Posted Monday, November 15, 2004; 21:00 HKT
Last year, Australia received a record 5.1 million visitors to its shores. Not one made it to the Ashmore Islands, unless you count the few hundred poor souls who arrived on leaking fishing boats from Indonesia via the Middle East and China. Leaving aside asylum seekers (who are quickly detained, packed on navy ships and transported to detention centers on the mainland), the only people in recent times to have trodden on these islands, 400 km northwest of the Australian mainland, are Australian customs officials and—while on assignment for a geographic magazine in 2001—this correspondent.

Which is a pity. Because with a few minor improvements—an airport and a luxury resort would be nice—the Ashmore Islands would pack 'em in. As it stands, the only regular visitors are thousands of migratory wetland birds, which use the islands' three doughnut-shape cays, complete with swaying palm trees, as a pit stop on their journey north. They keep well away from the beach, however: imagine acres of deserted, pure white sand, untainted but for flecks of glittering multicolored coral. Then there is the sparkling lagoon surrounded by the coral cays. Wade into its temperate waters, dive beneath the surface (visibility 80 m and counting) and within minutes you're swimming with giant sea turtles, dugongs, dolphins, more than 750 species of coral fish, and—in a less enticing reminder of Eden—the world's highest concentration of sea snakes. All of which explains why the Ashmore Islands, and the surrounding 239 sq km of reef that rises 100 m from the ocean floor, have been designated a National Nature Reserve: off-limits to fishermen, resort developers and, alas, you.

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