The last twenty years or so haven't all been kind to Mel Gibson, who's suffered some mishaps in his personal life, and come in for negative press attention as a result. That might have been the trigger for him to buy an island where he can spend is days without worrying about photographers lurking around every corner. True to Gibson's style, he didn't just buy any old island - he bought one of the biggest private islands anywhere in the Pacific, close to Fiji. Even in doing that, he couldn't completely steer clear of controversy - the island used to belong to slave owners, and was used as a cotton and sugar plantation in the 19th century.
Those days were long gone by the time Gibson paid $15m to buy it from a businessman in 2005, and he set to work removing all traces of the island's history. One of the very few buildings that remains on the 5,400 acres of land is Gibson's purpose-built mansion; the rest of it is pure and unspoiled.