Taprobane Island
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| Geography | |
|---|---|
| Location | Sri Lanka |
| Adjacent bodies of water | Indian Ocean |
| Administration | |
Taprobane Island, originally called "Galduwa" ("Rock Island" in Sinhalese), is a private island with one villa, located just off the southern coast of Sri Lanka opposite the village of Weligama. The island was renamed after the old Greek word for Sri Lanka, by its most famous owner, the self-titled Count de Mauny Talvande (born Maurice Talvande), who sighted it around 1925 after a long search for an earthly paradise. He built its villa and replanted the island to create a private eden. The islet passed on to the American author and composer Paul Bowles and then the Sri Lankan born former UN Chief Prosecutor Sir Desmond Lorenz de Silva before it came to the ownership of the Australian businessman Geoffrey Dobbs.
Notable people who stayed on Taprobane include Dutch author Peter ten Hoopen, who spent a month there in 1984 during civil unrest on the mainland, as well as Kylie Minogue, who composed a song about the island inspired by her stay titled "Taprobane (Extraordinary Day)". It had inspired Jason Kouchak to compose "Dark Island" in his 1999 album Watercolours.Coordinates: 5°58′04″N 80°25′32″E / 5.96778°N 80.42556°E
The author Robin Maugham, who visited the Island as a young man, and in the mid-1970s, considered the unique beauty and harmony of the villa had become compromised after de Mauny's death by partitioning and the loss of his furniture and fittings, and that the area itself had been despoiled by the construction of a new road along the mainland beach. Since then, and particularly after the 2004 tsunami, substantial further residential development on the adjoining mainland has occurred.
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