I've always loved the Crusoe game, even in primary school, despite the arguments I had with my teachers over it. I was busy devising how to build a small suspended hammock, cooking pots, bags and baskets for food gathering and knives for hunting and food preparation. They deducted marks because I didn't create a hair bush instead. Sigh.

Given we live in Australia, one of the few countries where a citizen can find themselves in real need of bush engineering, I find their priorities somewhat naff.

But I digress. The Crusoe game is very simple: You have been cast away on an island. You do not know where you are, or how long you will be there. The island appears to be uninhabited, but not inhospitable. You have with you what you can scrounge from the wreckage of the ship:

• some rope
• assorted timber pieces (door frames, etc)
• a deck chair
• six tins of tomatoes
• several pairs of cotton t-shirts, too large for you
• 1 pair of underpants, too small for you
• 1 notebook, soaked in seawater (no pen)

What do you do? What do you build (and with what?) What are your priorities? What are you going to do with someone else's underpants?

You can adapt this game to suit any list of things that come to mind (if you hadn't guessed, I pulled that lot out of the air just now), just make sure that they don't have an obvious purpose. So, no swiss army knives, fire starters, axes, shovels or emergency kits.

And for those of you whose solution is to whip out their smartphone and google "How to survive on a deserted island": there's no phone signal here.