Island Dreaming, Where Solitude Is To Savour
The Sunday Age
Sunday March 14, 2004
Australia is the biggest island in the world. But that doesn't stop some of us wanting our own.
Being an owner of an island carries a cachet of prestige and suggests affluence. It also taps into romantic ideas about escaping from the rat race to your own slice of paradise.
Well-known island owners include Virgin airlines head Richard Branson, who owns one in the British Virgin Islands and reportedly bought one in Queensland's Noosa River last year.
Actor Marlon Brando owns an island resort in Tahiti. He fell in love with Tahiti while playing Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty in 1962. (He also played the deranged ruler of an island in The Island of Dr Moreau (1996), although that one might be better forgotten).
But you don't have to be international entrepreneur or reclusive movie star to possess your own island getaway. Nor are they necessarily as expensive as you might think.
Picturesque, windswept Swan Island, three kilometres off the north-east coast of Tasmania, sold last Monday for an undisclosed price close to $2 million, to a couple from NSW.
The island failed to sell in 2002 when it went on the market for $1.8 million. This time the interest was such that it sold before its auction date of last Friday.
Selling agent Michael Brown, of Elders Real Estate in Tasmania, said the new owners did not want to be named. But he said they were an ordinary couple who had fallen for the charms of the island, which, according to a statement of chattels, include nine laying hens and two feral goats.
``They are private people, that's why they don't want their name in the paper," Mr Brown said, adding that the new owners planned to live on the island and continue to run the tourist guesthouse there.
The 237.8-hectare freehold island (a rarity in Australia) was named by explorer Matthew Flinders and first settled by convicts, who built the still-operating lighthouse in 1845.
Swan Island, which has seven white-sand beaches, an airstrip and even a rare mutton-bird rookery, is described as a paradise by its caretakers, Erika and Alan Johnson.
The couple, in their 60s, have been looking after the island for the past 18 months, making weather reports to the Bureau of Meteorology and looking after the occasional tourist.
``It's a wonderful place," said Erika, describing how she and her husband dive for abalone, walk regularly the 20 kilometres of tracks, or simply enjoy the magnificent views.
There are more than 8000 islands across Australia, but most are under government control. Sales of freehold islands are rare.
Queensland is the most sought-after location for islands, but there are a handful of others available for sale elsewhere.
Swan Island's former owner, Dr Farhad Vladi, makes his living buying and selling islands around the world.
His group, Vladi Private Islands, has bought and sold 1200 islands in the past 30 years, ranging from major resorts to a two-hectare lagoon island off Italy's watery city of Venice.
Mr Vladi, who bought Swan Island in 1990, combs the world looking for islands to buy and sell.
Although island sales are regularly quoted in publications aimed at the monied, such as The Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine, Mr Vladi told an Australian publication last year that it was a misconception that island buyers were only for the uber-wealthy.
He said that the prices of some of his islands were similar to upmarket inner-city real estate prices.
Tiny Picnic Island (just over a hectare), in Tasmania's Freycinet National Park, sold over 18 months ago for just $40,000.
Unfortunately, there is a catch: the island is considered too rugged to live on permanently.
Many Australian islands are owned by players in the big end of town and cost millions.
Queenslander Vaughan Bullivant, commonly called ``former vitamin king" from the days of his old business, Natural Health Products, bought Daydream Island four years ago for $75 million.
Rosemount wines founder Bob Oatley spent $198 million last December on the luxury Hamilton Island resort.
On the other hand, Melbourne developer David Marriner recently bought Hook Island in Queensland's Whitsunday Islands from its receivers, reportedly a bargain at $1.08 million.
Mr Marriner said that despite the romance of buying an island, the decision was based on a great price and providing blue-water access to his Whitsunday coast resort, Laguna Whitsundays.
He is upgrading facilities on Hook Island.
Paradise can have its downside. While promotional views of Swan Island show turquoise seas lapping on gleaming sand, at other times roaring Bass Strait winds lash the island. It is also better known for its aggressive tiger snakes than swans.
Erika Johnson said that although only one person had been bitten by a snake in the 160 years the island has been inhabited, she keeps to the tracks in warmer weather.
Then there is the isolation. Because of strong tides around Swan Island, the safest way to reach it is by plane.
The Johnsons pick up supplies and mail from neighbouring Flinders Island every fortnight. Bigger items have to wait until they go to the Tasmanian mainland, a trip they make once every three months.
This is the flipside to the romance of living on an island.
Marooned Robinson Crusoe nearly went mad in his solitude; the castaway cast of television comedy Gilligan's Island were cheery but kooky as they waited for rescue.
The sense of being adrift from the rest of the world is even there in the paranoiac plotting of contestants on the so-called ``reality" show Survivor.
Real estate agent Mr Brown had more than 70 inquiries about Swan Island. But reality is another thing.
``Some people see it's an island and think, `Wow!' " he said. ``But the logistics of living on an island and the solitude that goes with it sorts the wheat from the chaff."
© 2004 The Sunday Age
