Brendon Grimshaw from Dewsbury, Yorkshire, born in 1925, had been the resident owner of Moyenne island a few degrees south of the equator in the Indian Ocean until his death in Victoria, Mahe, in July 2012. Grimshaw first came to the Seychelles – an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, only eight of which are permanently inhabited – on holiday in 1962.
Grimshaw fell in love immediately with its silence and its wild tangle of vegetation. It was, he would later say, close enough to be accessible from the Seychelles’ main island, and yet a world away.
“It was totally different. It was a special feeling,” he told a documentary film crew in 2009. “This is the place I’d been looking for.”
Moyenne is one of the smallest of the Seychelles’ inner islands: it measures just 0.4km long and barely 0.3km wide, and its coastline runs for less than 2km. Its highest point rises to an altitude of just 61m above the water’s edge. Moyenne possesses the same paradisical white sand and granite boulders that characterise so many Seychelles shorelines, but it’s also home to a dense, unbroken wall of trees that cover the island, forming a low pyramid above the water’s edge. It’s a riot of green against cobalt skies and a sapphire sea, like a tiny rainforest erupting from the ocean.
Grimshaw published the story of his connection with Moyenne as a book, ‘A Grain of Sand’ in 1996 and has over the years been the subject of many documentaries, the latest being one by Simon Reeves just prior to his death.
Grimshaw was always ready with a story for the many visitors who beat a path to his door: stories of hidden treasure and of the painstaking development of his island home and his tireless conservation efforts. He was the quintessential islander and a devoted lover of nature who poured his love for Moyenne into the island for nearly half a century.
In 210 pages there are no less than 94 “chapters”. The book is, therefore, a collection of snapshots rather than a careful chronology of the author’s life since he was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire in 1925.
He learned his trade with the Batley News and the Sheffield Star but it was when he accepted an appointment as senior sub-editor with the East African Standard in Nairobi that his love affair with East Africa and the Seychelles began. He writes about his eight years in Nairobi – and a further eleven in Dar es Salaam as editor of the Tanganyika Standard – with the critical eye of the professional journalist commenting on the developing political scene during those years, from Mau Mau to the 1964 army mutiny in Dar.
But the Job that gave him most satisfaction was making himself redundant by training his 300 African and Asian staff at the Standard to take over from him. This he achieved in 1970, earning the thanks and friendship of Julius Nyerere who invited him to be Tanzania’s first public relations consultant. He held the job for three years travelling overseas with official delegations and supervising trade stands at international fairs. He recounts his impressions of Japan, Russia, Hong Kong, Zambia and Zanzibar plus a backward glance at his National Service days in pre-independence Cyprus and Palestine.
Grimshaw finally left Tanzania in 1973 to live on, and develop, the island he had bought ten years earlier for 8,000 pounds. The heart of his book is the pain and pleasure he experienced rescuing Moyenne from an overgrown wilderness neglected by man since 1915 when Miss Emma Best last planted it up.
Despite Moyenne’s diminutive size, restoring the island’s natural beauty was a massive task. A combination of neglect and heavy-handed human intervention had left Moyenne dishevelled and gasping for air. Weeds choked the understorey, and the island was so overgrown that, it was said, falling coconuts never hit the ground. In the tangle of weeds, birds were noticeably absent and rats foraged in the undergrowth.
Grimshaw tells how, with the minimum of help from a local named Rene Antoine Lafortune, the 19-year-old son of a local fisherman, he cut a path round the island; levelled a site on the hillside for his house; dug an underground water reservoir; installed a generator; rebuilt sea and retaining walls and restocked the tangle of old and decayed trees with some 16,000 new saplings, including 700 mahogany trees that have now grown to reach 60-70 feet in height. He also planted Palm, Mango and Paw Paw.
They saved rainwater and pumped it up the hillside by hand, or rowed back to the main island to collect a barrel of fresh water.
The nature lover has also attracted about 2,000 new birds to the island which he has encouraged to flock there. There was the indigenous pigeon Hollandais, so named because it shares the colours of the Dutch flag, and the beautiful reddish-orange body weaver bird, a native of Madagascar. They feast on rice from the five 50kg bags Grimshaw puts out each week, they make for a magnificent sight.
Bernard Pauncefort in his review of the book says “with his snapshot writing style, Grimshaw has the irritating habit of breaking continuity to pursue a specific theme, whether, for instance, it be his commitment to International Rotary (by which he has raised considerable sums for deserving causes) or his passionate support for legislation and enforcement to protect the marine environment of the Seychelles. However, this style does make for a book in which to browse. East Africa and the Seychelles before and after independence; the story of a modern Robinson Crusoe; and impressions of foreign travels on behalf of a newly independent country are the three main divisions of this book.
Dip in it where you will. There is much of interest to former colonialists, including those who have seen the green flash at sundown”.
Though his mother always refused to visit Moyenne because she didn’t much like ‘abroad’, Grimshaw’s sister Sandra moved to Mahe with her husband and opened a cafe. And when his father Raymond was widowed in 1981, he accepted Grimshaw’s invitation to come and live on Moyenne.
‘To my surprise, he moved from Seaford in East Sussex to be with me when he was 88,’ said Brendon. ‘We had a wonderful time together, and became the best of friends.’
Day-trippers are allowed to visit from Mahe for £10 each. Grimshaw had a strict rule that no one is allowed to stay overnight, but some visitors try to linger a little longer.
History
More than 200 years ago, the Seychelles were a hideaway for pirates, including the infamous Oliver Levasseur, known as The Buzzard, who was hanged in Mauritius in July 1730. He plagued the shipping in the western Indian Ocean, plundering their valuable cargoes.
His missing hoards of treasure, including the fabled Portuguese Fiery Cross of Goa encrusted with diamonds and rubies, were buried on islands in the Seychelles, including Moyenne. Or at least that’s what the stories say. One treasure trove is supposed to be worth more than £30 million.
The information board on Moyenne (March 2016) states ~ The island’s name derives from the French moyenne, “middle.” It was supposedly used by pirates in the 18th and 19th centuries, and contains two graves called pirate graves. From 1946 to 1962 the island was owned by the late Phillip Georges. He and his wife Vera Georges had lived on the island in the early years and later moved to Mahe where they lived in the property known as Fairview. A view on the island and a beach were named after Vera who spent her days on the property while her husband Phillip worked on Mahe during the day. Phillip sold the island to Brendan Grimshaw after they had dinner together. Phillip and Vera were very hospitable and invited Grimshaw to supper when he approached them to buy their island. An agreement was reached after an extended dinner.
For 39 years, Grimshaw and Lafortin planted 16 thousand trees with their own hands and built almost 5 kilometers of paths. In 2007, Rene Lafortin died, and Grimshaw was left all alone on the island.He was 81 years old. He attracted 2,000 new bird species to the island and introduced 120 giant tortoises, which in the rest of the world (including the Seychelles) were already on the verge of extinction. In 2012, according to Grimshaw, the eldest was 76, and was named Desmond, after his godson. Thanks to Grimshaw’s efforts, the once deserted island now hosts two-thirds of the Seychelles’ fauna. An abandoned piece of land has turned into a real paradise.
Grimshaw and René operated the island as a nature reserve, charging visitors €12 to come ashore, roam the island, dine at the “Jolly Roger” restaurant and relax on the beach.
As tourism in the Seychelles grew in the 1980s and the archipelago became synonymous with a tropical island paradise, investors turned their covetous gaze towards Moyenne. The prince of Saudi Arabia offered Grimshaw $50 million for the island, but he refused. “I don’t want the island to become a favourite vacation spot for the rich. Better let it be a national park that everyone can enjoy.”
As Grimshaw grew older, he became increasingly aware that he had limited time left to protect the island’s future. He had no children to whom he could pass on custodianship of the island, and when Lafortune passed away in 2007, Grimshaw decided to act. With Suketo Patel and others, he set up a perpetual trust to protect the island and signed an 2009 agreement with the Seychelles’ Ministry of Environment that included Moyenne as part of Ste Anne Marine Park, but granted it its own special status. With that, Moyenne Island National Park, the world’s smallest national park, was born.
In 2013, after the island received its own national park status, a new hut was built and a warden was posted on the island, collecting the entrance fee from tourists.
Today, the island’s main industry is tourism, and it is known for its beaches, especially Anse Creole Travel Services (formerly known as Anse Jolly Roger). The restaurant on the beach is a haven for tourists. Behind the restaurant is the local warden’s house. The island is also visited for its wide variety of underwater creatures like fish, sharks and rays.
It can be easy to imagine Grimshaw as an eccentric figure. After all, he moved alone to the other side of the world, bought an island, believed in pirates and spent a lifetime restoring a seemingly inconsequential speck of land. But many Seychellois remain grateful for what he bequeathed to his adopted nation.
“Personally, I don’t think he was crazy,” said Isabelle Ravinia from the Seychelles National Parks Authority. “He gave the island back to the country, which was a noble thing to do. Normally people would try to sell off the island before they die so they can obtain money to do something else. Instead, he did something incredible.”
Grimshaw died in 2012 and his grave sits alongside that of his father (who later came to live with Grimshaw) and the two unknown pirates. At his request, Grimshaw’s tombstone reads, “Moyenne taught him to open his eyes to the beauty around him and say thank you to God.” In his last will and testament, he expressed his final wishes: “Moyenne Island is to be maintained as a venue for prayer, peace, tranquillity, relaxation and knowledge for Seychellois and visitors from overseas of all nationalities, colours and creeds.”
Today
The island has no jetty and arriving here carries a special kind of magic: nowhere else in the Seychelles can match Moyenne’s sense of deserted-island discovery as you wade ashore, barefoot, through the shallows. As you reach dry land and take your first steps along the gently climbing forest trail, the trees close in behind you and you enter another world. Dappled sunlight filters down through the canopy to the forest floor, the temperature is cooler, and the island’s 16,000 trees – mahogany, palm, mango, pawpaw – planted by Grimshaw and Lafortune surround you. By one estimate, Moyenne has more plant species per sq m than any other national park in the world.
Moyenne Island National Park boasts a glorious array of wildlife, along with 40 species of palm trees, including the exotic bwa-bannann (known as the wood banana) and 13 coco de mer, or sea coconut.
Every now and then, you may find your path blocked by one of Moyenne’s nearly 50 free-range giant Aldabra tortoises. They’re in no hurry, and nor should you be as you watch them pass. Back in the shallows and by the beaches at Pirate’s Cove, watch for hawksbill turtles that often come ashore to nest.
Even during peak tourist season, there are rarely more than 50 visitors on the island at any one time, and never more than 300 over the course of a day. Six islands make up the Ste Anne Marine Park, but Moyenne is the only one, aside from tiny Ile Cachee, with no hotel development or other forms of private land ownership. And thanks to Grimshaw and his friends, Moyenne is likely to stay this way.
