Man who sold entire life on eBay to buy deserted Caribbean island reveals biggest threat to him living there
A man who sold his entire life on eBay in order to buy a deserted Caribbean island has revealed the biggest threat to him living there.
The British man gave up his whole life to start afresh after splitting from his wife.
Ian Usher advertised everything he owned in the eBay listing he posted in 2008, gaining a lot of media attention.
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At the time, he told BBC News: “I intend to walk out of my front door with my wallet in one pocket and my passport in the other, nothing else at all.”
And that’s exactly what he did.
Usher said his goodbyes to his Australia home and went traveling before settling down on an island of his own in the Caribbean.
After that, his life became a bit of a mystery until documentary maker Ben Fogle spent time with him in his new home six years after Usher had sold his life on eBay.
An update on his life aired in an episode of Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild but not every part of Usher's life on the island has been plain sailing.
The adventurer explained in a new interview with the Daily Star the biggest risks associated with his isolated lifestyle, as well as confirming that he has spent the past nine years traveling the world after selling the island in 2015.
“There really is a mixture of ups and downs trying to do something that far off,” he said, adding that settling on the island led to him learning Spanish, learning to use a boat and building his own home.
When it came to safety on the island, Usher wasn't too concerned about security, but did admit that theft was an issue from time to time.
“The biggest issue was theft if you weren’t there to monitor your stuff. There’s a local Indigenous people who live there and the concept of someone going on holiday was an alien one to them, so if you disappeared for a couple of weeks they must have thought, ‘Oh that guy doesn't need his roofing material, his furniture, he’s gone’.
“So there was what I always called a very active recycling programme [on the island],” he joked. “As soon as your back was turned your stuff would start disappearing, so rather than feeling it was dangerous in a physical sort of way you had to maintain an awareness about property.”