Task 2
Yorkshire’s Robinson Crusoe Found His Paradise
In 1962 Brendon Grimshaw, the Yorkshireman, bought Moyenne — a small island just half a mile wide — in the Seychelles for the princely sum of £8,000, and he has been living there ever since. He spends his days caring for the island’s giant tortoises and birds that also call it home.
Giant tortoises are native to the Seychelles, but have been killed off on most of the other islands. Brendon has been gradually reintroducing them to his corner of the Indian Ocean, painting them with identifying numbers and giving them names such as Alice, Florita and Four Degrees South.
He first arrived there on holiday in the late fifties, restless and seeking adventure after years spent working as a newspaperman in Africa. “I knew the moment I set foot on the island that it was the right place for me”, he said. Brendon hired his own Man Friday, a Seychellois called Rene Lafortune, who helped him transform Moyenne. Together they planted palm trees, mango and paw-paw, saved rainwater and pumped it up the hillside by hand. When he arrived, there were no birds on the island, so he brought ten from a neighbouring island. Brendon started feeding them, and more birds settled on the island.
“But we weren't doing it to make it into a national park or anything like that”, said Brendon. “We were doing it to make it habitable for me.” A Saudi prince once offered him a blank cheque for Moyenne, but Brendon certainly isn’t selling. “The only reason someone would want to buy this island is to build a big hotel”, he said.
Yes, of course he wants to keep his hideaway unspoiled, but perhaps he still has hopes of finding the pirate treasure rumoured to be buried somewhere on the island. After buying the island, Brendon admits he spent much of his spare time searching for the fortune, poring over old maps, hunting for clues and shifting tons of rock at his two excavation sites.
But it’s fair to say Brendon has never been motivated by money. He has worked tirelessly to transform and preserve Moyenne, ensuring that when he finally leaves the island it will be protected and passed to the people of the Seychelles as a national park. “Brendon is the modern Robinson Crusoe,” says Joel Morgan, environment minister for the Seychelles. “He’s a naturalist, a conservationist and a hard worker.”
The island has been Brendon’s life, and as he has struggled to create a spectacular home, it has repaid him by giving him a tonic that no doctor can prescribe: a real sense of purpose and meaning. Out in the Indian Ocean Brendon Grimshaw is still living the dream.
What has Brendon Grimshaw done on the island?
AHe has tamed Seychellois tortoises by giving them names.
BHe has increased the population of tortoises on Moyenne.
CHe has brought tortoises to the Seychelles from other continents.
DHe has kept a definite number of tortoises in his nature corner.
