Fantasy Islands : It’s Hard to Find an Escape More Remote Than Any of These South Pacific Outposts. With the Current Transpacific Air-Fare Bargains, There’s No Better Time to Go. : Lord Howe: British Heirloom

LORD HOWE ISLAND, Australia —  “See you at the fish fry,” passers-by shouted as we pedaled rickety bikes down pot-holed, one-lane roads toward the Milky Way Restaurant on Lord Howe Island. Every Friday evening the restaurant’s outdoor picnic tables fill with locals who gather for gossip, a cold beer under the palms and a generous slab of kingfish caught that morning in waters nearby. While their counterparts in Sydney fight rush-hour traffic, diners at the Friday night fish fry are about the closest thing to a crowd that can be found on Lord Howe.

We had to pedal our bicycles hard to exceed the strictly enforced speed limit of 15 miles per hour that rules the 15 miles of roads lacing together the island’s 98 homes, 12 tourist lodges and four small general stores--all half buried in bougainvillea and palm trees. Shaped something like a boomerang, 7 1/2 miles long and roughly one mile wide, this tropical green, volcanic sliver lies 500 miles northeast of Sydney in a remote corner of the South Pacific. And despite our age of rampant development and super resorts, the determination and pride of the islanders--as well as their unusual government--has allowed Lord Howe to remain relatively uncommercial.

Several lodges refuse to in stall telephones--as a protection for guests who really want to get away from it all. There are no overhead cables or billboards. And at the nine-hole golf course, guests can help themselves to clubs, balls and buggies and deposit payments into an honor box. Although the local population of 292 swells to nearly 700 during the peak Christmas period, it is always possible to find some unpopulated white sand beach with the dramatic mist shrouding Mt. Gower and Mt. Lidgbird in the background.

The entire island is part of the city of Sydney and is government-owned Crown Land. That means that no one, not even those born on the island, can own any of it. Leases of half an acre or less are granted in perpetuity, with islanders given preference over outsiders. Lots cannot be taken over by companies and must be occupied full time, effectively keeping out companies and holiday cottages.

The Lord Howe Island Board, which is governed by the Australia National Parks and Wildlife Service, maintains strict control over any changes: All buildings, including hotels and motels, cannot exceed a single story and leaseholders must apply to the board before they so much as cut a branch off a tree or change the color of their home.

Several years ago, concern over the number of cars on the island (at that time, 143) prompted the board to rule that islanders must apply for permission to buy a new car, showing proof that their old one is no longer in use. “We’re sometimes accused of being bureaucracy gone mad,” says longtime resident Clive Wilson “but our goal is to prevent change and to preserve our unique and delicate environment.” All of this said, tourists find that the most popular form of transport is the bicycle, which is readily available for rental.

UNESCO was obviously impressed when they declared Lord Howe Island a World Heritage Site in December, 1982, ranking the pristine island jewel with such natural wonders as the Grand Canyon and Mt. Everest--not only for its beauty, but for its natural treasures as well.

The world’s southernmost coral reef lies off the west side of the island. And into the subtropical, 3,600-acre haven bustling with indigenous birds and creatures fly thousands of migrating birds from as far away as Siberia to nest in the 28 rocks and islets that make up the Lord Howe Island Group--eroded remnants of a huge mid-ocean volcano that erupted more than 8 million years ago.

Lord Howe Island was visited by ships of Britain’s First Fleet on Feb. 17, 1788, just weeks after the founding of the colony at Port Jackson, which would later become Sydney. That event is marked each year by Discovery Day--the island’s biggest celebration. The sailors found the island well stocked with birds and turtles, which they captured for the cooking pots of scurvy-racked Port Jackson.

Settlers gradually made their way to Lord Howe, many of them seal and whale hunters. One early settler was Nathan Chase Thompson, who in 1853 brought with him a 12-year-old Gilbert Island princess whom he had plucked from a marriage arranged when she was a baby. The couple made their living by supplying passing ships, but hard times came with the arrival of steam and a downturn in the market for whale oil.

In 1878, when the New South Wales government sent a representative to help the islanders out of their economic troubles, it was discovered that money might literally be growing on trees. The endemic kentia palm proved a perfect indoor potted plant, and settlers began exporting the seed to stock turn-of-the-century palm courts in Europe and America. The kentia is still one of the world’s most popular potted palms and a nursery has been set up to export the plants worldwide. Even today, pickers must head into the rugged backcountry, collecting seeds between March and October in the old-fashioned way by wrapping straps around their feet and climbing to the top of the swaying palms. The olive-sized seeds are carried out in backpacks.

The island has been a tourist hideaway since 1947, when stately old airplanes called “Sandringham Flying Boats” took off in a curtain of spray from Sydney Harbor for the three-hour flight that landed them in the island’s lagoon. Passengers were greeted on the dock by islanders bearing frangipani leis. But the romantic old aircraft could operate only in good weather and in 1974, economics caught up with the world’s last scheduled flying boat service, replaced today by a landing strip.

Twenty-five hundred-foot Mt. Gower and 2,200-foot Mt. Lidgbird, the domain of the hardy bush-walker, are nestled on the southern tip of the island and, along with the hills that rise on the northern end of the island, are permanent park preserve. On the lowlands in between are homes, farms and lodges. There is no real township, though the post office, community hall and government offices are clustered near the junction of Lagoon Road and Neds Beach Road. The Blue Lagoon is one of the most popular lodges for sipping a beer.

The islanders are like one big family and, in fact, many are related. The name Thompson--carried by descendants of the original settler--is still one of the most common. Sharing a strong community spirit, Lord Howe Islanders live a tranquil lifestyle, sheltered from many of the woes of the outside world. There is virtually no unemployment or crime and the resourceful residents have learned of the necessity to turn their hand to more than one skill.

Bob Crombie is a typical example: Butcher and baker, he also runs the island’s only gas station. Jim Dorman carved a niche for himself by salvaging memorabilia from the island rubbish dump to stock a museum in the old Retired Servicemen’s League building, now an intriguing collection that includes the skull of the extinct giant horned turtle, the largest animal to live on the island before man. With high freight charges attached to supplies that are shipped to the island, islanders don’t waste anything and recycling is common. When Dorman’s museum was bursting at the seams, he extended it by using materials left behind from sets constructed for the 1984 filming of Colleen McCullough’s book, “An Indecent Obsession.”

There are two churches on the island where visiting ministers of various denominations hold regular services. The only liquor store is run by the Lord Howe Island Board, with profits going toward island improvement projects.

Island births may be rare these days, but they are a much celebrated event at Lord Howe’s well-equipped, four-bed hospital. Across the way at Government House, the arrival and sex of a newborn islander is proudly heralded by a pink or blue diaper on the flagpole.

Donning snorkels and flippers during our 1990 trip, we swam out into the crystal clear waters of the shallow lagoon to drift over Sylph’s Hole and Comet Hole, where the sandy seabed gives way to rocky pockets rimmed in vivid corals. Neon-colored fish darted among convoluted brain corals and anemones--some of the more than 400 species, including the gorgeous butterfly cod and hawkfish, that inhabit island waters. Warm currents from New Caledonia and Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef bring swarms of creatures to mix with those normally found in cooler waters, creating a rich and unusual collection of about 500 temperate and tropical organisms that make this small lagoon a world-class diving hole.

At dusk on Ned’s Beach, we stood knee-deep in water, feeding bread to hundreds of bluefish and rainbow fish swirling around our legs. As the last bits of food were tugged from our fingers, the first of the muttonbirds arrived from a day’s fishing at sea and filled the sky with ghostly silhouettes. We moved up the beach to watch as they plunged suddenly earthward and scurried awkwardly to burrows excavated in the sandy soil beneath a canopy of banyan and palm trees, just a few feet from the edge of the road. These remarkable birds migrate almost 9,000 miles each year from the Bering Sea to nest on this island. Another haven for sea birds lies 10 miles away on 1,680-foot Ball’s Pyramid, a gothic spire that is the world’s highest rock pinnacle, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The jagged, tooth-like volcanic remnant rises eerily at the horizon, a beacon for hundreds of thousands of sooty terns and petrels and masked gannets.

More than 120 species of birds can be spotted from the lowlands or on the lofty peaks of Mt. Gower, a rugged six-hour hike, and Mt. Lidgbird, which is the last nesting site of the Providence petrel. The most famous local bird, however is the Lord Howe Island wood hen. As we clattered along the wheel ruts of a little-used track, a pair of dark brown birds about the size of bantam hens and resembling New Zealand’s kiwi burst from the thicket and ran toward us. By the time we jumped from our bikes, the hens were bobbing around our feet and shrieking like rusty pulleys. Without the slightest trace of fear, they plucked bits of cheese from our hands with slender curved beaks.

There was a special excitement in our close encounter with the Lord Howe Island wood hen. Before man’s arrival almost 200 years ago, the island was home to thousands of the flightless birds. But by 1980, the wood hen was listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as one of the world’s 10 rarest birds. Naturally inquisitive and unafraid, they fell easy prey to hunters and became the main ingredient of the popular local wood hen pie. When scientists arrived to do a head count in 1979, only 15 could be found. All were sheltering in the chilly upper reaches of Mt. Gower, where they had retreated from their natural habitat on the warm lowlands to escape foraging feral pigs.

It seemed only a matter of time until the wood hen went the way of nine of the 13 endemic species of birds that had completely disappeared from the island. With the help of a group of scientists and concerned islanders, a desperate and elaborate 11th-hour rescue was launched in mid-1980 to save the wood hen. A helicopter was flown all the way from Sydney to carry the birds down from their mountain sanctuary to a safe breeding area funded by about $200,000 donated by a hopeful Australian public. By May, 1981, the first wood hens bred in captivity were released back into a wilderness cleared of pigs. Today, there are more than 200 of the endearing little birds wandering the island, many of them having taken up residence in local gardens. By late 1981, Glenn Lourie Fraser, the dedicated 23-year-old aviculturist who engineered the wood hen’s revival, was honored with an award from the American Federation of Aviculture for achieving the most successful comeback of any endangered bird in the world.

Lord Howe Island is a rare gem and it is heartening to see it being treated as such. As Australian conservationist Nigel Ashton wrote 10 years ago in a report to the Lord Howe Island Board on the island’s future: “. . . Australia should cherish this landscape and realize that it has here an opportunity to show the world what can be done to retain the island in its unique and lovely form for the future, not just as one of its treasured possessions, but also because of its value in the future of mankind.”

GUIDEBOOK

Lord Howe Island

Getting there: From Sydney, Oxley Airlines and Eastern Australian Airlines have flights to Lord Howe Island. The round-trip is approximately $525. Reservations can be made through Qantas Airways or any airline that flies into Sydney.

Where to stay: Rates at the Pinetrees Lodge are $140 per person, per day, including all meals. For reservations, call (612) 262-6585, or fax (612) 262-6638. Or call Lord Howe Island direct at 011-65-632-177 or fax 011-65-632-156. Ocean View Lodge charges $95 per person, per day. For reservations (no published phone number), fax 011-65-632-122.

Where to eat: Try the Milky Way Bar and Restaurant at the Milky Way Old Settlement Lodge, phone 011-65-632-012, and the Ocean View Restaurant at the Ocean View Lodge, fax 011-65-632-122.

Getting around: There are only a few cars for rent on Lord Howe Island, but bicycles can be rented at many of the lodges.

For more information: Contact the New South Wales State Tourism Commission, 2121 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1200, Los Angeles 90067, (310) 552-9566.