Abiding by the island’s 25kmh speed limit, we cruise past the local tip, where 86 per cent of the island’s waste is composted, reused, or recycled. I later discover this is where Whitfield gets ingredients to power his bio-fuelled van, thanks to the island’s restaurants depositing their used vegetable oil here.
Amid the dense greenery a pecking order becomes apparent. While the native Kentia palms are supported (their cultivation provides the island’s second biggest income after tourism), the introduced Norfolk Island pines are not. ‘We’re encouraged to cut ourselves Christmas trees, or the pines would take over the place,’ says Whitfield.
Not all the flora is easy to remove, but luckily Lord Howe’s appeal is such that tourists will actually pay to come here and do a spot of weeding. While the Lord Howe Island Board, which administrates all the island’s needs from composting through to running the airport and the National Park Preserve, runs a more intensive programme, resident naturalist Ian Hutton’s regular week-long weeding trips are extremely popular.
Rob Pallin, owner of Paddy Pallin adventure stores, and a recent addition to the island’s board, says the weeding programmes kept him coming back every year since 2001.
‘We’ve been removing climbing asparagus (an exotic) from large parts of Transit Hill. It’s a superb way of enjoying the natural attributes of this incredible place and contributing to the island,’ says Pallin. ‘People get a feeling of contributing in the morning, then, in the afternoon you get taken on walks to see the mutton birds nesting, or to explore aspects of the environment.’
But while the thick undergrowth caused by the climbing asparagus actually prevents the mutton birds from setting up home, to a novice, it just looks like leafy green plant life.
‘A lot of people who visit don’t see the weeds if their eyes aren’t trained to do so,’ agrees Pallin. ‘But they do see a far greater variety of plants and birds when the weeds aren’t there.’
With hundreds of endemic species, Lord Howe teems with birdlife, but many of the rarest species have only returned to this utopia thanks to the eradication of introduced predators. Pigs and goats, brought by early sailors as a source of fresh meat, ate their way across the island, trampling precious vegetation as they went. Pigs also ate the highly endangered Lord Howe Island woodhen and their eggs. Eventually, Mount Gower’s cloud-forested peak became the only place in the world the species could be found, and the population dropped below 20 pairs.
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