Be Going

Tom Won't

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By Stuart Inder

Tom Neale, the celebrated hermit-author, won’t be return ing to Suwarrow, the northern island of the Cooks that he has had to himself.

Tom, who has stomach cancer, has been in and out of hospital on Rarotonga since he was taken off Suwarrow in March (see PIM, Sept, p 17). If he beats this illness - and every body hopes he does - he still won’t go home, because Cook’s Premier, Sir Albert Henry, says he couldn’t take the risk of leaving him there alone again without any attention. “If anything happened to him on Suwarrow, they would say we had no compassion” Sir Albert told me.

I visited Tom Neale in hos pital at Rarotonga in late Sept ember. I found him very depressed, worrying mainly about what was happening back “home” on Suwarrow, but also complaining about the pressures of “civilisation”.

“My life here is not my own” he told me. ‘There are always people and requests. I’m all upset”.

He had recently learned that a visiting yachtsman had removed his visitors’ book from the island, and also taken the mail box which he used as the official postmaster of Suwarrow.

Presumably some uncancelled stamps had been removed too.

“We know his name and his yacht and the government is trying to run him down”, Tom Neale said. The news has upset him seriously, esp ecially in his ill and weakened state.

“I should never have taken on the post office arrangement.

There are no facilities for keep ing things, and when they first sent the box and cancellation stamp up to me I should have .sent them all back”, he said.

“I’m worried about my tools, I left them all there - I left every thing there. They were good tools; some of them have steel in them that you can’t get these days”. Tom Neale is a former carpenter.

Tom will be 74 in November, He first went to Suwarrow in 1952 and has lived on it alone there for varying, sometimes extensive, periods, before he was taken off this March because of his illness.

He left a note behind to say that he expected to be away “for at least one month”, and he added in the note, “I especially hope that any visit ors will respect my property”.

The missing visitors’ book was started by Tom about 1970, and carries the names and details of yachtsmen and others who have called at Suw arrow in the last seven years.

It’s an historic document, con sidering the time and place, and it should really the Cook

Islands library.

Tom, however, in his present condition, is not impressed. “Nothing historic about it!” he said curtly. “It’s just my visitors’book. Why would anybody want to take it?’

Tom Neale in hospital in Rarotonga Photo: Byron Hart