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| Nickname: HIMI | |
|---|---|
| Geography | |
| Location | Indian Ocean |
| Coordinates | 53°06′00″S 73°31′00″E / 53.10000°S 73.51667°E / -53.10000; 73.51667 |
| Archipelago | Heard Island and McDonald Islands |
| Area | 368 km (142 sq mi) |
| Highest elevation | 2,745 m (9006 ft) |
| Administration | |
 Australia | |
| Demographics | |
| Population | 0 |
| Pop. density | 0/km (0/sq mi) |
The Heard Island and McDonald Islands (abbreviated as HIMI) are an Australian external territory and volcanic group of barren Antarctic islands, about two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica. The group's overall size is 372 square kilometres (144 sq mi) in area and it has 101.9 km (63 mi) of coastline. Discovered in the mid-19th century, they have been territories of Australia since 1947 and contain the only two active volcanoes in Australian territory, the summit of one of which, Mawson Peak, is higher than any mountain on the Australian mainland. They lie on the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean.
The islands are among the most remote places on Earth: They are located approximately 4,099 km (2,547 mi) southwest of Perth, Western Australia, 3,845 km (2,389 mi) southwest of Cape Leeuwin, Australia, 4,200 km (2,600 mi) southeast of South Africa, 3,830 km (2,380 mi) southeast of Madagascar, 1,630 km (1,010 mi) north of Antarctica, and 450 km (280 mi) southeast of Kerguelen. The islands are currently uninhabited.
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History
Neither island-cluster had recorded visitors until the mid-1850s. Peter Kemp, a British sealer, may have become the first person to have seen the island. On 27 November 1833, he spotted it 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 Heard 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 nearby McDonald Islands six weeks later, on 4 January 1854.
No landing took place on the islands until March 1855, when sealers from the Corinthian, led by Captain Erasmus Darwin Rogers, went ashore at a place called Oil Barrel Point. In the sealing period from 1855 to 1880 a number of American sealers spent a year or more on the island, living in appalling conditions in dark smelly huts, also at Oil Barrel Point. At its peak the community consisted of 200 people. By 1880 sealers had wiped out most of the seal population and then left the island. In all the islands furnished more than 100,000 barrels of elephant-seal oil during this period.
A number of wrecks have occurred in the vicinity of the islands. There is also a discarded building left from John Heard's sealing station which is situated near Atlas Cove.
The first recorded landing on McDonald Island was made by Australian scientists Grahame Budd and Hugh Thelander on 12 February 1971, using a helicopter.
The islands have been a territory of Australia since 1947, when they were transferred from the U.K. The archipelago became a World Heritage Site in 1997.
Amateur radio DXpeditions to the island took place in January 1997 and in January 1983. Another is planned for 2014.
Administration and economy
The United Kingdom formally established its claim to Heard Island in 1910, marked by the raising of the Union Jack and the erection of a beacon by Captain Evensen, master of the Mangoro. Effective government, administration and control of Heard Island and the McDonald Islands was transferred to the Australian government on 26 December 1947 at the commencement of the first Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition (ANARE) to Heard Island, with a formal declaration that took place at Atlas Cove. The transfer was confirmed by an exchange of letters between the two governments on 19 December 1950.
The islands are a territory (Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands) 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 65,000-square-kilometre (25,000 sq mi) marine reserve and are primarily visited for research. There is no permanent human habitation.
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 temporary base at Spit Bay in the east, such as in 1988, 1992–93 and 2004–05.
With no population, there is no indigenous economic activity. The islands' only natural resource is fish; the Australian government allows limited fishing in the surrounding waters. Despite the lack of population, the islands have been assigned the country code HM in ISO 3166-1 (ISO 3166-2:HM) and therefore the Internet top-level domain .hm. The timezone of the islands is UTC+5.
See also
- Australia
- Australian Antarctic Territory
- Birds of Heard and McDonald Islands
- Template:Misplaced Pages books link
- Index of Australia-related articles
- List of islands of Australia
- List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands
- Outline of Australia
Notes
- CIA World Factbook. Accessed 2009.01.04.
- Commonwealth of Australia. "About Heard Island – Human Activities". Retrieved 21 October 2006.
- Cocky Flies, Geoscience Australia
- Distance Between Cities Places On Map Distance Calculator
- SIOE 2002: Heard I. & The McDonald Is
- Name Details - Australian Antarctic Data Centre
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
CIA World Factbook.was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - CIA World Factbook.
- → Heard Island and McDonald Islands current time
References
- LeMasurier, W. E. (1990). Volcanoes of the Antarctic Plate and Southern Oceans. American Geophysical Union. pp. 512 pp. ISBN 0-87590-172-7.
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Further reading
- Australian Government. (2005) "Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve Management Plan". Australian Antarctic Division: Kingston (Tas). ISBN 1-876934-08-5.
- Green, Ken and Woehler Eric. (2006) Heard Island: Southern Ocean Sentinel. Chipping Norton: Surrey Beatty and Sons.
- Scholes, Arthur. (1949) Fourteen men; story of the Australian Antarctic Expedition to Heard Island. Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire.
- Smith, Jeremy. (1986) Specks in the Southern Ocean. Armidale: University of New England Press. ISBN 0-85834-615-X
External links
- Click here to see a map of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, including all major topographical features
- Heard Island and McDonald Islands official website
- World heritage listing for Heard Island and McDonald Islands
- "Heard Island and McDonald Islands". The World Factbook (2024 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency.
- Template:Dmoz
Wikimedia Atlas of Heard Island and McDonald Islands- Image gallery of Heard Island and McDonald Island with high quality limited copyright images.
- MODIS satellite image, taken 30 September 2004 and showing a von Kármán vortex street in the clouds, caused by Mawson Peak's effect on the wind
- UNESCO World Heritage site entry
- Fan's page with further historical and geographic information and a map
