That to me, says it all.
I started this book wanting to find out about Gerald. To find out if he really was the kind of man Lucy Irvine wrote about in Castaway. Unfortunately nothing could have persuaded me further than reading it from his own pen that he was indeed 'that' kind of man.
'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man must be in want of a wife.' Jane Austen. Well this man certainly did, so he advertised for one. It isn't clear from either account how he sold his idea to marry and maroon themselves on an island to Lucy. The marriage was to satisfy Australian authorities more than anything else and something they had to do in order to proceed. I think however for him it meant more and he wanted a wife in EVERY sense.
His folly I believe was choosing a 24 year old wife when he was 50 plus. Her folly was sleeping with him before they embarked upon the experience and then realising she just wasn't attracted to him.
He fills the book with all of his castaway island experiences, of which there are two before Lucy. He seems to exult in passing sexual experiences which I believe are a direct answer to Lucy's account of him in Castaway. He does impress me greatly with his accounts of shark fishing but other than that... I found his previous attempts at life as Robinson Crusoe boring.
The reason I have and do label him as a pig is because his account of Lucy is as a go getting, empty headed, nitwit. He does compliment her for certain things though, he even admits to her writing skills in her diary.
But you will never tell me that someone who wrote a far longer, more intuitive, introspective and beautiful account like Castaway was empty headed.
Lucy tells us regularly that Gerald lacks get up and go and it's very telling that he had a contract to write a novel at the outset of the experiment and she didn't. Yet she managed to publish an account of Tuin 2 to 3 years before he did.
I feel his narrative tries to swallow hers and very much that he trivializes and yet in a way idolises her. I am much less sorry for him now that I have read his own account.
Unfortunately, though she exposed him for the old fashioned, chauvinistic husband and lazy man that he was, he exposed himself in a much crueler manner to me as a selfish, bigoted man with few finer feelings. That to me, says it all.
April 20, 2018
A very interesting book. The section on the Torres Strait island was especially interesting to see the difference in outlook between Kingsland and Lucy Irvine, his companion on the island, and the author of "Castaway", and their narrative of life on the island.
March 27, 2011
A companion to Lucy Irvine's 'Castaway'.
August 16, 2025
I enjoyed the read. I guess I like survival stories, travelogues like this. The guy was an arrogant ass who was responsible for all his own ruined relationships. It’s a shame he couldn’t have put his ego aside.
He was definitely not as dedicated, nor as natural a writer as Lucy. She’s the one who wrote daily. She’s the one who finished her book, three times the length of his, well before he did.
He was definitely not as dedicated, nor as natural a writer as Lucy. She’s the one who wrote daily. She’s the one who finished her book, three times the length of his, well before he did.
August 4, 2008
It's really an amazing story and useful book about a life in an awesome island and much more you should read it and feel t.
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November 16, 2011fresh start good
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews