Some people are happiest when they are at home surrounded by familiar things, but not me, I like it out there. I was christened Neil Francis Butler, after my mother’s father, but have always been called Frank since before I was born. That major event in my life took place back in 1960 around the end of May. My father Patrick was working in Scotland at the time so by default I was born a Glaswegian.
When I was six months old we all moved back to Ireland, to Donegal to be precise. Of course I wasn't moving back because I had never been there before, but Mum, Dad and Sheila (my older sister) were moving back home. So consequently my first memories are of Ireland.
Nearly all my favourite childhood memories are related to the farm. It was a typical Irish farm, a few sheep and cattle, chickens ducks, hay, corn, potatoes, and turnips. So milking cows, cutting hay and picking potatoes featured strongly in my early life.
When I was not doing farmer stuff I was off adventuring, just me and my uncle's dog Jip, and after Jip came Daisy. We would just take off in one direction and keep walking until we got tired or I got scared of getting lost, then we would come home again. That would do me for a couple of days then the urge would take me again and we would be off in another direction. This stopped when I was about six because the whole family had moved to England by then, and Leo and Noreen, a new brother and sister, had arrived.
The six of us made our new home in Hatfield, an unremarkable town just north of London. In England I learned to ride a push-bike and was off travelling again. It would have been around this time that my second brother Brian arrived, so that made seven off us. This time it was to neighbouring towns and villages. Sometime after at seventeen I learned to drive a car, then there was no holding me. The lads and me. you couldn't keep us at home. We went to Wales and Scotland. It seemed as if we were at the coast every second weekend. It was about this time that I realised that I had the early symptoms of travel fever.
Shortly after this bit of self-diagnosis, I moved to Jersey in the Channel Islands with a view to perfecting my somewhat less than perfect surfing style. So on Jersey I worked hiring out cars in the morning and surfing in the afternoon. It was truly wonderful and by the time the summer was over I was a reasonable surfer.
Time to take the show on the road, surfing through Europe; first stop France and Biarritz then down south to Portugal and the Algarve. Sell the board and go for a wonder around northern Europe, then back to Jersey for the summer season, more hire cars more surfing and saving this time for a trip to Australia.
The end of the season came and I was off down under, on the way I stopped in Sri Lanka for a month or so then a little visit to Bali in Indonesia for a couple of weeks and before I knew it I was riding waves at Bondi beach. Australia is a grand place and I stayed there for six years. It was there that I moved on
from being a mad surfer and became a mad SCUBA diver.I had dived in England and the Channel Islands but just for fun. In Australia I gained my Instructor's Ticket and could be found most weekends at one of Sydney's beautiful beaches, running a dive course. Diving gave me another reason to travel. I dived off the east coast of Australia from Port Douglas in Queensland to Port Arthur in Tasmania. Then I went over to Fiji for a holiday. I fell in love with coral diving, the water was warm and clear and the colours and diversity were literally breath taking, oh yes this was the life for me.
A friend of a friend knew a bloke, and before my wet suit had dried I was working at Walindi Dive Resort in Papua New Guinea. I stayed at Walindi for two years before starting my own dive business in Rabaul.
Rabaul is best known as a wreck-diving Mecca. It was the main Japanese base for the South Pacific and has world-class diving year round. The town itself was often referred to as one of the pearls of the Pacific.
That was up until September 1994
when two (not one but two) volcanos
erupted and completely destroyed
the town...
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After cleaning up, and there was plenty of that to do, it was time to hit the road again. This time it was for nearly two years, a big trip all through Asia and Africa, a little time in Europe then North and South America and finally back to Papua New Guinea and the start of a new venture this time growing Kava (the plant that makes the drink that is best known in Fiji). 
How about this for luck. Just as the crop was ready for harvest it was placed on the banned substances list by most first world countries, as it was rumoured that it was linked to liver damage. I think that the truth is that the big and all-powerful drug companies considered it a threat to their products such as Valium and Prozac and used their considerable influence to have it banned. That is my conspiracy theory anyway. So the up side of that is that it has given me the time to undertake the adventure of a life-time, to go around the world on a motorcycle for a thousand days, so I should not complain too bitterly.
Frank Butler, September 2002.
