Brendon Grimshaw's Island - Seychelles
"Did you ever bathe in the hot blue water with your feet on a coral-reef strand, with starfish tickling the soles of your feet, with the bleached sand running beneath them, with the water melting into the sky in waves of sunshine, and your body melting into the water? Then your body has no burden, it wavers and washes in the moving of the sea, and your weightless feet, your water-washed thighs, your shadowed legs, your drifting hands, dissolve from you, and are born into the warmness and coolness and sweetness of the sea."
Agnes Keith in "Land Below the Wind"
When I read here that Brendon Grimshaw had, on his thirties, the opportunity to buy his private paradise I immediately went back on my memories to this beautiful passage, from the Agnes Keith's book "Land Below the Wind". Few books gave a sense of calm and tranquility like this one and maybe I thought that Brendon Grimshaw managed in his life to achieve what many of us dream.
Agnes Keith in "Land Below the Wind"
When I read here that Brendon Grimshaw had, on his thirties, the opportunity to buy his private paradise I immediately went back on my memories to this beautiful passage, from the Agnes Keith's book "Land Below the Wind". Few books gave a sense of calm and tranquility like this one and maybe I thought that Brendon Grimshaw managed in his life to achieve what many of us dream.
50 years ago Brendon accepted the challenge of buying an atoll at the Seychelles sea. It was just a desert amount of bush and rocks in the middle of nowhere. 50 years later, 16.000 trees planted, tracks manually build, wood houses erected on the top of the reef, thousands of birds and turtles well adapted to the island, Brendon has finally that magic story to tell to the world. How a single man managed to transform desert into life, the quietness of the sea in the singing of birds, rocks into a dense forest, a desert island into a National Park.
It took until the early 1970s before he was able to move to Moyenne Island full time. Brendon has become one of the few people to ever live on the island. He puts the number of his predecessors at three.
The first challenge, then, was to cut a path through the undergrowth so he could see exactly what the island had to offer and what needed to be done.
From the impenetrable bush with few signs of fauna, - where to get from one side to the other of the island it was required swimming around or boating - he created a micro climate, planting mahogany and palm trees, which attracted thousands of birds and forested a thriving community of giant tortoises, none of which were around when he bought the island.
The island was in the past a stop where pirates docked, so he wasn't surprised when he found two pirate's graves which the carefully looks after settling his own future grave right beside them.
Brenton has had offers of 50 million pounds to sell the island but be doesn't have a greedy nature. He prefered to apply for the Seychelles Goverment and transform Moyenne Island into a National Park. He succeed to do so and now, with more than 80 years old, he is living his relaxing days on the quietness of a Private Paradise.
Moyenne Island & the mahogany trees from Wandering Eye on Vimeo.
Here you can see the all story
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