90 Australian GeographicT
HE SUPERLATIVES TRIP off the tongue with
ease when talking about Lord Howe Island.
Within a few hours of arriving at the airstrip I
had already climbed through a forest of black-
butt, greybark, curly palms and elkhorn ferns
to the lookout high on Malabar Hill. Here is
one of the most spectacular views in the South Pacific. Splayed
out to the south in front of me lay the misshapen crescent of
the island, dominated at the far end by the rugged peaks of Mt
Lidgbird and Mt Gower, and filled in the middle with meadows,
forests, beaches and bays. Protected within the crescent was a
shallow lagoon – a line of breakers on its right delineated the
boundary of the world’s southernmost coral reef.
As if that wasn’t enough to take in, there I stood amid the
world’s largest nesting ground for red-tailed tropicbirds, their
nests found in pockets of the cliffs beneath my feet. Turning
180° to the north – to take in the view away from Lord Howe
and towards the Admiralty Islands – the graceful white forms
and screeching calls of these aerobatic seabirds filled the sky as
they weaved back and forth above the waves and the mosaic of
coral reefs 208m below me.
Just 90 minutes later I’d climbed down to the lagoon and
was bobbing in the warm waters and dipping below to snorkel
alongside double-headed wrasse, spangled emperors, reef sharks
and turtles. Here I made my way through thick gardens of coral,
found further from the tropics than any others on Earth. At
Erscotts Hole, near the south of the lagoon, I looked up to find
myself almost in the shadow of 875m Mt Gower.
“Lord Howe represents the southern extremity to where the
East Australian Current drives warm tropical water, 12 months
of the year – although in summer it will extend right down into
Bass Strait,” says Cameron Lay, manager of Lord Howe Island
Marine Park. “It means we can maintain a truly tropical ecosys-
tem, and the island’s waters are characterised by both tropical
and temperate species – one of its defining features. It’s got a
real mix of climatic zones... The current brings larvae, eggs and
spawn down from the Great Barrier Reef to settle around Lord
Howe. So we’ve got more than 500 species of fish, 98 known
corals and possibly thousands of invertebrates.”L
ORD HOWE IS A SPECTACULAR speck in the Pacific; 780km
north-east of Sydney, it is just 11km long, and it is this
compactness that makes it a brilliant destination for enjoy-
ing a wide variety of nature-based activities all within a few days- including bushwalking, kayaking, birding and snorkelling.
Hiking along beaches, cliff ledges and forest trails is a fantastic
way to encounter some of the 200 species of bird that live or
pass through here (including 14 nesting seabirds) and 300 plants
(such as 11 orchids, 56 ferns and 105 mosses, which are abundant
in the cloud-capped forests atop Mt Gower and Mt Lidgbird).
“One of the great things about Lord Howe Island is that it’s
an incredibly diverse environment, but it’s also very accessible,”
says Dean Hiscox, who was the island’s park ranger for 16 years,
and who now runs Lord Howe Environmental Tours with his
family. “You can be on the reef in less than 10 minutes, or a
mountain in a very short amount of time, and really get an
appreciation for the diversity the island has to offer.”
Crew members of the First Fleet ship HMS Supply caught
glimpses of Lord Howe in 1788 while they were en route from
Sydney Cove to establish a second colony on Norfolk Island.
Merchant vessels plied this route and whaling ships stopped here
in the intervening years, but the first settlers didn’t arrive until- They made a living trading with passing ships until whal-
ing began to decline, and then developed a trade in the seeds of
native thatch or kentia palms, which became enormously pop-
ular in the parlours of Victorian Europe. The island’s governing
body, the Lord Howe Island Board (LHIB), still earns revenue
from the cultivation and export of seedlings by a contractor.
It is the island’s remoteness and the rugged nature of its
1455ha of land that have kept it in relatively pristine condition
compared with other Pacific islands. Today, Lord Howe has just
350 permanent residents, and up to another 400 tourists in
peak season. Numbers are controlled by an LHIB restriction on
guest beds, limiting development. The island group has been a
World Heritage Area since 1982 and a marine park since 1999.
Ecologist-turned-hotelier Luke Hanson and his wife, Dani
Rourke, own Pinetrees Lodge, an island institution; with 75
beds, it is the largest provider of accommodation. Dani is the
sixth generation of a family who first began taking paying guests
on Lord Howe in the 1890s. Luke says the island has a series of
delightful bushwalking spots, including the northern hills we’d
ventured into earlier that day.
“Without too much effort you can get up to Malabar and
Kims Lookout. It’s not too steep. There’s a nice track up to the
ridgeline. And, when you get there, you realise you’ve climbed
up the back of this sea cliff that drops 200m down to the ocean.
And it’s kind of staggering,” he says. “You can walk along that
ridgeline for about a kilometre and you get these little viewpoints
where you pop through the forest. And this time of year you’re
surrounded by all the red-tailed tropicbirds and chicks squawk-
ing. It’s a great wildlife experience.”
The red-tailed tropicbirds are all along the island’s northern
cliffs from November to May, but if you’re there over the period
from September to January, there will be sooty terns in their
tens of thousands instead.
Also worth exploring at that end of the island is Mt Eliza,
slightly lower than Malabar at 147m.
Lay of the land. John Pickrell stands on Malabar Hill from where walkers can
take in the whole island, all the way to distant Mt Lidgbird and Mt Gower.Continued page 95 LUKE HANSON (LH)