Green Island Escape into a Different World

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What makes Robinson Crusoe such a popular and enchanting novel for all age groups is the opportunity it provides for make-believe. It puts you into an uninhabited island and makes you its landlord, thereby enabling you to be the architect of all your desires. Stuff that fantasies are made of, stuff that inspire more fantasies it is not surprising that Robinson Crusoe brought in its wake so many veiled and unveiled emulations.

As you step into Green Island, your first thought is that you have reached Crusoes island. And the uncharted possibilities of desert island adventures open up to you. At heart a child, you wish you could live that fantastical childhood once again.

A small blot of luxurious green within a blue ocean of a thousand shades a birds eye view of the Green Island situated within the Great Barrier Reef gives you the impression that a small child has smudged tubes of varying shades of blue acrylic and placed one dollop of green in between it. The warm sunshine (that shines throughout the year), the crystal clear vision and the sharp colors will impress upon the fact that you have stepped into a different world.

Green Island is a small but authentic coral cay close to the mainland. Built over the last 6,000 years through build up of sand, animal and coral deposits, it had served as a fishing ground and ceremonial site for local Aborigine tribes for thousands of years before Captain Cook sighted it the first white man to do so.

However, it was as late as the middle of 19th century that white settlement appeared, when a sea cucumber smoking station was established on the island. Towards the end of the century, Green Island had already become a site for occasional pleasure trips, and a fortnightly ferry service to the island was started in 1924.

Its vantage position in the Great Barrier Reef meant that it became a starting point for popular exploration of the reef. Floating glass boxes were used for viewing corals for a long time until glass bottom boats were introduced in 1948. Only a few years later, in 1954, Green Island was the site for the worlds first Underwater Observatory.

The Marineland Melanesia has a crocodile farm, an aquarium as well as a museum. The island is also famous for the worlds first movie theatre on a small island which was operational till the early 1990s. The island reached a celebrity status when in 1970 Queen Elizabeth II paid a royal visit to the island. Shortly afterwards, the Great Barrier Reef was declared a national park, and the position of Green Island within it established it as frontier post for exploring the reef.

This smallish blot of tropical green is all of 15 hectares and it just takes a leisurely 45 minutes walk to circumnavigate it. A fascinating intersection of luxury, intense beauty, harmony and peace, Green Island is a paradise for the nature lover. Its tropical forests harbor 126 native plant species, 20 native bird species and 50 migratory species and magnificent coral gardens. While fishing is not particularly popular, it may be an ideal place to spend a few idle hours with the line it is another matter, though, if you will catch something!

Green Island can be a great holiday destination, whether you are a day-tripper, or you want to stay over and sink in the ambience over a few leisurely days. A short distance from Cairns and Palm Cove, and a little more from Port Douglas, it is easily accessible, and yet comfortably separated from mainland to guard its unique charms. The weather is uniformly tropical with very little difference in temperature between seasons.

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Green Island Escape into a Different World

The Life of Luxury Green

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It is always nice to see how the other half lives, take for instance there is the

Life of Luxury: the George Hamilton way.

This is a TV show which looks at the lives of the Super Rich in which the first episode looks at the PlayBoy Mansion, a collection of multi-million dollar homes, hip-hop half-billion dollar empires and some queens of shopping.

Tom Delay’s Life of Luxury over the last six years:

Public documents reviewed by The Associated Press document his 48 visits to golf clubs and resorts; 100 flights aboard private company planes; 200 stays at hotels, many world-class; and 500 meals at restaurants, some averaging nearly $200 for a dinner for two. Not all paid for by Tom Delay.

ARCHESTRATUS: THE LIFE OF LUXURY

ARCHESTRATUS was a Sicilian Greek who wrote a poem that was an actual cookbook describing styles of Greek food in antiquity In travelling throughout the Greek world – Greece, Southern Italy and Sicily, the coast of Asia Minor, the Black Sea – Archestratus shows us how the ancient Greeks were extremely cosmopolitan. His influences – ingredients, combinations of flavours, techniques – are drawn from a wide Mediterranean background, taking in a diversity of ideas unrestricted by the topography of the Greek mainland.

The Life of Luxury: Check out the Robb Report: Luxury Homes

The Robb Report features this Beverly Hills house. The owners, a retired industrialist and his wife, who is a trustee of Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, wanted the architect to maintain a simple palette that would not compete with their art collection, which includes a beautiful collection of contemporary art.

The Life of Luxury’s Most Expensive ZIP Codes

From Beverly Hills to TriBeCa, from notorious enclaves of mansions and lush lawns to little-known niches of wealth, this is where the most expensive real estate in the country can be found.

Many of these neighborhoods are rarified places, of course. They are close to beaches and golf courses and prime yacht moorings–or at least within spitting distance of the power centers that are the sources of great wealth. they have high tax bases, expensive private schools, exclusive restaurants and they are not all located close to Rodeo Drive.

The Life of Luxury; Some Expensive Must-Have Items

We must be getting richer. Designer items are becoming more and more popular, we are no longer happy with a cheap watch but want an Omega or a Tag Heuer.

According to the Federal Reserve, the net wealth of American households hit a high at the end of last year, increasing from $46.59 trillion in the third quarter of 2004 to $48.53 trillion in the fourth quarter. Rising real estate and stock prices helped push the country’s household net worth up 4% between the third and fourth quarters. You can now buy a $67,000 hand-crafted bathtub; Luxury is no longer confined to the affluent. To enhance people’s lives they are willing to pay more for luxury items like expensive perfumes and designer handbags. Sometimes it’s hard to justify spending much more on an item when something considerably less expensive offers the same functionality.

You can, for instance, buy a watch for $10 and you can buy a watch for $20,000 that offers the exact same functionality so where is the rationale for buying the expensive watch? Still, the expensive watches get sold and people are proud to own them. The exclusive maker of mattresses for the British royal family will reject a container of cashmere if it is deemed to be clumpy or defective in any way, says the director for the American division. For each bed, workers cover thousands of springs in calico cotton; the damask cases are hand-woven in Belgium If you have to ask how much these mattresses cost you can’t afford them.

Life of Luxury: living on your own Cruise Ship

The World is the only private luxury community at sea. It is a Cruise Ship built with apartments and studios for long term residency rather than vacation cruises.

For sale originally were 106 apartments, 19 studio apartments and 40 studios, with square footage starting at 675 for studios and maxing out at 3,242 for a three bedroom apartment with optional jet pool. With the exception of studios, which have more limited amenities, The World’s residential accommodations include fully-equipped kitchens, living room, veranda and all furniture and audio/video equipment. Studios an Apartments can be had from 1.4 million to 4.8 million dollars and annual maintenance costs start at $100,000.

This is a 40,000-ton ship which could easily carry 1,500 passengers but the World Residensea carries an average of 285 guests plus a crew of 252. The passenger distribution is about 40% Americans, 40% Europeans and 20% from other nations. The price of a “home” on board the ship includes furniture, appliances, carpet, draperies, linen, china, cutlery and crystal. Maintenance charges will cover daily housekeeping service, repairs and replacement of appliances, fixtures and fittings supplied by the builder.

The Life of Luxury Green