World’s best luxury island escapes
When it comes to seclusion, serenity and the chance to fall off the map, just add water.
This article appeared in issue seven of Travel + Luxury magazine. Pick up a copy in The Australian on Friday, 24 June or explore the full edition online.
The benefits of an island fling include seclusion, serenity and the chance to fall off the map into the blue. Think Cast Away but with a private chef at your disposal. Pinned to my home office wall for many years has been a map of Newfoundland Island, across the Strait of Belle Isle from the north-east coast of Canada. Ringed in red ink is a farther offshore island with a name that intrigues and inspires. It’s Fogo and in that mellifluous word comes the suggestion of reckless weather and a remove from all things dull and expected.
On Fogo Island, there are seven “singular” seasons, including “long and hungry” pack ice in March and berry picking and preserving in early autumn. Storm-watching is a sport, of sorts. It’s been called not so much a place as a state of mind. There are 11 settlements along a harsh coast and a particular resilience to the residents.
But for travellers, the 29-room Fogo Island Inn is a beacon of comfort and sustainability, built to withstand gales in a vernacular that seems at once lightly and robustly tethered or, as architect Todd Saunders puts it, “walks gently on the land”. I am convinced it’s a place of harmony, too, tantalisingly out of reach from reality. My determination to go there remains undimmed.
‘There’s something about being surrounded by water that really sparks the imagination’
Tourism based on natural and sometimes remote environments is at an all-time high and ample research indicates that spending time in such elemental places helps reduce stress, promote physical activity and enhance well-being. Quantitative studies have investigated the potential benefits of outdoor “blue spaces”, meaning bodies of water, for improved health and happiness. Could there be, say, academic papers looming on the therapeutic effectiveness of islands? Because there’s something about being surrounded by water that really sparks the imagination.
Perhaps it’s the sense of enclosure, of knowable boundaries and the perception of isolation. Putting aside vast island continents and holiday isles all but sinking under the weight of tourism, there are places circled by seas, lagoons and rivers that still feel magically removed, like planets of calm and charm. Guests may be linked by Wi-Fi to the wider world, but otherwise there’s an irresistible feeling of falling, however temporarily, off the map and, in the best cases, being absorbed into a strong and welcoming community.
But sometimes it can be the most fleeting and even cinematic of connections. For instance, take tiny, uninhabited Monuriki Island in Fiji’s Mamanuca Islands group near Nadi, where the 2000 film Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks, was shot. It features, somewhat ironically, on tour itineraries, which is a clever idea and understandably popular when, unlike the movie, a safe and short return trip comes guaranteed.
Get away from it all but still want it all, at least in terms of comfort and style? Top-tariff private isles are obvious contenders for any list of the best such hideaways, especially Vatuvara, a cluster of three small islands in the north-west of Fiji’s Lau group. There’s just a trio of guest villas on the main isle of Kaibu’s sheltered lee side, all with private pool, vast sea-facing terrace and massage and yoga bure where treatments are a finger’s snap away. Notes from sand-scattered pages of my Moleskine: “There’s not so much room for a pony but a stampeding herd. The resort’s mantra of conscientious luxury refers mostly to sustainability and marine stewardship, but also to a certain design restraint that suggests a vacation home, not a gold-plated palace.”
What makes this place so remarkable is a full-time team of staff, multiple dining options and a biodynamic farm that supplies villagers and staff. While in residence, it feels almost like an exclusive fiefdom. When I depart, I ask the managers when the next guests are due. They admit they don’t know. Maybe the owner will drop by. That would be Jim Jannard, founder of Oakley Inc and Red digital technology. You could call this extraordinary place a folly, but that would be a disservice. It’s his holiday home, open to those with the cash to stay, but more importantly a philanthropic foundation that benefits nearby communities.
Satellite Island in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel off the south-east coast of Tasmania has a similar sense of sequestration as Vatuvara but infused with an adventure ethos. It’s available to private parties of a maximum eight guests accommodated across a stylish summerhouse on a hill, boathouse by the water-lapped jetty and luxurious bell tent, all with seafarer touches and salvaged finds. This wildly beautiful isle of just 34 hectares has an ethereal end-of-the-world feel and offers coves and cliffs, pristine bushland, walking and kayaking, bird-watching, oyster-shucking and a cosy environment for old fashioned lazing about. Catering is DIY, but why not splurge on a private chef to putter across in a dinghy from the mainland and rustle up meals?
The Apple Isle boasts its own satellites, too, for taking healthy outdoors holidays. Here’s to the likes of Bruny, Flinders, King and Maria. Or purely for geographic speculation, look at a map of the isles between Bass and Banks straits and into Franklin Sound and ponder such dots as Badger, Goose, East Kangaroo, Tin Kettle and Preservation. Hardly holiday destinations, or even habitable in some cases, save for seabirds and waders, but proof of the unambiguous bent of early map-makers to value, record and name such dots with no-nonsense precision.
Then there are city islands, removed from urban noise and crush, that could be likened to balcony-box lookouts from which to observe the metropolises beyond. Consider Île de la Cité on the Seine and book a pied-à-terre from Christophe and Philippe at Guest Apartment Services Paris. Or check into Belmond Cipriani on Giudecca Island, a launch ride across Venice’s famous lagoon. Something more permanent? At the top end of the scale, Sotheby’s frequently has islands for sale, some just sandy atolls but most with glamorous residences, covering destinations as exotic as the Bahamas and as unexpected as off-the-radar specks in the Aegean. These all come with eyewatering price-tags, but solitude can be had on an achievable budget, such as 3.25-hectare Barberyn Island, offshore from Beruwala in south-west Sri Lanka, where there’s a heritage lighthouse and plenty of space to position a villa among the palms.
And as we emerge from the uncertainty of the pandemic era, listing agents such as Private Islands Inc report more demand for ultra-secluded properties, from Panama and Grenada to French Polynesia and Brazil. The objective is clearly to be removed from reality on the cusp of a brave new post-Covid world.