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The 115 islands of the Seychelles are covering an area of approximately one
million sqkm North of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The land area of all
islands together measures only 454 sqkm. Mahe is the main island and is situated
at 4 deg 40' North and 55 deg 30' East. In 1998 the republic had some 79.000
inhabitants with 60.000 of them living in the capital Victoria.
The Seychelles are made up of several island groups. The central Granitic
group consists of 41 islands including Mahe and La Digue (AF-024), other islands
are Aldabra (EU-025), Amirante (AF-033), Cosmoledo (AF-026) and Farquhar
(AF-035). Nowadays they seem to be perfect tropical islands with booming tourism
and many hotels with their achitecture perfectly fitting into the landscape. A
wellknown souvenir is the Coco de Mer, a special coco- nut whose erotic form is
the origin for many legends.
The islands were a French colony from 1756-1794, then became British and
belonged to Mauritius. In 1903 they became an autonomous British colony and
finally they became independent in 1976. Prior to 1756 the Seychelles like many
other islands in the Indian Ocean were home to numbers of pirates. The notorious
pirate La Buse (Bussard) aka Oliver Le Vasseur is said to have buried a
legendary treasure in the Bel Ombre bay on Mahe.
Amateur radio: prefix S7, own DXCC entity, not listed in the actual MOST
WANTED DXCC LIST of the ARRL. A few islands were own DXCC entities until Jun 28,
1976: Aldabra (VQ9/A), Desroches (VQ9/D) and Farquhar (VQ9/F). Time difference:
UTC+4h. CQ zone 39, ITU zone 53. <DX-NL 1268 November 7, 2001> |
