Australia's highest mountain is a snow covered volcano.
January 25, 2019 2:48 AM   Subscribe

"It startles me that Australians think of their beaches and red deserts, but they don't know about this other part of their landscape." Surrounded by storms, riven by volcanic blasts, Heard Island is a place that few, ironically, have heard of.
posted by smoke (12 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Beautiful photos, and great article, thank you.

I guess we don't think about it because it's so remote and we'll never go there whereas the beaches and red deserts can hardly be missed. It looks like such an amazing place, I hope it's kept pristine. Feel like a permanent research station would spoil it. I need to check in again in another few decades to see how much it has grown!
posted by kitten magic at 3:13 AM on January 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


I've been smiling about penguins being so excited to see them that they were acting silly. Super cute.
posted by kitten magic at 3:14 AM on January 25, 2019


PENGUINS
posted by Hermione Granger at 4:27 AM on January 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


Shhhhhhh, don't tell anyone. Instagrammers and peak baggers will only ruin it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:05 AM on January 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Huh. I had no idea there were islands in that general vicinity at all but there are clearly lots of them.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:59 AM on January 25, 2019


I'm kind of fascinated with the islands of the South Atlantic/Indian Ocean boundary and Indian Ocean proper's sub-antarctic. Mostly controlled by the French (Heard and McDonald being one of the exceptions), on the surface they look like they could have supported a small French colony on the pattern of Iceland or Newfoundland, or even the Falklands. The Kerguelen Islands are only moderately smaller than Cyprus or Puerto Rico, and bigger than Trinidad. The Crozet Islands compare to Malta. The South African-controlled Prince Edward Islands (no, the other one) is about the same. None are dominated by ice like Heard and McDonald. But of course their permanent population is zero.

To some extent this is because the winds can roar the whole way around the world at that latitude with no continental land to break it up, and nothing like a Gulf Stream to keep things warm. Nor does it help that they're what geographers term "the ass end of nowhere". Iceland and Newfoundland had fisheries and Europe nearby, the Falklands were much further away and much less populated, and then you got these places that were just that one step too far. I'm just...not surprised...I just wonder that no-one ever took a serious crack at it during the heyday of colonialism when Europe was mad for colonial ventures.
posted by Quindar Beep at 7:37 AM on January 25, 2019 [3 favorites]


"Australia's Hawaii, but colder". As a marketing slogan it needs some work.

Quindar, I'm also fascinated by these remote islands. They had their heydey as whaling stations in the 19th century. That and the Shackleton expedition, where South Georgia plays the unlikely role of the promised land.
posted by Nelson at 8:10 AM on January 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


ooooh I have never heard of this place. those islands are hella isolated! the earth is a fascinating system full of surprises and wonder (and penguins!!)
posted by supermedusa at 8:25 AM on January 25, 2019


I'm also fascinated by these remote islands.

I recommend this great book by Judith Schalansky "Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will"
posted by dhruva at 9:06 AM on January 25, 2019 [5 favorites]


Some really remote islands were used for coaling stations during the steamship era, and there was a minor 19th century colonial power struggle over islands, particularly those in the South Pacific, containing exploitable quantities of guano, a major source of nitrates for fertilizer and industrial use (including explosives!), prior to the development of the Haber–Bosch process on which civilization as we know it currently depends.

This 99% Invisible article is pretty good, if you're interested. Atlas Obscura also has a piece. Most of the biggest guano islands were off the coast of Peru, but some pretty remote places got explored (and exploited) and claimed by various powers. Some were successfully colonized by populations that remained even after the guano era ended, e.g. the Germans colonized Nauru (though I think they came for the guano and stayed for the phosphate mining). The U.S. still has a variety of islands in the Pacific, and some pretty shady legal precedent that comes up occasionally, as a result.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:43 AM on January 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


on the surface they look like they could have supported a small French colony on the pattern of Iceland or Newfoundland, or even the Falklands

You hit the nail on the head about natural resources and distance, but also consider that France considered it's colony in North America mostly not even worth it because it only had fur, no gold, no sugar, no spice. So not surprising they didn't do too much with it.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 9:55 AM on January 25, 2019


> also consider that France considered it's colony in North America mostly not even worth it

That's not really true, though it was for the initial half century. France spent a great deal of money on Louisbourg to defend the approach to New France, for example; the colony just got swamped by the unprecedented growth of the British settlements on the eastern seaboard. By the 1760s, New France's population was doubling every thirty years and had reached 70,000, a trend that didn't stop until the 1960s.

Unfortunately for them the Thirteen Colonies did it every twenty over the same time period. The transfer of New France to the UK after the Seven Years War was more because the French knew they couldn't defend it, not that they didn't want it.

> there was a minor 19th century colonial power struggle over islands, particularly those in the South Pacific, containing exploitable quantities of guano, a major source of nitrates for fertilizer and industrial use (including explosives!)

Kadin2048, I have an book called Lost Islands that includes a wonderful map tucked into a pocket of the inside cover, a reproduction of 19th century one showing "American Polynesia". It was based on all the private claims made under the Guano Act and not a few of the so-called islands were entirely non-existent.
posted by Quindar Beep at 10:22 AM on January 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


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