My island life

Thirty years ago, Hilary Roots swapped her suit for a sarong and her native English for French and hasn’t looked back. BOBBI MAHLAB reports.

Sometimes a chance meeting can change a life. In 1975 Hilary Roots, a Sydney-based political journalist, came to the Isle of Pines, a heaven-sent island in New Caledonia, for five days. In a small bar on her first night, Hilary, then 29, met Albert Thoma, a Swiss man who ran the local scuba diving school. After 10 days she returned to Australia to resign her job and empty her house.

“I don’t know if I took the path or the path took me,” Hilary says. “ I never came here for one second thinking I would come and live on an island. Then, the very first evening I was here I met Albert.”

“I remember someone saying to me, ‘you really did it.’ And I said, ‘you just do it’. In the end it boils down to that. I thought if I try it and it doesn’t work I can always go back.”

But there has been no going back. Three decades on, Hilary meets with us on the eve of her 60th birthday. She has spent the day preparing a Melanesian feast to be shared with Albert and friends the following day. Her birthday extravagance is to order a cake from the island boulengerie.

Hilary was inspired to visit the Isle of Pines after reading a story in The Australian. It read; ‘If you really want to get away from it all, go to where there is white sand, warm sun, French food – then go to the Isle of Pines.’

The Isle of Pines is everything you imagine paradise to be. Only two and a half hours by boat from Noumea or 25 minutes by plane, this small 14 by 18 kilometre island is known for its distinctive pine trees, crystal clear lagoons and friendly Melanesian locals. There are no crowds, few cars, only a handful of guesthouses, and one resort - the utterly stunning and intimate five-star Le Meridien.

To find Hilary on the Isle you just have to mention her name. Everyone knows her. But there is a twist: they know her as Cleo. Shortly after arriving Albert renamed her because the French-speaking islanders found Hilary too difficult to pronounce.

“Albert said you can’t have a name like that. So he changed it and called me Cleo,” she recalls.

Hilary’s contribution to the island started almost immediately. For 17 years, she taught English at the local school. She gave it up when she found she was teaching the children of previous students. For the past 20 years she and Albert also acted as the liaison between the islanders and the arriving boats.

Today, Hilary is best known as the island historian. “People think it’s a pretty island but it’s got much more than that,” she says. In addition to writing a number of books about the island, she recently developed the island website and is writing about the local convict history. In the 1870s, 3000 political prisoners from the uprising of the Paris Commune, including only five women, were deported to the Isle of Pines. They received amnesty after eight years. Most returned to France but a handful went to Australia. Her project now is hunting information about these convict women, as well as the 50 or so other women who voluntarily joined their husbands in exile.

Limited by the conditions of her visa, Hilary cannot write or comment on anything political. As a foreigner she is also not allowed to own land on the island. The irony of not being able to comment on politics for a former political journalist is plain. “Under the terms on which I was allowed to come here, I wasn’t allowed to do anything to offend the government. That was the price I had to pay and since then I have kept my mouth closed. I am still a guest and this is a small island.”

New Zealand-born Hilary admits that she read about the Isle of Pines at a time when she was ready for change after seven years in Sydney. She already had papers to immigrate to Canada. “It was time for me to have a new challenge,” she says.

And what a challenge she got. One of the first things she and Albert did was build their house. For two years they didn’t have a toilet.

“To have a happy life on an island you have to do it yourself,” she explains. “I am very privileged to be here. We swim at lunchtime in probably the cleanest water in the world, we breathe air that’s probably the cleanest in the world.”

Although the lack of physical comforts took some getting used to, the biggest challenge was language. “I didn't speak French when I came here and I'd rarely even heard a French person speak. Albert told me as this was a French country we would only speak French! So for the first six months I said very little and it was about two years until I started feeling comfortable using the telephone.

“Learning and 'living' another language in a foreign country is a humiliating and often frustrating experience and it was only when I came to live here I came to appreciate just how difficult it is to be an immigrant anywhere.

“Later on, over the next decade or two, I had some down times when I wondered what worth I had, when I had obviously been successful before. Then came the chance to work on the first coffee-table book about Isle of Pines and I picked myself up and began to believe cautiously in myself again.”

Hilary, now 60, and Albert, 72, live in a basic two-room house surrounded by tropical bush that is a quick stroll to the jetty where the cruise ships come in. Every day starts with yoga in the garden and most of the things they eat – including the paw paw that Hilary swears is a health elixir – are grown locally.

The couple make their living from a small boutique beside their house where they sell t-shirts and sarongs designed by Albert, as well as Hilary’s coffee-table books.

Choosing not to have a television, the couple’s connection to the larger world is an annual holiday outside New Caledonia, the internet, the radio, and The Bulletin magazine and The Guardian newspaper that arrive weekly. And of course, the visitors who arrive each week on cruise ships.

“Our project this year is to pursue a long-held dream Albert has to go to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We’ll then meet up with his family, including grandchildren, from Switzerland.”

Looking into the future, Hilary says, “I rather like the titillating aspect of not knowing what the next 20 years may bring. I can never imagine being bored.”

Visit Hilary’s website at: www.isle_of_pines.com

The writer was the guest of Aircalin and the Ramada Plaza in Noumea.