This display would appeal to all, but for the more adventurous there could be the unique and unforgettable opportunity of underwater tours along the reef. They would emerge, with breathing gear and shortrange communication sets of the type already in existence, from a chamber just below the water line, and follow a guide who would introduce them to his pet grouper, show them round the coral glades, answer all their questions, and gently discourage them from collecting specimens or swimming off by themselves. No fishing of any kind, either by spear or line, would be allowed around the hotel. There would be opportunities for that on reefs some miles away, but here would be a sanctuary where men and fish could share the water in peace, each studying the other’s peculiar ways.
There is nothing fantastic about this dream, though I do not know if it would survive the cold scrutiny of the cost accountant’s eye. Today’s underwater observatories are but the beginning; it can be only a matter of time before there are not merely underwater hotels, but even underwater homes. . . .
Whatever the future may bring, the Reef can wait. As I leave—for how long I cannot guess—the world of coral and sun and rainbow-rivaling fish, I remember the Reef in one of the moods of fury which have put terror into the hearts of so many sailors, in so many diverse craft. I think of a day when a gale was howling northward along the Queensland coast, tossing the branches of the pisonia trees above my head. Looking across toward the hidden mainland, forty miles away, I could see the breakers foaming over the neighboring reef. It seemed as if, every few seconds, a line of white cliffs formed magically upon the horizon, then as suddenly disappeared as the wall of spray fell back into the sea.
The storm was destroying billions of the coral animals, shattering their tiny homes around them. But even before it had passed and the seas were calm again, the mindless architects who built this twelve-hundred-mile-long range of sunken mountains would be at work repairing the damage. They laid the foundations of the Reef ages before Man appeared upon this planet; and theirs is a monument which may still endure when all the creations of his brain and hand have passed away.
*For much of the information in this chapter, I am indebted to Frank Reid’s The Romance of the Great Barrier Reef.
The Coast of Coral Page 23
