Together alone

209 Pages·2004·1.75 MB·English

by  Falconer

The true story of a modern-day Swiss Family Robinson who make the
ultimate sea-change for a new life on a desert island.

After travelling the world alone in his handmade boat, Scottish adventurer Ron
Falconer still yearns to live his dream – to escape to a desert island. But when he
falls in love with Anne, a strong-willed Frenchwoman, it looks like the dream
may remain just that.

Two children later, Anne’s ready to try it. When the Falconer family arrive at
their new home, tiny Caroline Atoll in the Pacific, they quickly discover that life
in paradise isn’t easy. Shark-infested waters, crafty rats, giant crabs and flesh-
eating ants – it’s sink or swim for Ron and Anne, as they struggle to live off the
land and raise their children without the things many of us take for granted.

In Together Alone Ron Falconer celebrates the pristine island wilderness of
Caroline Atoll in loving detail. Both an adventure and a love story, it’s an
insightful, poignant and truly fascinating tale of how one man’s dream to live
alone in paradise becomes very much an extraordinary family affair.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Map of South Pacific
Map of Caroline Atoll
Foreword by Dr Graham Wragg
PART ONE ARRIVAL
1 Caroline Atoll: The Dream Becomes Real
2 Sharks and Other Perils
3 A Triumphant Entrance
4 We Lay Claim to Our Destiny
5 Preparations for a Long Stay
6 Visitors Already
7 We Find a Home
8 Rain and Pain
9 Our World on Ana-Ana
10 An Interdependent Community
PART TWO PROGRESS AND REFLECTIONS
11 A Helpful Stranger Comes to Call
12 The End of Our First Year
13 A Brief Return to Civilisation
14 A Disquieting Meeting with the Future
15 Home Again
16 Guardians of Everything
17 The Concrete and the Symbolic
18 Outside Influences
PART THREE LETTING GO
19 A Forecast of Stormy Weather
20 Of Scientists and Fishermen
21 New Invaders
22 Paradise Lost
23 The End of an Adventure
Epilogue
Conversion table
Chart of Caroline
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
About the Author
Picture Section
Copyright Notice
Loved the book?

For Anne, Alexandre and Anaïs
The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of
the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a
stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To
know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the
highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can
comprehend only in their primitive forms, this knowledge, this feeling is at the
centre of true religiousness.
Albert Einstein
South Pacific Ocean
Caroline Atoll; route taken on the first voyage of discovery, before entering
Blind Passage.
Foreword
Very little was known about Caroline Atoll when our small biological expedition
arrived at this tropical paradise. It was in need of a scientific survey before its
nomination as a World Heritage site could be submitted to the United Nations.
‘Caroline Atoll is uninhabited,’ we had been told by the owners of the
island, the Kiribati Government – which made the presence of the Falconer
family quite surprising. We saw them as a modern-day Swiss Family Robinson.
We were pleased to find Ron, Anne, Alexandre and Anaïs acting as
competent caretakers of this perfect little place. The Falconers were eating
locally grown produce and catching fish whenever possible. They used whatever
was washed up on the beach in ways that boggled the mind, and held us in rapt
admiration of such true ingenuity at work. They had developed a pragmatic
blend of Polynesian and Western ways, and they amazed us with their
determination to overcome outside influences that threatened to overwhelm their
self-made paradise.
Ron Falconer is quite a character – adventurous yet relaxed, private, yet a
talented singer and musician. His abilities as a gifted storyteller have served him
well in the pages of this book. If you are looking for ‘tried and true’ desert island
survival skills, or a classic family adventure story, then read on, you will not be
disappointed!
Dr Graham Wragg (R/V Te Manu)
University of Oxford
January 2002