Greek Island Inheritance

When Michael Arnold’s father passed away in 2010, he left behind something his family had not known about: four Word documents in a folder on his computer, the beginning of an autobiography he had never shared. Michael’s siblings found the files while sorting through their father’s things. They copied them. A moment later, the computer failed completely and could not be used again.

The story that was on those four documents became Greek Island Inheritance: an account of a lost father-son relationship, a nineteen-year quest to claim a small plot of land on the Greek island of Skiathos, and two lifetimes of “continual change and diversity,” in his father’s own words, that had taken Michael Hollands from South Africa to New Zealand to the Aegean and back. Michael Arnold edited, designed, and published the book through Lulu as a memorial volume. A Vietnamese translation has been completed but remains unreleased.

The experience of recovering and publishing his father’s words, and the recognition of how much can be lost between generations when nothing is written down, became the founding impulse of Metro Writers. On the Metro Writers podcast, Michael Arnold described it directly: “Because my dad wrote something down, I just have that. I know some stories, and I can share them with my descendants, my children, my grandchildren. It never fades. It’s always there.” The book that almost didn’t survive a dying computer became the reason a company was built to make sure other people’s stories would.

A book rescued from a broken computer became the argument for why every life deserves to be written down before it’s too late.

Michael Hollands last saw his father Reginald Ashton Hollands at the age of five, standing on a dockyard crane at the end of a pier in Durban, waving at the ship that would take the young Michael and his brother Terry away to a new life in New Zealand. As an adult, he rediscovers Reg and begins a correspondence with him, hoping that they will reunite at last, only to have his hopes dashed when his father passes away from a sudden stroke.

Years later, he embarks upon a journey to make one last reconnection: a trip to a remote Greek island known as Skiathos, to claim a small plot of land his father had left behind. A touching story of a lost father-son relationship and the attempt to restore a sense of belonging, these chapters were to have formed part of a complete autobiography that remained unfinished when Michael Hollands himself passed away suddenly in 2010. They are published here in his memory.

“As I approach the property, I feel the excitement of proximity to the land that links me to my past. There it is ahead, on the rise and between the branch of the main road and the side road that, according to the sign, leads up towards the Nostros nightclub and restaurant. Within a minute I am walking down the little track and out into the clearing, where I stop and rest.

The silence engulfs me.

After a minute or so, I walk across the grassy field strewn with wild flowers and blood-red poppies. It’s funny how the grass seems to grow just above ankle height here – never any longer, giving the countryside a storybook appearance.

As I approach the track that leads into the trees at the far end of the property, I disturb several brightly-coloured butterflies shaped as if they are flying backwards, and a huge shiny black-winged insect buzzes lazily across the field about a foot above the grasses.

Once upon the pathway, I walk on through the fig trees and a stand of plane trees nearby. I pause and listen to the rustling of their flat leaves. The sun bakes the pathway and I sit on a rock, studying the clay track.

I can sense my father’s presence.”

— Michael Hollands, Greek Island Inheritance