In 2009, a canny campaign by Queensland’s tourist office offered one lucky person the chance to be paid AU$150,000 to spend six months as caretaker of an island paradise off the north-east coast of Australia. It made headlines around the world as “The Best Job Ever”, but it wasn’t quite Robinson Crusoe. Can you really be caretaker of an island with a five-star hotel on it its beach?

Away from the world of canny Aussie PR, there is a world of actual private island caretakers who look after some of the planet’s most desirable properties when their owners are busy elsewhere polishing their golden helicopters. For obvious reasons, being employed to maintain the private paradise of the ultra-wealthy means it’s difficult to talk about the specifics of the job. But thanks to the anonymous posts of a man who, in 2009, was looking after a celebrity’s private island, we have an idea of what it involves. The caretaker of a Bahamian private island described in a Reddit Ask Me Anything session how his job on the island combined everything from repainting boats and installing solar panels to filling fridges and pretending to dress as a native islander to scare off noisy tourists/trespassers. Think of it as working on a yacht, only with more homemade weapons.

If you can’t get paid to island-sit, then look to Mr Caio Rodrigues Rego, who left his job in São Paulo 34 years ago to be the unofficial keeper of Ilha dos Gatos in south-east Brazil. In 2015, he described his job, which also involves scaring people off with spears, as “the best in the world”. His wife and kids disagreed. They left him there soon after he arrived in 1982.