The Indian Ocean Adventure

Erik Fearn goes to Christmas Island to reacquaint himself with the Great Outdoors.

Precariously perched on the edge of the deep and forbidding Java Trench in a remote corner of the Indian Ocean somewhere between Indonesia and Australia rises alone tropical island unlike any other in the world. Christmas Island, with its mist-enshrouded peaks, virgin jungle and her flanks relentlessly battered by deep ocean rollers, is uncannily reminiscent of the Jurassic Park Island.

And just like that mystical place, Christmas Island’s chief lure is its fascinating, large and definitely unique wildlife. The main difference then between Jurassic and Christmas? Christmas Island has a great resort on it that caters to the adventurer in all of us (No lah, no electric fences needed to keep the dinos out…)

Until recently, that wasn’t so. This Australian protectorate lies just over an hour south of Singapore, and strangely, has a tiny population barely topping 2,000 mainly Penang Chinese and Malacca Malays.

A micro-economy based on phosphate mining has existed on this forlorn patch of land for a century now, but it only in the last decade or so that the true natural wealth of this jade fleck has been recognised.

Simply put, for its size, Christmas Island has arguably the most intense and ready display of untouched flora and fauna in the world – all of it big. The very remoteness that made the lives of the original settlers so hard is now providing to be the island’s saving grace.

There’s something here for everyone. Huge elegant frigate birds and boobies dominate the sky with their one metre wingspan, the jungles are literally crawling with millions of red crabs and monstrous basketball-size Robber Crabs (with no natural predators, they flourish both in size and number).

And perhaps most impressively, the surrounding sea is seriously teeming with pelagic – big fish-like hammerheads, whale sharks, dolphins, manta rays, tuna and barracuda which are sure to excite, if not scare, even the most jaded diver. Two-thirds of the island has been declared a national park to protect the delicate ecological balance, and most of the surrounding sea has barely been discovered.

But until four years ago, there was very little in the way of infrastructure for the recreational adventure. That was until the Christmas Island Resort boldly established themselves on a clifftop overlooking the thundering ocean and was determined to put Christmas Island on the traveller’s map.