By David Ellis.
IF your dream is to have your very own tropical island in the sun, a castle to call home, and a history around you with which to intrigue visitors for hours, have your dream come true with a little spot that’s gone up for grabs in the sunny Bahamas.
And for a mere US$38,000,000, or around a tad over 50.5-million Aussie bucks.
The private Darby Island snuggles amid the 300 islands of the Exuma Cays that comprise one of the most beautiful parts of the Bahamas, and amongst new-found neighbours owning nearby isles you’ll have David Copperfield, Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage and Faith Hill to name-drop just a few.
You’ll also have 6.5km of water frontage, your own 14 white sandy beaches lapped by crystal waters, a total 225ha of land all to yourself (the size of around a couple of hundred football fields,) and a somewhat overgrown one-time airfield.
Plus a 740 square metre castle built by a British hotelier, Sir Guy Baxter who was given the island by England’s King George VI when he knighted him in the mid-1930s.
Which also means you’ll be able to talk colourfully about Sir Guy as well, because not only did he raise livestock, and grow palm oil, cotton and fruit here, he reputedly acted somewhat bizarrely in the early 1940s. This included flashing floodlights at night from his castle’s rooftop, creating an elaborate radio communications room, and laying concrete moorings near caves on his island – allegedly, many locals said at the time, for German WWII submarines patrolling the Atlantic to tuck up to for a bit of crew R&R.
Whether that is true in whole or part, no-one really knows, for Sir Guy and his mistress fled in the early 1940s after being confronted by a deputation of angry neighbouring islanders who accused him of being a Nazi sympathiser, and where he disappeared to remains a mystery to this day.
DARBY ISLAND in the sunny Bahamas, is up for sale for a cool US$38,000,000, or a bit over 50-million Aussie bucks.
YOUR own castle on Darby Island was built by Englishman Sir Guy Baxter in the 1930. It’s said he allowed German submarines patrolling the Atlantic Ocean to tuck into his island for a bit of crew R&R early in World War II, leading to he and his mistress being forced off the island by surrounding neighbours angry at his Nazi sympathies.
