Barry McKnight & Roger Cowland visit Lord Howe Island
The ad. in the newspaper said “Visit Lord Howe Island - The Last Paradise”…Now Paradise is a purely relative term. What is Paradise for some could be Hell for others. Still we were intrigued, and booked ourselves a seven day holiday package for the island in 2004. Below is Roger’s letter to his sister, Doris in London……….
Our recent trip to Lord Howe Island was most enjoyable, and gave us the opportunity to add to our video collection. This very beautiful island is 550k N/E of Sydney and takes about 2 hrs to fly there. This used to be serviced by the flying boats until the mid 70's, now Qantas uses the De Havilland, Dash 8, twin prop 36 seater. Anything bigger would have trouble landing there. The flight over was quite good except on landing at the island where the short runway lies between the mountains. It was very windy that day which buffeted the plane, giving the passengers a bit of a scare.... On arrival we were driven to our self contained apartment at Somerset Lodge, a collection of about 20 units set in beautiful Hibiscus gardens surrounded by Kentia Palms. Although we had been assured in Sydney that these units had full cooking facilities, they only had a microwave. There was however, an outside BBQ which came in very useful for us, and fortunately it didn't rain. Another thing we were at first concerned about was the fact that the units had no door keys, but were told that nobody locks their doors on Lord Howe Island.. We asked our tour bus driver when was the last crime on the island. It took him a while to find an answer, but the only one he could remember was when someone got a speeding fine when they exceeded the 25kph limit....The island, which is world heritage listed, measures 11 x 2 k and the CBD (central business district) comprises of a post office, a cafe, a general store, a hair salon, a power station and a community hall. There are two other general stores, a liquor store, hospital, three churches, a police station and a number of restaurants scattered around the island. We had considered dining out but the restaurants served dinner early and were pretty expensive, and you had to book in advance...No booking no food!.. Our neighbours at the Somerset dined out one night. With wine, the bill for two was $157....There are 350 permanent residents and the maximum visitors/beds is capped at 400. Grocery prices, as you can imagine are quite high with some being double the mainland price with very little choice. Most meat is frozen. although we did find one store that had fresh steaks, but they were $20 to $32 a kilo. There are restrictions on plastic bags and you have to take your own when shopping or pay 50 cents per bag. Rain is their only source of water but fortunately they get plenty. In fact, the island has actually been flooded in the past. Considering there are very few roads we were surprised at the amount of cars and utes. Recycling is very big here. Even the cars, or some of them anyway, run on recycled cooking oil and there’s even a couple of electric cars about. The main mode of transport however is bicycles, but we chose to walk as it would be difficult to carry our camera gear while pedaling a bicycle - especially with the cumbersome tripods. Certainly one needs to be pretty fit for this type of holiday as there are walking tracks everywhere. The alternative to walking is just to laze on the beach and take in the magnificent view across the lagoon of the dominating mountains, Gower and Lidgbird, remnants of an ancient volcano. If the sea is not too rough you can take a cruise around the island, or just view the colourful coral and fish from a glass bottom boat.
Ned’s beach, which has a nice safe lagoon, was just a ten minute walk up the road. The sandy lagoon is ideal for swimming and snorkelling. They have fish feeding at Ned’s everyday at 4pm which is quite a sight. Hundreds of fish home in on this spot for a feeding frenzy. The sea literally boils as the huge Kingfish and others break the surface to grab the food - or each other! The trick is to grab your dinner, while avoiding being somebody else’s!. Not a good time for anybody to be in the water though! A sign actually warns people against going into the water when the fish are feeding. After viewing the feeding frenzy we decided that is one warning sign that we will definitely heed! Barry took out the underwater camera at Ned’s when the tide was suitable and got some nice footage swimming with the colourful fishes. The island has quite an assorted bird population. Our favourites were the White Terns which are pure white. They are really cute with black eyes and eye-rings and blue/black beaks. They don't build nests, just lay their (rather large) egg in a fork in a tree or a depression in a branch. Of course the eggs and young are very vulnerable to predators, especially the Currawongs, who like their eggs and really love tasty little chicks. We actually witnessed a Currawong swoop down and grab a young chick sitting on a branch one day. All the other adult birds sitting nearby went crazy. Another hazard for them is the wind. One day after a long hot hike we plonked ourselves down on a seat under a big Norfolk Pine overlooking the lagoon. The breeze from the sea was very refreshing. Barry had just removed his hat when there was a splat. At first we thought it was bird poo, but the sticky mess on his head was a White Tern’s egg that had fallen from its branch high above. We had a good laugh about his free egg shampoo!! The most memorable hike was to the top of Malabar Point, 209 metres up a narrow rocky track which sometimes disappeared. The views on the way up were breath- taking, but from the summit it was truly spectacular. The whole southern end of the island was spread out before us with the two mountains dominating the scene. Balls Pyramid, a huge, almost vertical island was visible in the far distance. It is 23 k from Lord Howe and at 550 mtrs high it is the world’s largest rock shaft. There was quite a lot of bird activity on the small rocky outcrop far below with many Red-Tailed Tropic birds swooping about the steep cliffs. These were the birds that we saw for the first time on Lady Elliot Island. They have the amazing ability to be able to fly backwards, which they do during their courtship rituals. If we had have been there during the winter months we would have been able to see the Providence Petrels. They look like Mutton Birds, have a great curiosity and have no fear of people. Consequently it is possible to call to them as they are flying and they will come and land at your feet, or outstretched arm. They also dig burrows like rabbits for nesting purposes. On the return we walked through a a colony of Sooty Terns, who were busy nesting on the side of the hill and took no notice of us. Coming down from Malabar Point was the easy part, with the round trip taking about three hours. We felt that we had earned a couple of beers that night but it was really worth it. After dinner we took a stroll to the woods near Ned’s beach in search of nesting Muttonbirds or Fleshfooted Shearwaters to give them their correct name. Unlike their cousins, the Providence Petrels, these sea birds arrive in the spring for their nesting season after flying all the way from the northern hemisphere. They too dig burrows for nesting and fly about the sea during the day catching food. At dusk it is fascinating to watch them all flying back to the island to return to their burrows. We didn't have to search the woods for long to find them, for, as we approached, their strange wailing indicated their location. All we had to do was to point the torch and there they were sitting outside their burrows. They took no notice of us at all, and even did not mind the movie lights shining in their faces. How tolerant is that? We just had to be very careful not to step on any! The burrows can be a bit of a hazard to walkers though, because, while following a path near a cliff top, Barry fell into one, when the ground collapsed beneath him. I had to help him out. All we could conclude was that it was old Mutton Bird burrows beneath the path… At night a good torch is a must here as there are very few street lights and it gets extremely dark. After such an energetic day we got home and crashed. An easy day followed, and after a bit of a lay in we booked a ride on the glass bottom boat for 9am the following day. Barry did a bit more snorkelling at Neds and later in the day we wandered to the main town beachfront and captured some amazing shots of Mount Gower glowing in the afternoon sun. That night we revisited the Muttonbirds and got some really great close ups of these strange birds.. Our glass bottom boat trip wasn't all that good from a filming point of view. The water was crystal clear and showed up the wonderful colours of the fish and coral, but as with all boats of this kind you get too many reflections in the glass. We knew this so we took along the underwater housing and Barry donned a wet suit and snorkel and took the plunge armed with the camera. What he saw was very beautiful but unfortunately the camera malfunctioned and nothing was recorded. Very upsetting, especially for him after all the effort he put in...The next day we went on Ron's Ramble which was one of the highlights. It consisted of a three hour walk through the bush to the Valley of Shadows, where huge Banyan trees form a canopy over the jungle. Ron is quite a character! He is one of those guys who has been everywhere, done everything and seen everything. Our group consisted of about 18 and he chatted on about the islands history, flora and fauna for the whole three hours. At one point he pushed over a dead palm tree and extracted a number of fat witchety grubs, which he put in a plastic bag. Further on he let out a strange bird call sound, and down came a Currawong. A young English girl was selected from the group to hold the grubs in her hand for the Currawong to take. However she didn’t like the slimy grubs wriggling about in her hand so Ron had to give them to somebody else to hold. Anyway the bird eventually came down and took them, and undoubtedly, enjoyed his meal. Then it was on to The Clear Place, a small clearing on the edge of a cliff, from which there were good views of the coast, Mt Lidgbird and Balls Pyramid. Here as we sat around on logs and nibbled at biscuits while Ron told us all about the island, particularly the measures that they were taking to save the Lord Howe Woodhen from extinction. The number of Woodhens had got as low as thirty when it was decided to round them all up before the rats killed them and put them into a breeding programme. This was successful and there were now around two hundred - enough to release some back into the wild.
After a visit to the Valley of Shadows, so called because of the mottled light cast on the forest floor by the huge Banyan trees with their weird aerial root system, we wound up our afternoon ramble with tea and cakes in a hillside restaurant. It was here that one of the Woodhens walked past on the surrounding lawn. Of course everyone made a mad dash for their cameras and the rather unspectacular little bird soon found itself the centre of attention. However like a true star it just carried on with what it was doing.. Now with footage of the rare Wood Hen in our cameras we turned our attention to one of our other objectives - the Masked Booby. We had been unsuccessful in seeing any so far, but on our last days there we bumped into a young couple, Geoff & Alex from Sydney who were keen birdwatchers. They said that the Masked Boobies were nesting at Muttonbird Point, and were quite visible from the lookout platform there. It was about a 15 k return hike to Muttonbird Point but we decided to give it a go. It was more difficult than we imagined with the last part involving scrambling through thick scrub following a trail that kept disappearing. We finally reached the lookout and sure enough it gave us a view of the headland below. It was separated from the mainland by a narrow neck of large rocks which would probably be submerged at high tide. Scrambling over the rocks with cameras and tripods was out of the question so we decided to grab the telephoto lenses and get what we could from the lookout. The Masked Boobies looked very beautiful as they soared so effortlessly about us. One or two young fledglings on the ground were just close enough to enable us to grab a few shots as they exercised their wings, anxious to join the others soaring in the sky above. Once we got back to the main road we were worn out, and were not looking forward to the 3 kilometres that we still had to go to reach the village. However a kindly motorist stopped and offered us a lift for which we were very grateful. I guess that by this time we had become known around the island as we walked everywhere with our cameras and tripods slung over our shoulders. One lady said she thought we were surveyors, while another said she admired us for being so focused on what we were doing.... The weather was very kind to us also with sunny skies and a temperature ranging between 15 and 26cel. The day we left however brought a wind change and some heavy cloud with it. We were told that before we arrived they had a lot of rainy weather, so I guess the rain was going to return as we departed. It was an interesting seven days on a very different part of New South Wales…………….
The Wind Up by Barry
Well, that is as Roger saw it. Maybe a bit of the island’s history would be helpful here. The island was discovered by Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball commander of the first fleet ship “Supply” in 1788 while en route between Sydney Cove and the penal settlement on Norfolk Island. He named the uninhabited island after the British Admiral Richard Howe and the rock shaft south of the island after himself. The first settlement came in 1834 when three couples arrived from New Zealand. In the following years the island acted as a provisioning station for ships traveling between Sydney and Norfolk Island and for the whaling ships. The native fauna, which had no reasons before to fear man, was now an easy catch and many of them were driven to extinction during this period. The extinction was hastened by Black Rats who swam ashore from a wrecked ship in 1918 and multiplied rapidly. When whaling was on the decline in the late 1870’s, the islanders turned to the collecting and export of Kentia palm seeds to the indoor plant market in Europe. Which they still do today. Tourists first came to the island by ship around the turn of the 20th Century. However it really picked up after W.W.2 with the introduction of a flying boat service from Rose Bay in Sydney in the late forties. As the Flying Boats became older and less efficient a runway was constructed in 1974 to allow the use of twin engine land based aircraft. The flying boat service also took a blow when one of their number was wrecked during a savage storm which caused it to break away from its moorings. In 1948, another flying boat, a WW2 Catalina belonging to the R.A.A.F clipped the trees on Malabar Hill and crashed on the slope below killing seven of its nine crew. Some of the wreckage can still be seen today. The real turnaround for the island’s wildlife came in the 1970’s when a decision was made to rid the island of its feral animals. Cats were banned completely and war was declared on the island’s rat population in an effort to save the virtually extinct Lord Howe Woodhen, then down to only 30 birds. A breeding programme was successful and the numbers increased. There is another bit of good news too for a small number of Lord Howe Stick Insects, which were thought to be extinct, were discovered living on the rocky slopes of Balls Pyramid. Like the Wood Hen, a careful breeding programme has pulled them back from the edge of extinction too. As for being the Last Paradise, well maybe it would be more correct to refer to Lord Howe Island as more of a Paradise Lost!! Here we had an island that was totally uninhabited by man, which led to it evolving its own flora and fauna that was unique to the island. It was a similar situation to the Galapagos Islands. Unfortunately when man the hunter arrived on the island he brought with him his cats and other feral species and together they managed to wipe out most of the island’s unique wildlife. As for the humans living there now, as said before, the numbers are capped at no more than about seven hundred. Unlike mainland Australia, however, there is no tension from previous claimants of ownership of the land because there weren’t any. There are no snakes or stinging insects and the beaches are free of man eating sharks. I guess these things alone with the nil crime rate definitely give it a shove up the Paradise ladder…Today, in 2013 the battle with the rats is still on going and complete eradication is proving difficult. A type of carpet bombing with special poison pellets is planned for 2015, but I am not too sure that the residents and tourists will be jumping for joy when they learn that they are to be carpet bombed with rat poison!!! …However, should it succeed and have the desired effect, then thought will be given to introducing similar species of some of the extinct birds that survived on other islands in the area. If all this is successful, then perhaps it can be looked upon as Paradise restored!….
