Everything about Mcdonald Islands totally explained
Heard Island and McDonald Islands (abbreviated as HIMI) are uninhabited, barren islands located in the
Southern Ocean, about two-thirds of the way from
Madagascar to
Antarctica, 7718 km due south of
Rajapur, Maharashtra,
India and approximately 4099 km west of
Perth. They have been territories of
Australia since 1947, and contain the only two active
volcanoes in Australian territory, one of which,
Mawson Peak, is the highest Australian mountain. The group's size is in area.
History
Neither island had visitors until the mid-1850s. Peter Kemp, a British sailor, was the first person thought to have seen the island on
27 November 1833, from the
brig Magnet during a voyage from
Kerguelen to the Antarctic and was believed to have entered the island on his 1833 chart.
An American sealer, Captain John Heard, on the ship
Oriental, sighted the island on
25 November 1853, en route from
Boston to
Melbourne. He reported the discovery one month later and had the island named after him. Captain William McDonald aboard the
Samarang discovered the McDonald Islands close to Heard Island six weeks later, on
4 January 1854.
No landing was made on the islands until March 1855, when sailors from the
Corinthian, led by Captain Erasmus Darwin Rogers, went ashore, at a place called Oil Barrel Point. In the sealing period from 1855-1880, a number of
American sailors spent a year or more on the island, living in appalling conditions in dank smelly huts, also at Oil Barrel Point. At its peak the community consisted of 200 people. By 1880, most of the seal population had been wiped out and the sailors left the island. In all, more than of
elephant seal oil was produced during this period.
There are a number of wrecks in the vicinity of the islands.
The islands have been a territory of
Australia since 1947, and became a
World Heritage Site in 1997.
Geography
Heard Island is a bleak and mountainous island located at . Its mountains are covered in glaciers and dominated by
Mawson Peak, a high
complex volcano which forms part of the
Big Ben massif.
Mawson Peak is the highest Australian mountain (higher than
Mount Kosciuszko), and one of only 2 active volcanoes in Australian territory, the other being McDonald Island. A long thin
spit named "Elephant Spit" extends from the east of the island.
There is a small group of islets and rocks about north of Heard Island, consisting of Shag Islet, Sail Rock, Morgan Island and Black Rock. They total approximately in area.
The McDonald Islands are located to the west of Heard Island at . The islands are small and rocky and consist of McDonald Island (high), Flat Island (high) and Meyer Rock (high). They total approximately in area and, as with Heard Island, are surface exposures of the
Kerguelen Plateau.
McDonald Island, after being dormant for 75,000 years, erupted in 1992 and has erupted again several times since, its most recent eruption being on
10 August 2005.
Heard Island and the McDonald Islands have no ports or harbours.
Administration and economy
The islands are a territory of
Australia administered from
Hobart by the
Australian Antarctic Division of the Australian
Department of the Environment and Water Resources. They are populated by large numbers of
seal and
bird species. The islands are contained within a marine reserve and are primarily visited for research.
From 1947 until 1955 there were camps of visiting scientists on Heard Island (at
Atlas Cove in the northwest, which was in 1969 again occupied by American scientists and expanded in 1971 by French scientists) and in 1971 on McDonald Island (at
Williams Bay). Later expeditions used a tempory base at
Spit Bay in the northeast, such as in 1988, 1992-93 and 2004-2005.
There is no economic activity, but they've been assigned the
country code HM in
ISO 3166-1 and therefore the
Internet top-level domain .hm.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Mcdonald Islands'.
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