Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, pirates reportedly used Ile Moyenne for various reasons.
Moyenne is an island located 4.5 km off the north coast of Mahé, the largest of the 115-island Seychelles archipelago.
From 1946 to 1962 the uninhabited island was owned by the late Philippe Georges and his wife Vera who inherited the island. The Georges entertained a newspaper editor from Yorkshire, England, Brendon Grimshaw, for dinner together. Initially, Georges did not want to sell the island, but after getting to know Grimshaw, he agreed to discuss the potential purchase of their island. Grimshaw and Georges ultimately agreed on a price of £8000 for the entire 24-acre low-lying island.
This was in 1962.
Subsequent to the purchase, Grimshaw moved to Moyenne and got to work on his new life and lifelong mission.
Together with René Antoine Lafortune, the son of a local fisherman, over the course of decades, they planted 16,000 trees, built 4.8 kilometers of nature paths, and brought and bred Aldabra giant tortoises as they worked to create a dream island. Plants and birds thrived on the paradise island.
In 1996, Grimshaw went back to his roots as a communicator and wrote a book about his life on the island, called A Grain of Sand. In 2009, a documentary film – with the same name – was produced about Grimshaw and his history on the island [see full film below].
Uninhabited for decades, Grimshaw worked tirelessly, realizing his dream while never leaving the island.
For 39 years, the island slowly took its current shape. In 1981, when his mother died, his 88-year-old father came to live for him for 5 years (they are both buried next to each other on the island). Then in 2007, Lafortune died. Grimshaw stayed, alone until he moved to Mahé where he died in 2012.
He had transformed the abandoned island into a tropical paradise where 2,000 new bird species were attracted to the island. He introduced more than 100 giant tortoises, which were already on the verge of extinction. Thanks to Grimshaw’s efforts, the once deserted island now hosts two-thirds of the Seychelles’ fauna.
Grimshaw was unmarried and had no children, so there was no one who would take custodianship of Moyenne. So Grimshaw established a perpetual trust and signed an agreement with Seychelles’ Ministry of Environment whereby Moyenne became Moyenne Island National Park, the world’s smallest national park – a credit to Grimshaw’s original vision and lifelong dedication to realizing his dream.
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