Quitting the rat race and living on a desert island somewhere in the Pacific has been the stuff of daydreams ever since some of HMS Bounty's crew mutinied against sailing home to cold, old England in 1789.
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So not for nothing did the English property show presenter Kevin McCloud choose the South Pacific to launch his latest television program.
McCloud visited Boris and Karyn von Engelbrechten and their three children for Escape To The Wild on a remote Tongan island, their home for the last eight years.
The family's slice of paradise existence on the tiny island of Fofoa in the Vava'u island group launched a thousand Australian fantasies.
The series premiere on Tuesday was watched by 769,000 viewers. The ABC program ranked among the top 10 prime-time programs on all channels for the night.
Karyn von Engelbrechten decided to bail out of her nine-to-five existence after tiring of the three-hour drive from Bath to London for her work as an IT manager.
"I had got to the point where most of my life I spent on the M4. I thought there has to be more than this," she told McCloud.
"I gave up my life and went travelling, where I met Boris."
He was running his own beachfront hotel on Zanzibar. They travelled, settling in New Zealand for five years before finding the six-square acre property on Fofoa.
At first they rented a house in town, while Boris spent weeks alone out on Fofoa, clearing the land by hand with Tongan help.
After two years they moved in and lived in tents but everything had to be brought from the main island or shipped from New Zealand and the scarcity of food meant they learned to eat local.
Of course, Fofoa was not all Eden.
Like the Bounty mutineers, the von Engelbrechtens found another side of paradise.
They've endured a tsunami, earthquakes and cyclones and the oldest boy, Jack, found paradise a bit of a drag after eight years of home schooling and no playmates and, at 13, opted to attend boarding school in New Zealand.
For many over the years, the Pacific dream has been a lure that in reality can become too much of a good thing.
The French artist Paul Gauguin rendered it for European eyes, first in Tahiti, then in the Marquesas, where he died, maybe of syphilis, maybe not; the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson settled in Samoa but it killed him at 44; in Confessions of a Beachcomber E. J. Banfield enthralled federation Australia with his idyllic life on far north Queensland's Dunk Island before dying of peritonitis, leaving his deaf wife alone for three days until she hailed a passing steamer.
Money certainly makes living the life ideal easier.
To survive, the von Engelbrechtens turned their own private island into a small business.
The $150,000 tantalising two-bedroom beach house overlooking the sand made from slabs of coral with beautiful floors fashioned from coconut palms has been turned into a guesthouse.
They've installed solar panels, a wind turbine for power, running water and established fruit and vegetable gardens. Boris will take visitors big-game fishing while Karyn hosts dives with whales. The nearest neighbours are on Neiafu, Tonga's second biggest town, a 45-minute trip by boat to restaurants, bars, shops and a local market.
The von Engelbrechtens will rent their beach house for $405 a night.
Until now, its been a word-of-mouth place but the debut of the McCloud series in England last month and Australian exposure on Tuesday, means Fofoa is unlikely to be a such a deserted island.
No matter, the von Engelbrechtens got what they were after.
"I wanted my kids to be free and in nature," Karyn told McCloud.
