To call Pitcairn a dot on the map is to do it an injustice. Truly, this tiny island stuck halfway between New Zealand and South America with only a couple of coral outcrops for company has a dwindling population of 37 and an economy that relies on outside help for everything except the most basic foodstuffs. But its history dwarfs its five square kilometres of hilly land.
This was the home of a dozen British mutineers from the Bounty ship who, in 1798 under their leader Fletcher Christian, cast their bullying captain Bligh adrift, took on board 12 Tahitian women and six Polynesian men and made for the most isolated lump of rock they could find.
Pitcairn was on no one's charts in those days: they had in effect sailed into oblivion.
The attraction now, to romantic souls, is twofold. First, the 37 inhabitants are reputed to be direct descendants of those colourful vagabonds; second, their society is said to be a trouble-free slice of paradise.
Dea Birkett, a British journalist, certainly thought so, largely on the strength of watching Mel Gibson's film version of the famous mutiny, The Bounty. That's enough to warn you that her judgment is a little suspect, although, to be fair, it only took simple research for her to find that the first claim is an exaggeration. Most of the mutineers died within a few years of arrival, either by accident or more often by someone else's design - usually a disgruntled Polynesian. Some of their family names live on, but today's population is equally the result of later arrivals.
A trip to the island was necessary to disprove the second. Not many of Pitcairn's fan club get that far: you need permission to land and a good reason to go.