But now Robertson, 64, is appalled by the transformation he has witnessed on once-quiet Lantau: apartment blocks in ancient valleys, a giant airport on an islet that used to teem with wildlife and, yes, Disneyland.

In a few years, Robertson plans to retire and go elsewhere.

"There's been too much countryside destroyed for me to stay," says the New Zealand native who has lived in Hong Kong since 1973.

Robertson's decision is just one example of how some citizens are reacting to what they call the destruction of one of the territory's last wild frontiers.

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For more than a century, Lantau has played a vital role in the development of a bustling megalopolis: as the anti- Hong Kong. While Hong Kong Island and Kowloon disappeared under thickets of skyscrapers and an inglorious network of highway flyovers and tunnels, neighboring Lantau to the west remained rugged, mysterious and untamed.

Boy scouts camped there. Burnt-out executives dropped out and retreated there. Buddhist monks lived off the land. But now, all of that is beginning to change, and Lantau's defenders are up in arms.

"We are running out of wild places in Hong Kong, and we need them," says a livid Clive Noffke, who used to work for the government as a land surveyor. Over the past 15 years, he says he has watched Lantau's development begin as a quiet trickle, then burst into a free-for-all.

The development of Lantau Island began in the 1980s with the construction of Discovery Bay, an exclusive outlying suburb.

But after work on the airport began on Lantau's north shores in 1992, the new town of Tung Chung followed, transplanting 80,000 people into a valley that once nurtured a Song dynasty fishing village.

In the past year, Disneyland has opened its gates, and later this autumn, a six-kilometer cable car ride will take tourists over some of the wildest corners of the island.

Because of projects like these, Lantau's residents say, the island's tranquility has been broken by sights and sounds more familiar in Central or Causeway Bay: a skyline obscured by layers of smog and echoing with the constant ringing of jackhammers.

That impact is as evident along the coastlines of Lantau as it is in its upper reaches.

Near the top of Sunset Peak sit several small stone cabins built by British missionaries in the 1930s. David Bunton, a Hong Kong University professor who spent several holidays up there as a child and still visits frequently, says the construction and development down below has robbed Sunset Peak of the famous views that lent Hong Kong's third-tallest mountain its name.

"We used to walk to the very top of Sunset Peak to watch the sun set beside Lantau Peak," Bunton says. "Often now it sets into a thick layer of pollution several minutes before actual sunset time."

In many ways, Lantau's development has simply mirrored that of other parts of Hong Kong.

But there is one important difference: for Lantau, the government is guiding future development with a master plan in hand.

Not that that has appeased the green groups.

"It's like the government is destroying Lantau willfully," Noffke says, referring to a special government agency called the Lantau Development Task Force, formed in February 2004 after then-chief executive Tung Chee- hwa mentioned the island in his annual policy address.

Ten months later, in November 2004, the task force, headed by Financial Secretary Henry Tang Ying- yen, published its Concept Plan for Lantau, carving up the pristine island, opponents say, into a patchwork of gaudy tourist attractions.

The concept plan, for instance, includes sketches of where another "international theme park" could be planted on Lantau, and what it might look like.

There are also suggestions to build resort facilities along the beaches of south Lantau, construct a major intercity transit hub in the north, and create a golf course, motor racing circuit and youth entertainment center packed with restaurants, fashionable stores, performance venues and even a massive indoor man-made beach.

And those are not the most controversial proposals.

That title would go to possible plans to reclaim 300 hectares of land off the shore of northwest Lantau to build Container Terminal 10.

A massive project there will fit nicely with the ultimate ambition of certain businessmen: a 29-kilometer bridge linking Hong Kong with Macau and Zhuhai across the Pearl River Delta.

"Lantau Island is well-recognized for its tremendous development potential as well as its nature conservation and recreation values," Tang said in November 2004.

Green groups were incensed. Martin Williams, head of Hong Kong Outdoors, told the Legislative Council the concept plan was "neither a concept nor a plan," since it was apparent that "planning is well advanced for several of the projects."

Jenny Quinton, an environmentalist and island resident, says the bridge could change Lantau forever. "It's a bridge for [tycoon] Gordon Wu and his container terminal," she says. "It's not for the people of Hong Kong."

When asked about what progress the administration had made in the nearly two years since the concept plan was unveiled, some officials clammed up. Several bureaucrats at the Planning Department declined interview requests, calling plans for Lantau Island's future were "very sensitive."

But a government reply to faxed questions says the government is "reviewing and updating the concept plan proposals, and undertaking relevant technical assessments."

A spokesman said the vision for the island is "to promote sustainable development by balancing development and conservation needs."

North Lantau will see most of the "major economic infrastructure and urban development" to optimize transport links and infrastructure. The rest of the island will be protected "for nature conservation and environmentally sustainable recreational and visitor uses."

The spokesman, in the faxed response, said: "Conserving high-quality landscape, ecological habitats and cultural heritage sites has been a priority consideration in formulating the concept plan."

He also pledged that feasibility and environmental impact studies will be conducted.

The Planning Department also has a 19-page conservation policy, which emphasizes the need to "retain significant landscapes and ecological attributes and heritage features as conservation zones."

Preservationists hope the administration will follow through on such lofty statements, pointing to the island's rich biodiversity. The famous pink dolphins that inhabit waters off the northwestern shores of the island are threatened, they say. The same goes for the island's streams, which are home to 57 species of freshwater fish. Hundreds of species of birds and butterflies have been identified on the island.

Many people are pessimistic about the government's sincerity. Noffke is upset the government has still not delivered on a 2,000-hectare country park that the chief executive promised in 1999, and later gazetted. Creating that park would offset much of the harm done by the airport, Noffke says, and keep developers' hands off the designated area, which he calls one of Lantau's most pristine.

Instead, it has become a symbol for Lantau environmentalists of the government's "broken promises."

Noffke says: "How can we believe anything else the government says about its plans for Lantau?"

(In May last year, environment secretary Sarah Liao Siu-tung said the government had decided to "review the designation proposal" in light of overall planning for Lantau.)

Green Lantau Association, a group of Lantau residents, including Noffke, issues quarterly newsletters tracking environmental issues on the island.

It is no small task. Though Lantau is sparsely populated, it is the largest of Hong Kong's 236 islands, nearly twice as large as Hong Kong Island.

Lantau remained undeveloped for years, even as Hong Kong's farm plots and fishing villages gave way to industrialization and urbanization.

But now there is the concept plan.

Like other conservationists, Robertson, the man who is making retirement plans elsewhere, agrees that some development on Lantau is inevitable, and even welcome - provided it is done with due consideration for nature and public health.

But he says planners have run amok on the island, seeing Lantau as another place to build luxury accommodation.

When Robertson asked town planners about whether a new hotel spa on Cheung Sha Beach would violate zoning laws, he claims they shrugged their shoulders and said they could simply change the zoning.

"That's scary," Robertson says.

Academics such as Lawal Marafa are also concerned. Marafa, a professor of geography and resource management at Chinese University of Hong Kong, is leading a three-man team examining the impact of development on Lantau.

"It's about balancing development with the concerns of people and the environment," he says. "We are all stakeholders - everyone who lives here on Lantau, and even those who don't" - and that includes "people with business interests."

Paul Melsom disagrees. He thinks the environment must come first in such a unique place. Melsom is a horticulturist who has made it his personal mission to replenish the stocks of tree species native to Lantau.

Many species has been lost to forest fires and could be destroyed further by irresponsible development, he says, looking over a lush valley in the shadow of Lin Fa Shan.

He has spent years taking school groups to plant trees in various areas, but such efforts, he admits, are no match for a development policy that puts environmental concerns first.

James "Skip" Lazell feels just as strongly about Lantau's animal life. Lazell, an island biogeographer from the United States, first visited Lantau in 1979, helping another scientist discover a new type of lizard native to the island.

"Lanky [Lantau] has a very long list of species, some of which are known nowhere else on the planet," says Lazell, who now lives in Rhode Island in the United States.

At first, when Discovery Bay was being developed, Lazell says, he and fellow biologists were not very concerned.

"But that seems to have been a harbinger of worse things to come," he says. He calls the airport "a disaster" and the new town at Tung Chung "a really sad example of overdevelopment."

The government claims it is listening to these voices.

When it issued a report on the results of the three-month public consultation last November, the administration acknowledged the "strong concern and objection" raised by green groups. But it insisted its proposals were formulated "with due consideration of environmental concerns."

The task force, for instance, rejected formal proposals to build a Universal Studio theme park on an artificial island and a cluster of "luxurious casinos" in Mui Wo. But listed in the "Proposals to be Examined" are other projects that worry environmentalists: an indoor ski resort, a mini-Great Wall of China and a "Small Tibet Palace," to name a few.

Professor John Ap Tsim-hung, a specialist in tourism planning at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, defends the government's plans for Lantau as "well-intentioned" and praises the concept plan for bringing much-needed oversight to the island's development.

But Ap says the concept plan came across to the public as "a shopping list of development projects" and failed to take into account what he calls the public's mainstream transition towards valuing the environment. Such awareness in Hong Kong's green spaces has spiked in recent years, he says.

That is obvious on Lantau where city-dwellers flock in the thousands on summer weekends.

Pan Lee, an 18-year-old secondary student from Tsuen Wan, says she would rather Lantau remained just the way it is.

Lee is with nine classmates who have rented a house for a three-day holiday. None is pleased to hear of plans to develop Lantau.

If Lantau Island looked just like Sha Tin one day, Lee wonders, "what would be the difference between the city and here?"

That is exactly the kind of sea change that environmentalists have been waiting for. But will it be enough to stop development?

Maybe not, Lantau green groups admit, but it is a start. Says Quinton, the environmentalist: "If Lantau looks like Hong Kong, it [Hong Kong] will have lost its greatest jewel."