Lord Howe Island: Strange birds in paradise
You may half expect to see pterodactyls wheeling in the mist – but you can count on a currawong divebombing you.
from the May 21, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Lord Howe has managed to get rid of three introduced species in the past century – goats, feral cats, and pigs. The pigs were responsible for pushing to the brink of extinction the rare Lord Howe wood hen. By the 1970s there were just 37 here. The last wood hens have only survived by retreating to the top of 2,870 foot-high Mt. Gower, where a sheer-sided slab of rock prevented feral hogs from reaching the summit.
"We call this the get-up place," says Jack Shick, a fifth-generation islander and one of two guides licensed to take visitors on the grueling climb up Mt. Gower, an eight-hour round trip. "If you can get up and over it, you're better than a pig."
Along with a dozen other hikers in our group, I hauled myself up with the aid of a muddy, greasy rope and footholds cut into the granite. Mr. Shick, a fit-looking 40-something, barely broke a sweat on this, his 1,074th ascent.
At long last we reached the mist-shrouded plateau covered in gnarled, stunted trees, their twisting limbs clothed in thick green moss. A lone wood hen poked for grubs among the ferns and lichens. The remnant population was hauled back from the brink of extinction by captive breeding in the 1980s. Hundreds of the gentle-natured brown rails now wander the forests here.
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There's an innocence about Lord Howe that seems straight out of the pages of an Enid Blyton adventure. Bikes are rented without locks, neat stacks of firewood are left beside the many public barbecue sites, and at Ned's Beach, one of the island's finest, an unattended wooden shed full of snorkeling equipment operates on an honor system – you pay for what you use.
A single road extends from one end of the island to the other, and most people get around on foot or by bicycle. There are no bars or clubs – just a handful of decent restaurants and discreet lodges. And the handful of cars bear bumper stickers that read "Lord Howe Island – somewhere off the Australian coast."
On my last day I walked one of the island's most scenic tracks, from Ned's Beach (voted Australia's cleanest beach) to Malabar Hill and along the cliffs to Mt. Eliza, where there's a magnificent view of the entire island. There, pristine-white tropical birds with two scarlet quills extending from their tails soared high above and sooty terns flitted about at shoulder height.
It was descending the path to Old Settlement Beach, beneath palms casting tiger-stripe shadows, that I encountered my avian attacker.
"They do tend to get a bit territorial – much more so than currawongs on the mainland of Australia," says Hutton. "The ones we have here are an endemic subspecies – they're found nowhere else in the world," he added proudly. Just as well those stones didn't hit their mark.
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