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Heard Island and McDonald Islands

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Antarctica

   Location of Heard and McDonald Islands
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   Location of Heard and McDonald Islands

   Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI ) are uninhabited, barren
   islands located in the Southern Ocean at 53°00′S 73°00′E, about
   two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica. They have been
   part 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 372  km² in area.

Geography

   Heard Island (368  km²) is bleak and mountainous, covered in glaciers
   and dominated by Mawson Peak, a 2745  metre high volcano which forms
   part of the Big Ben massif. Heard Island is located at 53°06′00″S,
   073°31′00″E. Mawson Peak is the highest Australian mountain (527m
   higher than Mount Kosciuszko), and one of only 2 active volcanoes in
   Australian territory.

   The other active volcano in Australian territory is on McDonald Island:
   after being dormant for 75,000 years, it erupted in 1992 and has
   erupted again several times since, its most recent eruption being on 10
   August 2005.

   A long thin spit named Elephant Spit' extends from the east of the
   island.

   McDonald Islands, located 44 km to the west of Heard Island, are small
   and rocky. McDonald Islands are located at 53°03′00″S, 72°37′00″E. They
   consist of McDonald Island (230 m high), Flat Island (55 m high) and
   Meyer Rock (170 m high). They total approximately 2.5 km² in area and,
   as with Heard Island, are surface exposures of the Kerguelen Plateau.

   There is a small group of islets and rocks about 10 km north of Heard
   Island, consisting of Shag Islet, Sail Rock, Morgan Island and Black
   Rock. They total approximately 1.1 km² in area.

   Heard Island and the McDonald Islands have no ports or harbors.

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 Heritage. They are populated by large numbers of seal
   and bird species. The islands are contained within a 65,000 square
   kilometre marine reserve and are primarily visited for research.

   From 1947 until the 1950s there were camps of visiting scientists on
   Heard Island (at Atlas Cove) and in 1971 on McDonald Island ( at
   Williams Bay).

   There is no economic activity, but they have been assigned the country
   code HM and Internet top-level domain .hm.

History

   Heard Island, from NASA World Wind
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   Heard Island, from NASA World Wind

   Heard Island did not have visitors until the mid-1850s. It is probable
   that no human had ever seen the Island until this time. Peter Kemp, a
   British sealer (seal hunter), was the first person thought to have seen
   the island on November 27, 1833, from the brig Magnet during a voyage
   from Kerguelen to the Antarctic and was believed to have entered the
   island in his 1833 chart.

   Captain John Heard, an American sealer on the ship Oriental, sighted
   the island on November 25, 1853, en route from Boston to Melbourne. He
   reported the discovery one month later and had the island named after
   him. Coincidentally, Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang
   discovered the McDonald Islands close to Heard Island shortly
   afterwards on January 4, 1854.

   No landing was made 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 1855–1880, 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 populated 200 people. By 1880, most of the
   seal population had been wiped out and the sealers left the island. In
   all, more than 100,000 barrels 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 part of Australia since 1947, and became a World
   Heritage Site in 1997.

   Retrieved from "
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heard_Island_and_McDonald_Islands"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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