Rathlin Island by Daniel Scott

The Irish sea was angry. This was probably one of the four times daily when over 1 billion tons of it are squeezed between a rock - the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland - and a hard place - the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland - eleven miles away. And there we were, on the Rathlin Island ferry, right in the middle of it all, plunging into a hollow one moment, lunging onto a swell the next.

At times like this you need a reassuring presence and I found one from remarkably close to my current Sydney home: Richard Green, ferryman, formerly of Hobart, Tasmania, and now one of only 100 inhabitants of Rathlin Island. With my two fellow passengers greenly studying their feet he was telling me what to expect of the boomerang-shaped island he calls home: "Rathlin's a place you'll either love or hate. I came here for three months 23 years ago and fell in love with it."

This was my third visit to Northern Ireland. I'd toured much of it at the height of the troubles - of which there'd been only the occasional sign (an armoured car here, a pavement painted, depending on local sympathies, with a British or Irish flag, there) - but, while I'd quickly become besotted with its luxuriant landscape and welcoming people, I'd never even heard of Rathlin Island then.

Now I was back and heading to the island, with the peace talks at last in with a serious chance. Not that that made much difference to Rathlin, as Richard told me: "the island's always been an oasis of calm during the troubles."

It took only three days to get a taste of that calm. By then my lungs were flushed with fresh salty air from walking to each of Rathlin's reachable points, my mind's eye replaying the sight of up to 100,000 seabirds breeding on the island's steep cliffs, my ears buzzing with stories from a long afternoon in Rathlin's only pub and my stomach bulging with Guiness and with Kay McCurdy's hearty Guest House cooking.

The first thing I realised on stepping gratefully onto shore at Rathlin is that if you're staying there for any length of time then you're going to meet at least half its population a minimum of once. I found my way to Liam McFaul, the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection Of Birds) warden, by asking a string of his relatives how to get to his house. "Just keep walking that way" said one of his small nephews pointing, "past the white stone cottage" said another. After about 90 minutes walk toward the West Lighthouse I found his place. Liam was expecting me, he'd been tipped off.

He took me, with yet another nephew and a small dog with an unnerving gift for edge-of-cliff walking, to the RSPB reserve to see the third biggest colony of seabirds in the British Isles. On the cliffs and the rock stacks off the coast, every ledge and cranny was crammed with nesting birds, around 40,000 guillemots alone, as well as razorbills, kittiwakes, black-headed gulls and those clown princes of the seabird world, puffins. As Richard had told me: "there's no other word for it than fantastic - I wasn't all that into birds when I arrived but it's fantastic over there." Come the spring and summer, come the birds to Rathlin from as far away as Africa, come the ornithologists, sometimes from even further. Nor is it just for the seabirds. With plenty of smaller birds and rabbits to prey on, all around the island kestrels hover, buzzards glide and preregrine falcons swoop.

Divers and archeologists flock to the island too, although on Rathlin, especially in the off season, the arrival of twenty visitors in a week would constitute an invasion. The diving off Rathlin is among the best in Ireland, with sheer underwater cliffs, excellent marine life and, according to the locals, a number of yet to be discovered wrecks. It might look cold and uninvinting out there, but by the time you've talked to them - you might just be tempted. Last year one young islander came across a pristine seventeenth century jar, in shallow waters off the shore.

On land, archeologists are still unearthing Rathlin's past. Remains from the Neolithic period (from 4000 to 2500 BC) fleck the island and a Bronze Age cemetery (with its skeletons still in tact) was found near to Church Bay. Occasionally, locals, like the woodcarvers Paddy Burns and his Kiwi partner Penny Sewell, make their own discoveries. Digging the foundations of a new home behind their rudimentary stone cottage, they began finding bits of old pottery. Within weeks their backyard had become an archeological site - the fragments identified as at least 4000 years old.

Unsurprisingly for an island midway between the British mainland and Ireland, Rathlin has a bloody history, with stories of massacres and counter-massacres punctuating its past. Reputedly, Robert the Bruce sheltered in a cave here after defeat by the English, garnering inspiration to fight again from a persistent spider spinning a web and returning to Scotland to triumph at Banockburn in 1314.

Rathlin remains a place to gather your thoughts, an island with an inimitable Irish/Scottish flavour, that can seem wild and isolated even in summer. Hiking around its virtually treeless landscape, my cheeks buffed pink by the wind, I found you can easily be alone here if you want to be. But you'll never be lonely. Sooner or later a McFaul or a McCurdy'll be along saying Richard or Paddy are looking for you in the pub!