KEY POINTS:
The blow to the back of my head came with such unexpected force that it knocked me to my knees. I was hiking through a forest of palm trees on Lord Howe Island, a boomerang-shaped sliver of land off the east coast of Australia, when the attack happened.
A deranged local perhaps, one of the 320 who inhabit this subtropical speck in the South Pacific? Or a crazed tourist sent mad by the island's somnolent ways and 25km/h speed limit?
Neither, as it happened. Turning round I was met by the beady yellow eyes and malevolent caw of a currawong, a raven-sized bird with the black and white markings of a magpie.
I'm ashamed to say I lobbed a couple of stones at it, but both missed.
"If you get too close to their nests during the breeding season they do tend to dive bomb you," a cheery local told me later.
Lord Howe is big on birds. It may be only 11km long and 3km wide, but it provides a haven for half a million birds, from masked boobies to fleshy-footed shearwaters.
"This is one of the great seabird islands of the world," says Ian Hutton, the island's pre-eminent wildlife guide.
More than 180 species have been recorded on the island, including one of the world's rarest, the Lord Howe wood hen, a skinny brown coot which was hauled back from the brink of extinction by a successful captive breeding scheme. Delicately featured white terns nest on the branches of pine trees next to the post office, masked boobies peer from sand dunes and wood hens wander nonchalantly into restaurants.
But it doesn't matter if you don't know a chough from a chiff-chaff. Abundant bird life is just one of Lord Howe's many attractions.
Named the most beautiful island in the Pacific by National Geographic magazine, it lies 700km northeast of Sydney, between mainland Australia and the even more distant outpost of Norfolk Island.
It takes less than two hours to fly from Sydney or Brisbane, so Lord Howe is easily incorporated into a trip along Australia's east coast.
It has everything you could ask for in a South Sea island retreat, including the southernmost coral reef in the world, set in an aquarium-like lagoon.
One end of the island is dominated by the twin bulwarks of Mt Gower and Mt Lidgbird, their sheer cliffs and mysterious plateaux evoking a lost world. You half expect to see pterodactyls wheeling over the mist-shrouded forest. Like giant bookends, the mountains loom over the island, which was created by a massive volcanic eruption seven million years ago.
About two-thirds of the island is covered in kentia palm forest, while the rest consists of emerald green meadows grazed by contented-looking cows, and wooden cottages screened by banyan trees and bougainvillea.
White sand beaches enclosed in sheltered bays dot the coastline; more often than not you'll have them to yourself. A single road extends from one end of the island to the other, and most people get around on foot or by bicycle.
There are no pubs or clubs, just a handful of decent restaurants and discreet lodges. The smartest is the Capella Lodge, with magnificent views of Lovers Bay and the coastline as it arcs towards Mts Gower and Lidgbird. Its timber slat walls, wicker chairs, bookshelves and picture windows lend it the feel of a posh beach house.
There's an innocence about Lord Howe which seems straight out of the pages of a Famous Five adventure. Bikes are rented without locks, neat stacks of firewood are left beside the many public barbecue sites and at Ned's Beach, one of the island's finest, an unattended wooden shed full of snorkelling equipment operates on an honour system - you pay for what you use.
The local newsletter, The Signal, carries reports of the previous weekend's sporting fixtures, including one by cricket correspondent Busty.
Tousle-haired surfers bike to the beach, their boards tucked under their arms, and the few cars bear bumper stickers which read "Lord Howe Island - somewhere off the Australian coast."
Older islanders remember feasting on mutton birds, or fleshy-footed shearwaters. "You had to boil them up to get rid of their oil, said Hutton. "Some people still eat their eggs."
Most of the island's inhabitants are descendants of the original settlers, who began arriving in the 1830s, 50 years after Lord Howe was discovered by a British vessel which was part of the First Fleet, bringing convicts to Australia.
The pioneers were a motley bunch of British sailors, American adventurers, Maori women and Pacific Islanders who forged a living by selling supplies to passing whaling ships.
World Heritage-listed for its wildlife and spectacular landscape, Lord Howe is criss-crossed by well-marked walking tracks, making it a near-perfect eco-tourism destination.
The most challenging of the walks is the 875m ascent of Mt Gower, a gruelling eight-hour round trip which is well worth the effort.
A group of a dozen of us set out one morning behind Jack Shick, a fifth generation islander and one of two guides licensed to take visitors to the summit. The path winds along the coast for a mile or two before climbing to a breathtakingly narrow ledge which runs halfway up the face of a cliff.
Clutching a rope which is bolted to the rock face, we shuffled along the perilously narrow track, stepping carefully over tussocky grass and trying not to glance below, where waves crashed on to slick black rocks.
We passed enormous banyan trees, waxy-barked giants which drop aerial roots to the jungle floor to form new trunks. As we climbed higher the forest became more stunted, battered into submission by salt spray and wind.
We pushed past endemic melaleuca bushes and flowering stinkwood trees, pausing to drink at Erskines Creek, a stream which tumbles over the saddle dividing Mt Gower from its inaccessible twin, Mt Lidgbird.
The sheer-sided cliffs, forested flanks and razorback ridges of both peaks looked utterly impassable.
Shick, who was on his 1074th ascent, is a master of laconic one-liners. "Mind that big rock there up on the right, he warned. "It'll sit you on your arse if you hit it with your head."
The record for the fastest ascent and descent is a scarcely credible one hour, 41 minutes, set by Shick's cousin. "He's a fit bastard. You just look at him and you start to feel tired."
Clambering ever higher through the jungle we came to a sheer-sided slab of rock which we negotiated with the aid of a muddy, greasy rope and footholds cut into the granite.
"We call this the get-up place," said Shick, explaining that the wood hen was saved from extinction because this was the only place on the island which wild boar were not able to access. "If you can get up it, you're better than a pig."
At long last we reached the summit of Mt Gower a mist-shrouded plateau covered in gnarled, stunted trees, their twisting limbs clothed in a thick carpet of green moss. A lone wood hen poked for grubs among the ferns and lichens, and as the clouds parted momentarily the lagoon appeared far below like a giant blue opal.
After eating a picnic lunch we began the long descent, reaching our start point just as a great black band of cloud swept in and gave the island a thorough drenching. Such squalls are short-lived and the next morning the Lord Howe sparkled..
We set off in a fishing boat for Ball's Pyramid, a gigantic basalt spike shaped like a witch's hat which looms out of the sea 23km to the southeast of Lord Howe. At 551m , it's the world's tallest rock stack, a remnant of the ancient shield volcano which formed Lord Howe. From a distance it resembles a Tolkienesque lair inhabited by some evil wizard.
So steeply sided that going ashore is almost impossible, it is a haven for seabirds. Storm petrels and grey ternlets skimmed the waves around us.
It is also home to a giant stick insect nicknamed the walking sausage or land lobster, which was presumed extinct until stumbled on by accident by wildlife rangers in 2001.
With the encouragement of the skipper, I dropped a hand-held line into the water and within moments had snagged a Galapagos shark, which nearly sliced my fingers off as it fought to escape. It was swiftly hauled aboard, slaughtered and cut up into bait.
Tossing in the line again, I was even more astounded to catch a fat kingfish, and a few minutes later another. We chugged back to Lord Howe, admiring its sheer cliffs and palm forests.
The next day I walked one of the islands most scenic tracks, from Ned's Beach (voted Australia's cleanest beach a couple of years ago) to Malabar Hill and along the cliffs to Kim's Lookout and Mt Eliza, from where there's a magnificent view of the entire island.
Pristine white tropic birds, with two scarlet quills extending from their tails, soared overhead and sooty terns nested in the undergrowth, so tame that you can walk up to them.
It was descending the path to Old Settlement Beach that I encountered my avian attacker. "They do tend to get a bit territorial, much more so than currawongs on the mainland," said Ian Hutton proudly. "The ones we have here are an endemic subspecies found nowhere else in the world."
Just as well those stones didn't hit their mark.
Checklist
Getting There
* Qantas has flights from Auckland to Lord Howe Island via Sydney.
Where To Stay
* Capella Lodge is on the web at lordhowe.com.
* Pinetrees Resort Hotel is at pinetrees.com.au or 00612 9262 6585.
What To Do
* Ian Hutton, naturalist, can be contacted on 00612 6563 2447, lhitours@bigpond.com or lordhowe-tours.com.au
Further information
* There's more about Lord Howe Island at visitnsw.com.au and lordhoweisland.info
