Isolated in the Wilderness of Lizard Island on The Great Barrier Reef

I am on Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef with friends Juanita and Jan for five days of relaxation. It may be an easy 20 kilometres off the coast of Far North Queensland by Cessna, but flying low over the coral reefs in clear tropical waters before landing on the island’s airstrip, I’m overcome by a feeling of being 20 light-years away from reality.

I’m a castaway in a wilderness not only in the unspoiled landscape of melaleuca and she-oak casuarinas, but in a technological wilderness cut off from a world of television and mobile phones (and almost from Wi-Fi Internet access that I can access in a lounge area only).

Today, Lizard Island is a terrestrial and marine National Park under World Heritage protection, combining ‘natural beauty, uninterrupted, with fine dining and refined comforts for the discerning traveller’.