The History of Stanley Island is an interesting tale of horse-drawn pont's, an enterprising farmer and a few con-men.

The Keurbooms river is 70km long, rising near Uniondale at the eastern end of the Little Karoo, but is navigable by powered boats for only the first 5km. The river winds its way through history, exposing the sharply inclined quartzite beds, some 400 million years old.

Until the 1880s, the Keurbooms River was a difficult boundary between the Western and Eastern Cape, and two enterprising brothers - the Stanley’s - started a horse-drawn ferry crossing to cater for travellers along the coast. Although successful, a road bridge was desirable, and a road was built - at some substantial cost and with many engineering difficulties along the impossibly steep riverbank. Sadly, the riverbed was unsuitable for the foundations for a bridge, and all that road-building effort and cost was wasted: the road now simply forms a nice walk along and above the river until it comes to an abrupt end. At least the Stanley brothers are remembered, as the island in the estuary is named after them: it is the only privately owned island in South Africa. The brothers used the island to graze cattle on during the summer months, walking them across during low tide.

A bridge was finally opened in the late 1920s, but was destroyed by floods just a few years later in 1931. Of course, the Keurbooms was just the first of a whole succession of deep gorges carrying short, steep-sided river valleys to the sea from the Tsitsikamma range. The great South African road-builder Thomas Bain, accompanied by an equally capable forester Captain Harison, surveyed a route through in 1869, but the road was not completed until 1885, such was the scale of the engineering. Today, the N102 road follows that zigzag route through all the gorges, while the new toll road skims across the tops, leaping the gorges on a succession of huge concrete bridges.

 In 1985 Lud and Barbara de Bruijn bought the Island for R200 000 from the Stanley’s granddaughter and renamed it Lud’s Island.  Lud was actually looking for a holiday home for his family and came across the island. He built on the island having to transport all the material across the river by raft from the mainland.   Being a farmer he built with scraps and did all the architecture himself. The N2 bridge was under construction and Lud bought the discarded poles for R1 each!   Reject klinker bricks were used as well as local material such as slate from the old causeway and river sand was used for the concrete.  It took three years to complete the project. During the project he decided to link it to his hunting farm as a getaway for foreign guests after hunting in the bush. It was opened to the public as a B&B and restaurant shortly thereafter .With the airstrip guests could fly in and local boat owners could arrive from the river.

Springbok, grysbuck, cranes and warthogs were all part of the scene. Klippies, a tame klipspringer lived in the house and entertained the guests by walking on the dining room table eating all the flowers.  The island was run by Lud and Barbara until their divorce in 1998. As part of the divorce settlement Barbara became the owner of the island and Lud returned to his game farms.                                                                     

In 1998 the Island reverted to its original name of Stanley Island and was rented to Barry and Barbara Becke who ran it as a backpacker’s venue.   Barry is a glider instructor so the airstrip was used as a motorized glider base.  Barbara put the island on the market and Michael Fogg kept the Island on hold for a number of years with his grandiose scheme to link 12 exotic properties in a timeshare link through South Africa.  

In 2004 Chris Crause offered to purchase the Island for ten million rand but as a developer he couldn’t get building rights because a large portion is under the 150-year flood level. Before payment he sold it to an enterprising con–man known as Nick, for eighteen million Rand. Nick moved on to the Island without exchanging money and hoping through squatters rights to remain on the Island for three months. He then tried to sell each room on a timeshare basis and would then disappear with his ill gotten gains. In fact he did sell one of the rooms for R100,000 to a widow who wanted to invest her granddaughters inheritance. Through the legal intervention of a Port Elizabeth attorney and two high court appearances he was evicted and the Island reverted back to Barbara.   

In 2007 the children of Lud and Barbara, Johan, Danielle, Michelle and Nicolette, took over the Island and renovated the rooms to the present 4 star standard. The week before opening the island was covered by the largest flood in history as the previous flood level was covered by 1m! Johan, Tinnie and the staff were airlifted off the island. The wedding venue was washed away and after 3 months of work a new leaner island wedding venue emerged. Stanley Island Resort has been successfully run as a four star resort since 2007 just outside Plettenberg Bay on the beautifull Garden Route of South Africa.