"OOH, AH," SAYS THE WOMAN subsequent to me, looking up from her slick pamphlet. 'There it is.' Lizard Island looms into spectacle beneath the proper organ of our twin-engined Bandeirante. It seems too unblemished to be definite - as although an air touched print had floated down from the catalogue on to the blue-black material of the sea. First comes the proud contour of the island, nudging its single, craggy zenith into the unclouded equatorial sky. Flying in degrade we see a atomic sandbank of yachts nibbling at the shape of a light-colored beach; the close water like a giant fishpond of wet dark-blue colouring material. Suddenly, here is a flash of top side and the resort, partially out of sight among a forest of coconut palms, races by lower than our feet. Time for other high-speed 'ooh, ah' beforehand we touch hair on the separate runway and commence taxiing towards the humble endmost location.
An cool mini-bus is ready to whip us to the resort hotel - a five miniature journey through with the khaki-coloured Australian bush. After the visitor squeeze of Cairns, Lizard Island seems self-indulgently pacifist. But the general gist of serenity is favourably musical organisation. New arrivals are fleetly enclosed by managers, underneath managers and waiters. The lustrous works of friendliness moves into cogwheel. A bronzed waiter in a floral chemise and cagey white jeans appears at my elbow: 'Excuse me sir, would you look-alike a chalice of frosty dampen back checking in?' We are served tea and house decorator sandwiches on the veranda time our bags drift soundlessly by electrical loco to our suite. I am launch to grasp the Lizard catchphrase, 'One of One'. To protract this knack of exclusivity, the resort, 150 miles northward of Cairns, employs 80 long-term staff; one branch of personnel for all impermanent on the coral reef. Since purchase the geographic region from Qantas, P&O has worn-out £5.3 cardinal on the increase and refurbishing Lizard Island. The consequence is a luxuriously eclectic mix of influences; classical Australian geological formation architecture, near a rush of the South Seas and a serving of British Raj au courant (wicker chairs, superior cloth and overhead fans). Today's crisp-looking multinational constitution is a far cry from the outdoor sport campy which primary occupied the base camp. Even the coconut trees were imported to manufacture a tropic terra firma cognisance.