A bankrupt Australian millionaire has been living alone on a desert island for 20 years

David Glashin once lived in Sydney, worked as a broker and made good money, but in 1987 he lost a huge amount on the fall of the stock index. In 1993, he, along with his girlfriend and a man's child, rented a small uninhabited island on the coast of Australia. His loved ones soon returned to civilization, but Glashin remained. For 20 years, he has adapted to life on the island, made himself a house from an outpost of the Second World War and lives all alone: his only companion is a Quasi dog.

On October 19, 1987, on Black Monday (in Australia, this day is known as Black Tuesday), the Dow Jones index fell by 508 points. It cost Glashin about $7.25 million. He recalls: "The next few years were extremely difficult. My wife lost a lot of money and blamed me for it. By and large, our family broke up in 1991." Glashin was pressed by lawyers, by 1993 he had lost most of his fortune and was looking for a way out.

Later that year, he met a woman from Zimbabwe who had recently divorced. According to Glashin, they felt about the same thing, so after learning from a friend about the possibility of renting a wild island on the northeast coast of Australia inexpensively, the couple jumped at this opportunity and settled in a small shack on the beach.

Glashin leased a third of the island with an area of 1.53 hectares for 43 years. To do this, he and his partner created the company Restoration Island Priory Ltd. Rent — 13 thousand pounds per year (at the exchange rate on February 13, 2017 — 78 thousand rubles per month).

"It didn't last long," Glashin says of living with a friend. "She couldn't handle it, it was too hard for her." After the woman left, "Robinson" grew a beard and stopped wearing shirts.

Thanks to solar panels on the roof of the house, the islander has electricity, so he goes online, works on the stock exchange (especially praises investments in uranium) and he can buy everything he needs on the mainland: go there for an hour by boat.

However, the man makes these trips infrequently: on the island he extracts coconuts, catches fish and crabs, and also grows fruits and vegetables himself and brews beer. Living in a desert place taught him simple survival skills: "If you don't learn this, you'll die here pretty soon."

"The best thing about living on the island is that you live in complete privacy and tranquility. Recovery Island is a good name. He personally restored me in every sense. And the bad thing is that there is no one to share, no one to tell about their discoveries," says David.

Since 2000, they have been trying to expel the man from the island: the Supreme Court of Queensland ruled that David does not fulfill his obligations and no longer has the right to occupy the island. The fact is that Glashin undertook to build a fishing base on the island and create an infrastructure for tourists for at least 131 thousand pounds and 60 rooms. He claims that the aborigines did not allow him to do this.

Glashin says that he gets lonely: "It remains to be hoped that some mermaid will be thrown ashore." However, sometimes yachtsmen, kayakers and farmers visit him. David communicates with them and treats them with gifts of nature. One day Russell Crowe's yacht docked on his island.

Four years ago, David became famous all over the world by posting several ads on dating sites about finding a "Friday girl" who would settle down with him. He even took a picture of his mannequin to show what a desperate situation he was in, but he never found a companion: "It didn't work out. I had a girl from Italy living here for a while, but she was talking about a free relationship, and I do not know what it was. I thought it meant we had no secrets from each other."

The former broker still loves the stock exchange, willingly talks about it and gives advice: "The stock market is amazing. This is the fastest, easiest way to earn money. It's better than work. You can get 50 times more in time, 10 times less." He does not complain about his current situation: "It was rash to go so far. I wasn't smart enough to see that disaster was coming. I didn't do what I had to do and went down with the ship."

Renaissance Island has an interesting story: on April 28, 1789, a riot broke out on the ship of British captain William Bligh, known as the "Mutiny on the Bounty". The rioters abandoned Bligh with part of the crew in a boat, without maps and a compass, and released him into the open ocean. A month later, having covered 6000 kilometers, Bly landed on the island, where he found water, oysters and berries, and named it Renaissance Island.