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Comments on Saturday 11 October 2003:
Islands off the coast (or in rivers or lakes) of Scotland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are surprisingly cheap. Some, with residences on, could quite easily and reasonably be got for under $100000 per couple, with a few couples sharing one huge residence and a few having separate cottages. Presumably the reason for this surprising cheapness is that most people need to be able to live somewhere where they can earn money, and islands aren't conducive to employment. But surely there are enough people who are independently wealthy who want such things? Maybe not. Maybe it's only the low-income dreamers like me who want to have an island to ourselves (possibly shared with friends).

On a related note, I don't want an ordinary house. Houses are boring and never shaped how I want them to be, and all their sockets are poorly arranged, and such. Hence, I want a house built for me... Or perhaps I want to Build my own house, possibly underground. Or a mix of that and overseeing contractors for the tricky bits.

Still, interesting that you can get a 300-acre island for about the same price as a flat in central London. Must get one of these eventually. Or soon... Soon, and for the rest of your life.

Incidentally, why don't people build homes in a very lazy way, such as, to pick an example at random from my head, buying a few second-hand semi-trailers, and burying them side-by-side to form an instant waterproof underground house, requiring only the fairly simple additional of plumbing, electrics, and ventilation? Presumably it's the same insanity that has people paying $20000 extra for a house if it has a big square of weeds that require constant tedious annoying maintenance. [17:01]

Kindred
Dear, the reason you would not want to live on an island near the Australian mainland...well, there is more than one reason. I will start with sandflies. Annoying bloodsucking bastard insects, found on ALL BEACHES in Oz after sunset. Prevalant on sandy islands. Second, but no less important, other island dwellers. Mostly wankers and strangly all related. Third, and very important, so not to be put behind first and second in your mind, but just for the purposes of this list, isolation. Oddly, isolation seems like a great idea, untill you chop your arm off carving arrows for your archery set (kit? what is an archery get up called?). Trying to radio for help and stemming the flow of blood and not passing out are all issues when you have chopped of your arm on an isolated island. As an isolated Australian island, you are likely to be ignored as a prankster, or if taken seriously, left to die anyway because the football is on.

RavenBlack
None of the islands we were looking at are actually very isolated, mind - many of them have causeways to the shore. And I very rarely chop my arms off anyway (my only emergency-room encounter was a broken wrist, which I could have treated better myself if I'd known how crappily the hospital was going to do it... And that was a wrist broken by the dodgy driving of a trucker, who shall, of course, not be allowed on the island).

As for flies, I'm generally not bitten by beasties, but I shall take a note. If we're going to be islanding, we'd probably rather the UK-ish islands anyway - easier visiting or kidnapping of friends there.
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