I spent Easter on King Island, off the north west coats of Tasmania. It was at the invitation of a life long friend who was bringing a highly successful career in shipping to an end and had chosen King Island as the spot to spend much of his retirement time. Through his work he covered the globe and could have chosen virtually anywhere to spend that time and as I listened to his reasons for choosing King Island and looked around I have begun to understand the wisdom of his selection.

The commercial world he was leaving behind was a world driven by the need to take every opportunity to profit in a fiercely competitive market place. Economic growth was seen as almost the sole purpose of that life and it was only the fear of global warming and persistent drought that convinced him, as it has others, that a broader view of economic life was sorely needed.

He saw on king island wonderful opportunities seek that broader view. But he could not escape entirely from his career ideals that kept an important part of his thoughts on the economic necessity of development and the efficient use of the resources that was paramount.

The first attraction was the seemingly endless and astonishingly beautiful coastline interrupted by clean estuaries and boarded by pristine bush. In most other coasts of the world such coastlines have been destroyed by over population and gross resort development or were simply inaccessible.

He saw the secret of finding the balance between maintaining the natural beauty and the need economic development in the promotion of education based tourism with universities and groups such as bushwalkers, bird watchers, divers, botanists and the like spending their time exploring the world in front of them. The island, particularly the coastline is one huge laboratory where the unique beauty of an insular ecology can be respected and studied. It is a priceless asset

As a bird watcher, I was overwhelmed when we were invited to join Mark and Lauren from the King Island Natural Resource Management Centre on a very early start to a successful search for the highly endangered Orange-bellied Parrot. But there is much more of ornithological interest than the glamour of a rare sighting. There are the mutton-bird rookeries and the daily penguin landings to be studied but also the island phenomenon of the evolution of distinct races of birds in isolation and also the phenomenon of the limited range of species in some

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