|One in 50 million, a red crab|
It's also been called called the "Galapagos of the Indian Ocean" for all its nesting seabirds and other wild things. Then along came the Australian Government, building a detention centre in 2005 to "process" asylum seekers arriving in Australian waters.
10 good reasons to like, even love, Christmas Island (which was named on Christmas Day, 1643, by British explorers - in case you were wondering) based on my trip there last week:
|Greta Beach sunset|
|Pic by Shawn Brenneman|
|Brown booby sea-watching|
|Pic by the lovely Carla Grossetti|
9. You can go trawling for goshawks. What the? Biologist Mark Holdsworth invented the method, to tag endangered Christmas Island goshawks (here's one he tagged earlier, at left). He uses the arm of a toy gorilla as a lure at the end of a fishing line, and we took turns riding with him in the back of his ute as we drove along a bush track. Strange but true.
10. The crabs. It always comes back to the crabs on Christmas Island. We weren't there at migration-time (that's at the start of the wet season, usually October or November) but we saw plenty: giant robber crabs (called coconut crabs on Pacific islands) eating mangoes, blue crabs hiding amidst tree roots; sometimes we'd have to walk in front of our rented 4WD to shoo crabs away from the tyres. CI sure is an interesting and amazing place. Fifty million red crabs can't be wrong...
PS What did you do for Earth Hour this year?