Bleaker Island

Challenging her fear of empty places, Nell Stevens took up a three-month writing fellowship on a small and remote outlying Falkland Island

- Jacqui Oakley

When I scoured Google maps for remoteness, flimsy-looking Bleaker stood out as the purest representation of what I was looking for. I was drawn to its precarious, peripheral position on the edge of the world, and to its name, the promise of not just bleakness, but a bleakness more profound than anywhere else. Bleaker: it was a challenge.

And on Bleaker Island, I found what I feared, and what I thought I needed. It was empty. It was quiet and wide, and gaping and wild. The guest house I rented — the home of the farm manager and his wife, a few farm buildings — was on the narrow middle of the island, and on either side was nothing at all. To the south: low, boggy land strewn with the bleached bones of penguins and sheep. To the north: craggy gulches, the rocky tip of the island and a white-sand beach where driftwood washed up and a penguin colony huddled together against the wind. There were no trees. There were no roads. I’d shrunk my world to fit within the edges of the island. This was my home, and my office; this was where I would write.