Club Med Lindeman Island, Australia - Club Med Vacation Resort

Club Med Lindeman Island Club Med Lindeman Island is a far cry from the sleepy little resort that pioneered tourism in the Whitsundays back in the 1920s. In those days, the Nicholsen family, who settled in the island in 1927, ran a tiny thatched-hut getaway. Guests arrived at their island paradise on passing steamers that carried travellers up and down the Queensland coast.

Today's bustling beach-side resort has 225 rooms nestled amphitheatre-style into the cliffs overlooking Home Beach. Close to the Great Barrier Reef with million dollar views of the spectacular Whitsunday Passage, it attracts guests from all over the world.

The classy Club Med has recently notched up another milestone for Lindeman as the first resort on the Great Barrier Reef to receive accreditation under Australia's National Ecotourism Accreditation Program. The island has achieved this without becoming one of those spartan establishments we often associate with the word ecotourism.

Eco-friendly, and similar buzzwords, are all the fashion at many of the world's chic resorts and hotels. Sounds great! But dig a little deeper and you will often find that their idea of caring for the environment is little more than surface sheen; trendy trifles such as brochures and menus incorporating recycled paper and asking guests not to insist on freshly laundered bath towels every day. When it comes to instituting processes that really matter, they usually find it too hard, too expensive or a threat to their luxury image.

Not so Club Med Lindeman Island. Because of its World Heritage location, Club Med had to take the whole environmental process to heart when they decided to build their Australian resort. They did it so well that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority considers Lindeman as a benchmark in how a resort can care for an island and its delicate environment.

All waste is sorted and treated and transported from the island. The resort's waste water is treated and used to irrigate the island's nine hole golf course which is fertilised with the waste sludge which is dried, mulched and mixed with grass clippings. When extensions were made to the island's original course, Club Med only used areas of land which were already degraded by previous pastoral use.

The resort's dam and the waste water holding pond have had a very positive effect on the island's wild life by providing a habitat for birds such as the Eastern Swamp Hens, Black Ducks and a number of migratory species. Extensive planting of native flora around the resort has increased food supplies for the birds.

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