RIGA: WORLD’S FINEST ART NOUVEAU ARCHITECTURE

David Ellis

PUBLISHER of interesting e-zine Oz Baby Boomers*, John Rozentals visited his ancestral homeland in search of memories of a namesake – and discovered the world's finest collection of Art Nouveau architecture. He sent us this fascinating report from Latvia to share with readers.

For most visitors to Latvia, the search for 12 Alberta Iela, on the northern fringe of Riga's CBD, and the struggle up some eight flights of steep, narrow stairs to the Janis Rozentals & Rudolfs Blaumanis Museum, would be low on their list of priorities.

Admittedly, Blaumanis was a celebrated writer and Rozentals was probably Latvia's greatest artist, but the former's fame was largely restricted to his native land, whilst you can see much more significant examples of the latter's work in the Latvian National Museum of Art, in Riga's Esplanade Square.

For me, though, the lure of these few small rooms was compellingly magnetic. As well as sharing ethnicity, Janis Rozentals and I share our names, or at least we did until my parents, probably rightly, decided Australian school life in the 1950s would be easier for a boy named John than for a boy named Janis.

It's extremely unlikely we're related, but I felt strangely comfortable browsing through the apartment where my namesake had lived a century ago, and sitting on a couch he would have spent many hours resting on.

There's a much stronger connection, though, between Janis Rozentals and this part of Riga than just an apartment.

Rozentals was a leader of the Art Nouveau movement, which flourished in Europe around the turn of the 20th century, influencing design in general and architecture in particular.

Nowhere was that architectural influence felt more deeply than in Riga. The precinct centring on Alberta Iela ("iela" is Latvian for "street") and including Elizabetes Iela and Streinieku Iela, is widely recognised as having the largest and finest collection of Art Nouveau architecture in the world.

Yes, the world — better than in Paris, Berlin, Moscow and St Petersburg that are all widely recognised as Art Nouveau centres.

I laughed with sheer joy as we entered Alberta Iela, overwhelmed by the absolutely over-the-top beauty of the buildings and the totality and consistency of the streetscape.

Despite a century of wars, invasions, social unrest and the economic fundamentalism of the Soviet era, the buildings here have survived intact. And the short-lived economic boom times of the early 21st century provided the city's new-found financial aristocracy with the funds for their meticulous restoration of the grand apartments they once were — or transformation into professional offices, corporate headquarters and national embassies.

Themes of ancient Greece and Egypt, nature, and ravishing female beauty seem to dominate. Sometimes, every floor, even every balcony and window, has an individual motif. It is a spectacular visual delight and the makings of an artist's or architect's dream tour.

Alberta Iela is within easy walking distance of many of Riga's downtown hotels, but one of the best nearby is the Reval, on the corner of Brivibas Boulevarde and Elizabetes Iela.

Its upper levels offer stunning views over the medieval gems of Vecriga ("Old Riga"), the nearby gardens, churches and the broad Daugava River, which wends its way to Riga and the Baltic Sea through the flat Latvian countryside.

Make sure that you get a city-view room, though. The outlook from the rear is far less attractive. The rooms are comfortable and well equipped if not grand, the service can be a bit off-hand, but the location is spot-on and the views sublime.

In nearby Vecriga, try the tiny, boutique Hotel Ainavas. It boasts no views, but is charming, central to the attractions of the medieval city, and the service is wonderfully friendly.

Several years ago, hotels such as these were charging 400–500 Euros per night. Following the collapse of the "Baltic Tigers", it's more like 100–150 Euros today, with breakfast thrown in.

And whilst in Riga take time to stroll the cobble-stoned streets of Vecriga (Old Riga), which has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and shed a tear while visiting the Occupation Museum of Latvia and wonder how people could be so cruel to each other.

Finally ensure you try some of the local delicacies by devoting a morning to Riga's Central Markets.

(*See www.ozbabyboomers.com.au)

 

Photo Captions:

[] LATVIA's Riga has the world's largest collection of Art Nouveau  architecture.

[] UPCLOSE look at the fine detail.

[] RIGA's fine architecture, churches and parks from the city's Hotel Rival.

(All Images: Sandra Burn White)

 

WEEKENDER’S $90M FIRE DAMAGE BILL

David Ellis

WHEN the renovators were called in to repair some fire damage to a weekender on England's River Thames in 1992, the owner wanted the work  to match the original as faithfully as possible.

This may have been a simple request had the place in question been a 1960s brick bungalow, or even a rustic riverside farmhouse.

But this was neither: the building was Windsor Castle, and the owner was the Queen.

Yet after the renovation job that cost an astonishing AU$90m, visitors to Windsor Castle today are often little aware that they are walking amid furnishings, murals, drapes and carpets that are largely painstaking replicas of the originals destroyed in that disastrous 1992 fire.

Windsor Castle's origins date back over 900 years to when William the Conqueror built a little timber and earth fortress on a 30m high hill overlooking the Thames, as protection for London against invaders from the west (London being a solid day's march away.)

Over the centuries the solid stone castle as we know it today evolved, with its role changing from that of a fortification to a royal palace – in fact the rambling 1,200-room bastion is the largest inhabited castle/palace in the world, the oldest in continuous occupation, and the world's only working royal residence that is open to the public.

Both Edward III and Henry VI were born here.

And the Queen who, with the help of hundreds of thousands of paying tourists a year, pays for the upkeep of this sprawling collection of rooms and galleries, halls, chambers, ballrooms, chapels and drawing rooms – not to mention the hectares of surrounding manicured gardens – considers it her favourite retreat, spending most of her weekends here.

In November 1992 the fire that broke out in the north-east corner of the Castle ravaged over 100 rooms and nine State Rooms, but fortuitously most of their priceless arts works had been removed just days earlier for display elsewhere.

Hundreds of specialists were brought in to restore the least damaged areas, and create new rooms and chambers in those areas that had been totally destroyed – their brief being to make them fit as harmoniously as possible with the remainder of the castle.

Hundreds more artisans and craftsmen were recruited from private companies, government departments and voluntarily came out of retirement to recreate furnishings, art works, murals, drapes and tapestries, ornate candelabras and chandeliers, carved staircases, carpets and polished timber wall panellings.

Many visitors today don't distinguish where the original ends and the renovated begins. A clue is the floors: while these intricately patterned new areas have been hand-crafted to resemble the original parquet designs, it will take years of tourists' feet for them to assume that well-trodden look.

Allow at least two hours at Windsor Castle. Areas of particular interest include the China Museum, the Ante Throne Room, King's Drawing Room and King's Bed Chamber, the Queen's Drawing Room, Queen's Ballroom, the Queen's Guard Chamber, Presence Chamber and Audience Chamber, St George's Hall and Private Chapel (resting place of ten British sovereigns,) the State Dining Room and the Grand Reception Room... and the remarkable gardens.

The castle abounds with treasures dating back centuries, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Rubens, Holbein and van Dyck, and priceless English furniture and porcelain.

And don't miss the extraordinary Queen Mary's Dolls' House, a Lilliputian masterpiece that was created in 1923 on a scale of 1 to 12.  It took 1,500 tradesmen three years to complete, with every room of the 7-storey mansion-in-miniature built and furnished to exactly as it would have been at the time – including working lifts that stop at every floor, electric lights, and even running water in all five bathrooms.

Windsor Castle is 50kms from London. Travel agents can book you onto organised tours from London as part of UK holiday programs, or simply take the train to either Windsor or Eton Stations that are each about 5-minutes walk from the Castle.

You can do a self-guided tour using a guide book or audio unit, and there are conducted tours of parts of the castle grounds. 

Windsor Castle is 15km from Heathrow Airport, causing one American tourist to famously ask a guide as planes flew over every few minutes: "Why would they build a famous castle so close to an airport?"

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HOTO CAPTIONS:  

 

[] WINDSOR Castle, the favourite weekend getaway of England's Queen Elizabeth.

 

[] THE magnificent chapel within Windsor Castle.

 

[] READY to have a few mates around for dinner: the King's Dining Room is fit, well, for a king.

 

[] QUEEN Mary's Dolls House at Windsor Castle: 1500 tradesmen took three years in the early 1920s to create its extraordinary detail.                                                                                                                                             

 

CAPTAIN COOK’S WALK INTO SAILING HISTORY

David Ellis

THERE are five reasons most people know about England's little North Yorkshire town of Whitby: James Cook, fish and chips, Dracula, a modern-day TV soap, and old steam trains.

Sitting astride the Esk River estuary, Whitby's 14,000 hardy souls have learned to live with the hammering winds that come in off the North Sea in winter, while in summer it can also be postcard-perfect rustic England, particularly on its older eastern side.

PICTURESQUE Whitby Harbour.

In those summer months its one of the quaintest harbour towns in the country. Tourists flock here to enjoy sunny strolls along the waterfront, the local fish markets, browse the antique stores, and eat fish and chips at outdoor cafes, in little restaurants whose window boxes overflow with fire-engine red geraniums, or with a pint in back-street pubs where battered haddock and chunky golden potato chips have been turned into an art form.

And taking a stroll around the narrow alleyways in search of history, in Grape Lane they find the one-time home of Quaker ship-owner, John Walker and the sea-farer student who lived in his attic – James Cook.

Cook was born at Marton near Middlesborough, and was apprenticed to a grocer in nearby Staithes. But his real love was the sea, and one day he walked the 21km into Whitby to ask Walker if he would teach him seamanship and navigation.

IT was in the attic of this house in Whitby that the young
James Cook lived while learning seamanship
under mariner John Walker.

Today in the museum that occupies Walker's one-time terrace house, visitors learn about Cook's life in Whitby, about the Endeavour that was built here, and of Cook's world travels; there's also a statue of Cook on West Cliff and a plaque in town given by Australia and New Zealand to commemorate his achievements.

And if you are in Whitby on the morning of Ascension Day each year, you'll see a group of civic and business dignitaries making apparent dopes of themselves as they squelch through the mud of Whitby Harbour to plant, of all things, a hedge before the tide comes back in.

This bizarre ritual started in 1159 when three Norman noblemen on a pig-hunt discovered a hermit giving comfort under a hedge to a boar they'd arrowed. They beat man and beast to death, but in his dying moments the hermit prayed that God would forgive them.

ONE of Whitby's many harbourside pubs that have
turned battered haddock and chips into an art form.

Hearing the story later, the Abbot of Whitby was so angered he ordered that as pennance every Ascension Day a group of 'noblemen' erect a hedge on the mudflats of low-tide Whitby Harbour, or lose title to their lands. And to make their task all the more difficult they could use, not spades, but simple 'penny knives' such as that carried by the hermit.

The ritual is still carried out annually 850 years later, and if the 'Penny Hedge' does not survive three incoming tides it has to be built again.

Up the hill overlooking the Estuary is an old hotel, and it is here when the winds howl in off the North Sea and the fire crackles in its grate that the visitor draws mind-pictures of that day in 1885 when Dublin-born writer Bram Stoker decided during a stay that it would be Whitby where 'my Count Dracula will come ashore from Transylvania.'

Stoker was captivated by the destructive storm that raged during his stay at the hotel and which sank the Russian schooner Dimitry of Narva on the nearby Tate Sands as she made for safety in Whitby: in his book he has Dracula coming ashore 'during a ferocious storm' from the Russian ship Demeter of Varna.

AUTHOR Bram Stoker wrote his classic
novel Dracula during a stay in Whitby

And for rail buffs the local North Yorkshire Moors Railway has regular tourist-train runs using restored steam and diesel locomotives hauling historic carriages to five nearby towns with their yester-year Tea Rooms serving wonderful home-made scones, pies and traditional pasties.

GOATHLAND Hotel 15km from Whitby –
renamed Aidensfield Arms for TV soap Heartbeat.

And on select nights, there are silver-service dinners in restored timber-lined Pullman carriages on runs into the countryside.

At Grosmont the old locos are still serviced in the original engine sheds – but it's the 15km run to tiny Goathland that's the most popular day-trip, for this was Aidensfield of TV's Heartbeat series, and where you can visit the Aidensfield Arms, Mostyns Garage, the Village Store and Greengrass's farm.

Whitby's a bit off the beaten track, but well worth the effort. For more information go to www.whitby.co.uk

Struth! UK's Most northerly hotel a derelict award-winner

John O'Groats "derelict hotel and sheds lurking with tourist intent"

STRUTH !  David Ellis looks at the more weird wacky and wondrous in the world of travel

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says that a popular British tourist destination has just won an award it probably won't be bragging about – the town of John O'Groats has been named winner of the 2010 Carbuncle Award for being the most dismal place in Scotland.

John O'Groats – population around 300 – attracts visitors for one main reason: it is the most northerly town in Britain, and therefore the furthest from the other end of the country, Land's End that's 1407.5km (874 miles) to the south.

But apart from this it's got nothing going for it says architecture magazine Urban Realm, that awards the Carbuncle each year. "It's a bleak outpost, notorious for being so desolate – we wonder why we even bothered to go there… it is the most anti-climatic tourist attraction that we know of – and the UK is not lacking in these.

"The main hotel is derelict and the most striking feature is a large car park… various tourist haunts hang around this and give the impression of not wanting to look at each other like early arrivals at a party; the whole effect is augmented by a series of sheds and caravans, lurking with tourist intent."

While that large white Gothic, and now derelict, hotel dominates the town, John O'Groats still attracts some thousands of visitors a year. And it regularly makes it into the nightly news with headline-seekers pushing babies in prams the 1407km from Land's End, riding penny-farthing bikes and in one case a child's scooter along the same route, and even dribbling marbles along a network of roads from Britain's far south to its far north.

And locals are quick to point out that John O'Groats has now got a new Café Bar to augment its several gift shops, a small museum, craft shops, a pottery and candlemaker, and a Tourist Information Centre that sells books of local interest.

And that there's a tourist hotel nearby, various B&Bs and a ferry to Orkney – although only between May and September.

Melbourne: Classic Hotels Define the City

David Ellis with John Rozentals

THERE may only be a few CBD blocks separating Melbourne's Adelphi and Windsor hotels, but in terms of style they might as well be in different galaxies — and both very desirable galaxies at that.

The Adelphi, in Flinders Lane, just a hop from Federation Square, City Square, Flinders Street Station and the Yarra, exudes cool. It's arty and hip, its decor still edgy nearly 20 years after its construction.

Stainless steel, varnished ply and bright leather combine artfully in the guest rooms, though occasionally, as with the angular sofas, a tad of comfort has been sacrificed to design. Those minor shortcomings are about to be corrected during a major refit.

The avant garde flows through the public areas as well, especially on to the rooftop, with its modern decking, bright chairs and an amazing 25-metre lap pool, which at one end has a glass bottom and juts out over Flinders Lane, nine storeys below. If you're going skinny dipping, can we suggest backstroke?

Even the reception area offers plenty of interest. At the moment it's home to a couple of pieces from the private collection of Damien Hodgkinson, one of the hotel's directors: a metre-tall ceramic stature of Chairman Mao (one of many churned out in China during the 1970s) and a car from an old carousel at St Kilda's Luna Park.

The Adelphi was designed by award-winning local architects Denton Corker Marshall and its construction within the confines of an old inner-city warehouse hailed as a prime example of urban renewal.

How appropriate, because the Adelphi preceded and sits just a stroll away from Federation Square, which in the late 1990s arose phoenix-like next to the Yarra on the site of the old Jolimont Rail Yard.

It's one of Australia's most exciting cultural and recreational precincts, home to the futuristically designed National Gallery of Victoria's Ian Potter Centre, the equally striking Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and on a slightly less cerebral note, Abbaworld.

There's ample shopping and eating, plus a state-of-art children's playground and bike-hire facilities that make nearby Kings Domain and the Royal Botanic Gardens just so accessible.

Within easy walking distance across the historic Princes Bridge are the Arts Centre, the National Gallery of Victoria International and the Melbourne Theatre Company's cutting-edge MTC Theatre.

If ready access to this golden mile of culture is high on your list of priorities, so, too, should be the Adelphi.

Less than a kilometre to the north-east, the Hotel Windsor is a very different animal that represents a bygone era among Australian hotels.

It was built in the early 1880s, amid the great land boom that followed Victoria's gold rushes. The developer was shipping magnate George Nipper and, as with the Adelphi, an eminent architect was involved ... this time Charles Webb, who had designed the Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and the South Melbourne Town Hall.

Nipper went bust and work was completed by the Honourable James Munro and the Honourable James Balfour, who added the Grand Ballroom, the Grand Staircase and the cupola-topped towers. For a while it was a "dry" hotel, known as the Grand Coffee Palace.

'The Duchess of Spring Street' became a mixing pot for politicians and businessmen, and in 1898 the Australian Constitution was drafted there.

And if you stay there, it could well be in a room once occupied by Lauren Bacall, Katherine Hepburn, Gregory Peck or Rudolf Nureyev.

To stay in one of the suites — complete with stained-glass door, entry hallway, substantial sitting room, and a dining room that can be set for 10 from its antique sideboard packed with classy crockery, cutlery and glassware — is an exhilarating experience.

So, too, is to wander through hallways restored to their original grandeur, complete with gold-leaf decoration, panelling and chandeliers, and to relax in the elegant restaurant for traditional high tea and champagne, with, of course, cucumber-and-cress sandwiches. Well in advance bookings are essential.

And the Windsor's location is completely appropriate ... right opposite what must surely be Australia's grandest Parliament House, and handily close to Treasury Gardens, Fitzroy Gardens, Captain Cook's Cottage, and Carlton Gardens with its World-Heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building.

It's a different side of Melbourne to Federation Square, but it's equally satisfying.s

Book either hotel through travel agents.

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PHOTO CAPTIONS:

[] HOTEL Windsor – a child of the great land boom that followed the Victorian gold rushes.

[] PRIVATE grand-style dining in-suite at the Windsor.

[] THE Adelphi Hotel's glass-bottom pool overhangs the street…

[] CITYSCAPE: looking back towards Melbourne's Arts Centre and city from the Royal Botanic Gardens, exhilarating stroll from the Adelphi Hotel.


- All photographs Sandra Burn White

Ten of the best train journeys in NSW

The golden days of train travel are here again as more and more discerning holiday-makers are discovering the relaxing pace and wonderful hospitality presented by the great train journeys of the modern era. Take a remarkable train journey in NSW where 'getting there' truly is half the fun.

For a touch of old world charm, jump aboard theSouthern Aurora at Sydney Central. Journey to historic Uralla & Armidale in New England country, along forgotten rail lines to Coonamble & Dubbo and to Narrabri over five-days. Train departs 1-5 October.

A new journey beckons in early 2011 with The Southern Spirit racing through the rural heartlands of four states. In NSW, visit Dubbo's Western Plains, the Blue Mountains, the Hunter Valley, Port Macquarie and Byron Bay.

The Indian Pacific takes its passengers on a journey from the spectacular Blue Mountains to the treeless plains of The Nullarbor. See the sights of some of the most famous outback towns with a scheduled stop at Broken Hill.

Take the kids on a rare day out with Thomas the Tank Engine. Life-size Thomas will greet friends and little ones can also enjoy a 50-minute train ride with Donald, the steam locomotive, departing from Sodor Island Railway Station around Thirlmere on 18 & 19 September.

Visit Dubbo's Western Plain Zoo with Countrylink's Dubbo Zoo Package. Depart from Sydney on a three-day tour, stay in Dubbo and spend your days getting up close and personal with the animals. Take advantage of Countrylink's kids 'travel for a dollar' deal allowing kids to travel for just $1.

Stay in one of the fully restored Red Rattler train carriages at the quirky Carriageway Resort located in the Upper Hunter region of NSW. With the main line running through a far corner of the property, train spotting from the timber bridge is a must.

Zig Zag Railway

Ordinary muggles will magically transform into wizards aboard the Blue Mountain's Zig Zag Railway's Wizards Express! For a more hands on experience try the Zig Zag's Footplate Experience which will see you driving a steam train in no time.

Re-live some of the former train operations at the historic Cowra Roundhouse Depot and Museum, the only existing railway roundhouse depot in NSW where steam locomotives are still lit up for a day's operation.

Sleep in one of three converted 100-year-old railway carriages decorated in Orient Express style luxury at Ruwenzori, a secluded, bush retreat near Mudgee in Central West NSW.

Leave your car and cares behind and see the traditional (and not so traditional) events of the Highlander Games in Bundanoon in the Southern Highlands. Be transported there and back in the comfort of train travel departing from Canberra Station for a day of fun and games.

Struth! Beach bums urged to cover up

STRUTH !    

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says that whether you want to believe it or not, that bastion of the bikini and skimpy dress, the Mediterranean is under threat.

Because authorities from France's Riviera to Italy in the east and Spain in the west are cracking down on female tourists who invade their streets and pavement cafés dressed only in bikinis. And blokes in nothing more than shorts and budgie-smugglers overhung by gross beer bellies.

Civic authorities in such bikini-littered resorts as Cannes and St Tropez say locals are getting fed-up with tourists who aren't content to just sport their bikinis on the beach, they can't even be bothered donning a shirt, shorts or slacks to cover themselves when forsaking the sun and sand for shopping, sightseeing, and wining and dining.

Even Provence which has its fair share of fully-nude beaches is cracking down on inappropriate off-beach wear, exposed beer bellies, and even simply the sight of hairy chests. And Paris which has long enforced "decency of dress" in its streets is now further tightening its public-dress laws.

As well the Vatican is coming down harder than ever on dress requirements in St Peter's Square, while authorities in Spain have begun warning tourists about wandering Barcelona's streets "in bikinis, shirtless, or showing the affects of alcohol."

Authorities in several countries say its all part of a need to protect human dignity, decency, morality and the young: in Italy recently police were called to speak to a woman bathing topless after another complained that the way the sunbather was applying suntan lotion "was troubling for my sons."

These authorities still generally agree that skimpy dress will always be part of beach culture, but they say it's got to be contained to the beach – and a survey by one newspaper attributed the new thinking to such reasons as new feminist priorities, concerns about skin cancer, a return to old-fashioned modesty, and Europe's growing Muslim population.

MYSTERY SOLVED TO GOING ROBINSON CRUSOE

david ellis

SO you wanna go Robinson Crusoe…

There's a little place in the South Pacific that's just for you. But that doesn't mean you won't need to do some planning if you're thinking of really escaping to a people-free paradise.

Because despite no one living on this miniscule 1.5-square kilometre oceanic dot that has no electricity, no running water, no roads and no telephones, your peace could still be shattered.

By hordes storming the beaches, and all keen to share your little piece of paradise, if just for a day…

And it's no mystery why: because, simply, this magical little spot you thought you had to yourselves, is called Mystery Island. And the mystery why you won't find it on the map, is that it's officially Inyeug, the most southerly island in Vanuatu.

And no one lives here is because its traditional owners who live on the island next door, believe it's haunted after dark by ghosts.

In the 1850s Australian traders who set up operations on the larger Aneityum Island just across the channel, mostly lived on Inyeug as they figured that the-then cannibalistic Aneityumese were unlikely to attack spooky Inyeug under cover of darkness.

Canadian missionaries also built the biggest church for its time in the South Pacific on the neighbouring Aneityum, its 1000 seats enough for a quarter of that island's population.

The traders and missionaries eventually drifted away due to ill-health or waning years, and abandonment and a tsunami put paid to the church; by the late 1800s Aneityum's near-4000 population had been decimated to just 500 – the legacy of western diseases introduced by the foreigners.

Aneityum and Inyeug faded into obscurity for over a century until in the 1980s the cruise ship Fairstar started visiting Vanuatu, often putting her passengers ashore by lifeboats for a day on this jewel of South Pacific white sand islands.

Fairstar's owners, the Sitmar Line also re-named Inyeug as Mystery Island – as it was always a mystery whether they could land their passengers there due because of unpredictable seas.

After Fairstar was sold, P&O started visiting with its bigger South Pacific cruisers out of Sydney and Brisbane; the company helped build a landing-jetty on the island, and every year its ships now put around 65,000 guests ashore for a day's swimming, coral reef snorkelling, beachcombing, or buying fresh fruits, shells, and souvenirs from the Aneityumese who come across on "ship days."

Mystery Island also has the clean and basic Mystery Island Bungalows: a Double-bed Bungalow that costs $66 a night, Beach Bungalow with two single beds ($33pp per night,) and Guest House with a double bed and three single beds costing $160 per night.

And you'll have the whole island virtually to yourself: Aneityum villagers who may turn-up to occasionally fish, are always well gone before sunset for fear of those ghosts.

It leaves visitors at the bungalows to rise in the morning when it suits, dangle a line for reef-fish or lobsters, beach-walk, snorkel, and ponder what we poor fools are doing back in "civilisation…"

And with no TV, telephone or internet, if isolation becomes too much it's simply a matter of waiting for someone to come across from Aneityum and negotiating a lift back by canoe to explore the neighbouring "big island."

Bungalow guests have to bring all basic food and other needs on the twice-weekly flight from Port Vila – the grass airstrip was built on Mystery Island to service the too-mountainous Aneityum.

Arrangements can also be made to have someone from Aneityum bring over local garden produce and cook for you if you want to experience the local fare. (Details from travel agents or www.vanuatu.travel)

And it's important to check whether during your planned stay, one of those cruise ships isn't going to pop up on the horizon and disgorge its 1000-plus passengers to share the solitude of your 1.5sq kilometre island for a day – the more so if you're prone to sunbaking in the bollocky.

FOOTNOTE: In 1974 while Queen Elizabeth was on her way to Australia from Port Vila aboard the Royal Yacht Brittania as part of a Pacific tour, she made a unscheduled stop at Mystery Island for an impromptu royal beach picnic in paradise. And for the first time, she had no one to wave to…


PHOTO CAPTIONS: 

[] BLINK and you've missed it – Vanuatu's tiny Mystery Island

[] LONG gone cruise liner Fairstar that put Mystery Island on the map

[] TODAY's P&O Pacific Jewel a regular visitor to the island

[] ISLAND in the sun for Pacific Jewel day trippers

[] MYSTERY Island Bungalow for that Robinson Crusoe getaway


Images: Vanuatu Tourism; P&O Cruises; Malcolm Andrews