The photographer who had travelled with me asked, “Are we still in Australia?” – and the mood for our adventure was set somewhere between ignorance and excitement.

Yes, we were still in Australia, I told the photographer, giving her an earful about consulting her atlas before she got on a plane, and we were still some way off our destination of Boigu Island, a small Torres Strait island tucked just off the coast of Papua New Guinea.

We filed along to get on the next frighteningly small plane in order of our importance - Transport Minister at the front, and me, as a reporter travelling with him, some distance along. Alright, I was at the back.

The plane rattled and bumped out over the islands then dropped out of the sky onto what appeared to be a rubbish dump. I have recently seen photos of the Boigu Island airstrip as a beautiful, smooth-looking bitumen strip, but at the time, I remember it as Super Mario Brothers meets Titanic. We bumped and crashed our way to a halt just short of something solid, all dropping each others’ hands in embarrassment now that we knew we would live into the afternoon.

Outside was an army-style jeep and a hugely smiling Torres Strait Islander man by the name of Father Blanket. 

“Come on in! Come on in!” Father Blanket cried, throwing his hands in the air and hustling myself, the photographer and a female ministerial adviser into the back of the jeep.

After the turbulent landing, the battered jeep was looking like the popemobile minus the bulletproof glass. We happily piled in.

As we drove off, we noticed flowers, balloons and streamers strung along the roadside. We had come for the opening of the island’s first-ever sealed road.

Children rode new bikes, roller-skated and scooted along the edges of the road and we later discovered they had never before had a long, flat surface to ride on. They were a long, long way from Luna Park, but having just as much fun as anyone in that part of the country.

“Come see!” Father Blanket began bellowing through the open sides of the jeep. “Come see the beautiful ladies!”

I looked behind us to see the beautiful ladies, but a sharp elbow in the ribs from the ministerial adviser advised me that we were the beautiful ladies.

After much giggling, we began to realise that people actually were coming to see the beautiful ladies.

People were piling out onto verandahs and front yards and smiling broadly. We began to wave and smile back.

All too soon, this pleasant journey was over. Boigu is not a very big island, and its new road was even shorter.

We arrived at a church and, just beyond it, the clearly visible shore of Papua New Guinea.

 But what caught my attention was an enormous wooden cross on the very edge of the island. The cross, for reasons best known to the Boigu Islanders themselves, was outlined in large electric light bulbs.

We were shuffled over to a large tree. It is some time ago now, but I believe it was called the Skull Tree, so named because the legends of cannabilism noted the bones of the victims were buried somewhere in this location.

“I would not stand there,” boomed Father Blanket to his now large audience, pointing to my feet.

I jumped, and the crowd laughed at what was obviously a tried and true joke at newcomers’ expense. Father Blanket roared the loudest.

My adventure to Boigu Island took me a long, long way from life as I knew it, but it was still a day I remember as filled with island flowers and divinely happy children.

  Have you been out of your comfort zone? Tell us about it in a maximum of 400 words and send it to marie.low@fairfaxmedia.com.au