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Macquarie Island*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
State Party	Australia
Type	Natural
Criteria	vii, viii
Reference	629
Region**	Asia-Pacific
Inscription history
Inscription	1997  (21st Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. ** Region as classified by UNESCO.

Macquarie Island lies in the southwest corner of the Pacific Ocean, about half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica. 54°37'53"S, 158°52'15"E. Politically, it has formed part of the Australian state of Tasmania since 1900 and became a Tasmanian State Reserve in 1978. In 1997 it became a world heritage site. It was a part of Esperance Municipality until 1993, when the municipality was merged with other municipalities to Huon Valley. Ecologically, it is part of the Antipodes Subantarctic Islands tundra ecoregion.

The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) maintains a permanent base, the Macquarie Island Station, on the island. The base's residents, the island's only inhabitants, range in numbers from 20 to 40 people throughout the year.

History

The Australian/Briton Frederick Hasselborough discovered the island accidentally in July 1810 when looking for new sealing grounds.^[1] He claimed Macquarie Island for Britain and annexed it to the colony of New South Wales in 1810. The island took its name after Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821. Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, who explored the area for Alexander I of Russia, produced the first map of Macquarie Island. Bellingshausen landed on the island on 28 November 1820, defined its geographical position and traded his rum and food for Macquarie Island's fauna with the sealers. Between 1810 to 1919, seals and then penguins were hunted almost to the point of extinction.^[1]

A view over the Macquarie Island bluffs

In 1890, New South Wales transferred the island to Tasmania, which leased it to Joseph Hatch (1837–1928) between 1902 and 1920 for his oil industry based on harvesting penguins.

Between 1911 and 1914, the island became a base for the Australasian Antarctic Expedition under Sir Douglas Mawson. George Ainsworth operated a meteorological station between 1911 and 1913, followed by Harold Power (1913 until 1914) and by Arthur Tulloch from 1914 until its shutdown in 1915. In 1933, the authorities declared the island a wildlife sanctuary and eventually transferred it to the Commonwealth of Australia under the administration of the Australian Antarctic Territory on 26 December 1947. The Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) established its expedition headquarters on 25 May 1948 on Macquarie Island.

On 23 December 2004, an earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter magnitude scale (one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded) rocked the island, but caused little damage.^[2]

On 12 April 2008, a 7.1 earthquake on the Macquarie Fault occurred near Macquarie Island.^[3]

Geography

Contour map of Macquarie Island

The island has an approximate length of 34 km (21 mi) and a width of 5 km (3 mi), with an area of 128 km² (49 sq mi).^[1] Near Macquarie Island are two minor groups of islets, Judge and Clerk Islets, 54°21′S 159°01′E / 54.35°S 159.017°E / -54.35; 159.017 (Judge and Clerk Islets), 14 km (9 mi) to the north, and 0.2 km² (49 acres) in area, and Bishop and Clerk Islets, 55°03′S 158°46′E / 55.05°S 158.767°E / -55.05; 158.767 (Bishop and Clerk Islets), 34 km (21 mi) to the south, and 0.6 km² (150 acres) in area.

The island is in two main pieces of plateau of around 150–200 m (490–660 ft) elevation to north and south, joined by a narrower and lower isthmus. The high points include Mt Elder on the north-east coastal ridge at 385 m (1,260 ft), and Mt Hamilton and Mt Fletcher in the south at 410 m (1,300 ft).

Bishop and Clerk Islets mark the southernmost point of Australia (including islands).

Macquarie Island lies atop a geographic feature named for the island, the Macquarie Ridge. This seafloor ridge is aligned along the eastern margin of the tectonic plate boundary between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Pacific Plate.

The daily average temperature ranges from 3.2 °C (37.8 °F) in June and July to 7 °C (45 °F) in January. Precipitation occurs fairly evenly throughout the year and averages 917 mm (36.1 in) per year.

In the 19th Century Emerald Island was supposed to exist south of Macquarie Island.

Fauna and flora

A Royal penguin rookery on Macquarie Island.

Fauna found on the island include: Subantarctic Fur Seals, Antarctic Fur Seals, New Zealand Fur Seals and Southern Elephant Seals - over 80,000 individuals of this species. Royal Penguins and Macquarie Shags are endemic breeders, while King Penguins, Southern Rockhopper Penguins and Gentoo penguins also breed here in large numbers.

Ecological balance

The ecology of the island was affected soon after the beginning of European visits to the island in 1810. The island's fur seals, elephant seals and penguins were killed for fur and blubber. Rats and mice that were inadvertently introduced from the ships prospered due to lack of predators. Cats were subsequently introduced deliberately to keep the rodents from eating human food stores. In about 1870, rabbits were left on the island by sealers to breed for food. By the 1970s, the then 130,000 rabbits were causing tremendous damage to vegetation.^[4]

The feral cats introduced to the island have had a devastating effect on the native seabird population, with an estimated 60,000 seabird deaths per year. From 1985, efforts were undertaken to remove the cats. In June 2000, the last of the nearly 2500 cats were culled in an effort to save the seabirds.^[5] Although seabird numbers began to rise initially, the removal of the cats allowed a rapid growth in the number of rats and rabbits which together are causing widespread environmental damage.

The rabbits rapidly multiplied before numbers were reduced to about 10,000 in the early 1980s when myxomatosis was introduced. Rabbit numbers have grown again to around 100,000 on the island.^[6] The rodents feed on young chicks while rabbits nibbling on the grass layer has led to soil erosion and cliff collapses, destroying seabird nests. Large portions of the Macquarie Island bluffs are eroding as a result. In September 2006 a large landslip at Lusitania Bay, on the eastern side of the island, partially destroyed an important penguin breeding colony. Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service attributed the landslip to a combination of heavy spring rains and severe erosion caused by rabbits.^[7]

Research by Australian Antarctic Division scientists, published in the 13 January 2009 edition of the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, showed that the success of the feral cat eradication program has allowed the rabbit population to increase, damaging the Macquarie Island ecosystem by altering significant areas of island vegetation.^[8]

On 4 June 2007 a media release by the Australian Federal Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Malcolm Turnbull, announced that the Australian and Tasmanian Governments had reached an agreement to jointly fund the eradication of rodent pests, including rabbits, to protect Macquarie Island's World Heritage values.^[9] The plan, estimated to cost $24 million Australian dollars, will involve mass baiting the island similar to an eradication program on New Zealand's Campbell Island^[10] and is expected to take up to seven years.^[11]

Gallery

A Macquarie Island beach	Macquarie Island flora	Macquarie Island flora just inland from the beach
Royal Penguins are arguing	Bull Elephant seal fighting	Simplified geological map
Macquarie Island Shag	Gentoo Penguin	King penguin Lusitania Bay
Rockhopper penguin	Sooty Albatross	Macquarie Island Station
Wandering Albatross	Green Gorge Hut

See also

Australia portal

• Administrative Heads of Macquarie Island
• List of islands of Australia
• List of sub-antarctic islands

References

• Macquarie Island, an 1882 paper in the Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand
• Macquarie Island, an 1894 paper in the Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand

External links

• Macquarie Island Station (Australian Antarctic Division)
  • Macquarie Island Station webcam
• World heritage listing for Macquarie Island
• Macquarie Island oceanic crust
• A picture of Macquarie Island (historical heritage - Remnants of seal hunting)

Coordinates: 54°37′00″S 158°51′00″E / 54.6167°S 158.85°E / -54.6167; 158.85

World Heritage Sites in Australia Australian fossil mammal sites at Naracoorte and Riversleigh · Blue Mountains · Fraser Island · Gondwana Rainforests of Australia · Great Barrier Reef · Heard Island and McDonald Islands · Kakadu National Park · Lord Howe Island Group · Macquarie Island · Purnululu National Park · Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens · Shark Bay · Sydney Opera House · Tasmanian Wilderness · Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park · Wet Tropics of Queensland · Willandra Lakes Region

Peri-Antarctic countries and overseas territories Argentina · Australia (Heard Island and McDonald Islands • Macquarie Island) · Chile · Falkland Islands · French Southern and Antarctic Lands (Kerguelen Islands) · New Zealand (New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands) · Norway (Bouvet Island) · South Africa (Prince Edward Islands) · South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands "Peri-Antarctic" (meaning "close to the Antarctic") does not include territorial claims on Antarctica itself.

From Wikitravel

Macquarie Island [1] or Macca as it is affectionately known, is a Sub-Antarctic island in the Southern Ocean. The island is administered by Australia.

Understand

Macquarie Island is home to a large variety of wildlife, including thousands of seals and millions of penguins, and has been designated a World Heritage site. It is a Tasmanian State Reserve and is managed by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service. It is Australia's Sub-Antarctic jewel.

Macquarie Island is about 1500km SSE of Tasmania (Australia) and around 1200km N of Antarctica. The Australian Antarctic Division research station is located at the north end of the island. The island is 5km wide at its widest point and 34km long. The island's total area is about 128 square km.

Cold, wet and windy. The average winter temperature is about 3 degrees C and the average summer temperature is 7 degrees C. It is your classic, cold, bleak, windswept, sub-antarctic island.

The island has a population of about 40 researchers and support staff during the summer. The population drops to about 20 during the winter.

Get in

By air

It may be possible to land on Macca by helicopter if your ship has a helicopter. Otherwise the only transportation to the island is by sea.

By boat

A number of companies offer trips to Macquarie Island. Usually it is a stop-over on the way to Antarctica for vessels departing from Australia or New Zealand. A strong constitution for travellers is recommended as sea sickness may be an issue for some - the Southern Ocean can have some of the roughest seas in the world. It usually takes 3 to 4 days make the crossing from either Bluff in NZ or Hobart in Tasmania. There are no port facilities at Macca so visitors will be put ashore on small boats like Naiads or Zodiacs. Expect to get your feet wet. Weather conditions may sometimes make landings frustratingly impossible though.

Companies offering cruises to Antarctica via Macquarie Island and other Sub-Antarctic islands include:

• Quark Expeditions, [2].
• Aurora Expeditions, [3].
• Heritage Expeditions, [4].

Get around

There are several walking tracks around the island. To limit environmental degradation some raised boardwalks have been introduced. Visitors are escorted by a Tasmanian park ranger. Zodiac inflatable boats are used to put visitors ashore at accessible locations for excursions. All landings are monitored by the Tasmanian park rangers. Vehicles are not used on the island.

See

A number of seal species are present including the Southern Elephant seal and the New Zealand Fur seal. Most of the bird life is represented on the island by four species of penguin: king, royal, gentoo and rockhopper penguins. Other birds include petrels, skua, albatross and ducks. Introduced animals, such as feral cats, rabbits, mice and rats have contributed to the decline of native animals however eradication and control measures have been implemented that have gradually reduced the number of feral animals.

The large penguin rookeries are an incredible sight. The king penguins congregate in their hundreds of thousands on the beaches, standing shoulder to shoulder only reluctantly moving to make way for the huge elephant seals sliding and jerking in their impressive way to and from the sea. Just in land from the beach the royal penguins roost in congregations that can almost overload the senses with an unforgetable smell and noise. Skuas, predatory birds, opportunistically try and pick off the chicks and weak. Other skuas and petrels can be found picking and tearing at the carcasses of dead seals.

The huge elephant seals, some weighing in at 1000kg or more, wallow together on the beach in their dozens. Male juveniles will play fight, that is, they will rear back on their tails and then crash together in what is more of a head slap than a head butt. This is all in preparation for when they are adults and will have to fight each other for right to mate with a harem of females. Adult males have an average weight of 2000kg and can weigh up to 4000kg. They can also be up to 4 metres in length.

Do

check out the seals, go to the weather station, go on bush tracks

Buy

Australian Antarctic Territory stamps are available for sale at the research station. Postcards and letters can also be left at the station to be mailed and postmarked with the Macquarie Island postmark. Macquarie Island and Australian Antarctic Division memorabilia like T-shirts, fridge magnets & caps are also sometimes available for sale.

Passports can also be stamped with a Macquarie Island stamp.

Eat

The research station's mess building will occasionally provide snacks to visitors like muffins, sandwiches, friands, pizza, tea and coffee.

Drink

The research station has a bar in the mess building. A bizzare, yet strangely tasty, distilled concoction made from old cans of fruit will be, on the rare occasions it is even available, offered to visitors in the bar.

Sleep

It is unlikely you would be able to stay on the island during a visit as you would be expected to sleep on the vessel you arrived on. Most visits last 1 to 2 days.

Work

It would help if you were an employee of Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service or the Australian Antarctic Division and were posted to the island when a position came available. Nearly all the inhabitants are engaged in the scientific research undertaken on the island or tradespeople such as carpenters, cooks and sparkies, to support the station.

Respect

There are hundreds of thousands of seals and millions of penguins and other sea birds that make their home on the island. Visitors are required to stay five metres from the wildlife. However penguins are inquisitive little guys and will waddle over to you to check you out. Visitors should also stay on designated trails.

Stay safe

See the article on the Islands of the Southern Ocean.