King Island from space, April 1993 |
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| Geography | |
|---|---|
| Location | Tasmania |
| Area | 1,098 km2 (423.9 sq mi) |
| Highest elevation | 213 m (699 ft) |
| Highest point | Mount Stanley |
| Country | |
|
Australia
|
|
| State | Tasmania |
| LGA | Municipality of King Island |
| Largest city | Currie |
| Demographics | |
| Population | 1723 (as of June 2007[1]) |
| Density | 1.57 /km2 (4.07 /sq mi) |
King Island is one of the islands that make up the state of Tasmania, Australia. It is located in the Roaring Forties of Bass Strait, off the north-western tip of the main island of Tasmania, about half way between Tasmania and the mainland state of Victoria. The southernmost point is called Stokes Point and the northernmost point is called Cape Wickham. There are three small islands surrounding King Island, namely New Year Island and Christmas Island situated to the northwest, and a smaller island called Councillor Island to the east.
King Island was named after Governor King of New South Wales, whose territory at the time included what is now Tasmania. The Local Government Area of the island is King Island Council. The population in 2007 was 1,723.[2]
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King Island was discovered by Captain Reed, hunting seals in the schooner Martha in 1799. Matthew Flinders’ first map of Van Diemen's Land and Basses Strait,[3] which was sent to England (before Flinders had left) and was published in June 1800, did not show King Island. However, before Flinders left Sydney for England in 1800, Reed had informed Flinders of the existence of the island. Flinders’ second map of Van Diemen’s Land and Bass’s Strait (properly finished on route to England) and published with his Observations[4] in 1801 shows:[5]
“Land of considerable extent has been seen about this situation”.
Captain John Black also visited the island just after Reed and named it King's Island after Governor Philip Gidley King. Captain John Black was sailing in the brig Harbinger, after which the dangerous Harbinger Rocks off the island's north-west coast are named. It was found to abound in both fur seals and elephant seals which were soon exploited to local extinction.
Governor King, knowing that the French navigator Nicolas Baudin was going to head for the island, when he left Port Jackson in 1800, sent the Cumberland from Sydney to formally claim the islands for Britain. The Cumberland arrived just before the French and the British had hastily erected the British Flag in a tree.[7]
As a result of this incident, British settlements were established at the River Derwent and Port Dalrymple in Tasmania and later Port Phillip.
Sealers continued to harvest the island intermittently until the mid 1820s, after which the only inhabitants were some old sealers and their Australian aboriginal wives who mostly hunted wallaby for skins. The last of these left the island in 1854 and for many years it was only occasionally visited by hunters and more often castaways from shipwrecks.
The first submarine communications cable across Bass Strait in 1859 went via King Island, starting at Cape Otway, Victoria, it made contact with the Tasmanian mainland at Stanley Head, and then continued on to George Town. However it started failing within a few weeks of completion, and by 1861 it failed completely. A later telephone and telegraph cable across Bass Strait operated via King Island from 1936 until 1963.
In the 1880s the land was opened for grazing. A township developed at Currie and the Post Office opened on 1 June 1892 (known as King's Island until 1903, King Island until 1917, thereafter Currie).[8]
Currie, on the west coast, now has the only Post Office on the island, but in the past Grassy, in the southeast (1918–1935, 1943–1991), Naracoopa on the east coast (1920–1962), Pearshape to the south (1946–1959) and Egg Lagoon in the north (1925–1967) (replacing Yambacoona (1922–1925)) all had official Post Offices. The other localities of King Island are Bungaree, Loorana, Lymwood, Nugara, Pegarah, Reekara, Sea Elephant, Surprise Bay, Wickham and Yarra Creek.[8] All share the postcode 7256.
Situated in the centre of the western entrance to Bass Strait, King Island has been the location of over 60 known ship wrecks, involving the loss of over 2,000 lives. Many King Islanders are descendants of shipwreck survivors.[9] Notable shipwrecks include:
The largest town is Currie, situated on the western side of the island. Grassy township, in the east, was a thriving mining town, where scheelite was extracted from an open cut mine. After the mine closed in 1990, the mine site was rehabilitated, the town sold and the pit was allowed to flood. Since then the Grassy population has increased and consists of local families, Sea-changers, a campus of Ballarat & Clarendon College and holiday makers. The town now boasts a large, heated indoor Swimming Pool, laundromat, the Grassy Harbour Supermarket, King's Cuisine at the Grassy Club, the Grassy Grub Fish Cafe, the Grassy Emporium, E J Motors and Fuel, Kelp Craft and King Island Holiday Village, for accommodation in the town, and a bed & breakfast and art gallery at the Portside Links, near the harbour. Grassy is also known for the penguin rookery near the port (safe harbour) and platypus at the Upper Grassy Dam. The weekly ferry from Melbourne which services the island comes in to Grassy Harbour on Sundays.
The island is noted for its production of cheese, lobsters, bottled rain water, kelp, and beef. It is a safe harbour for passing yachts and the site of the Huxley Hill Wind Farm operated by Hydro Tasmania.
The island has a football competition, The King Island Football Association with just three teams, Currie, Grassy and North, competes annually in the Stonehaven Cup boat races, the Imperial 20-foot race, Queen's Birthday Weekend Pheasant Season and many other activities.
The King Island Emu was endemic to the island. Although numerous bones have been found, the only existing skin was collected by Nicolas Baudin in 1802, shortly before the species became extinct, probably as a result of hunting by sealers for food.[10]
Some 193 km2 of the island, consisting of the coastline in a strip extending from the low water mark to one kilometre inland of the high water mark around the entire island, with a broader area encompassing Lavinia State Reserve in the north-east, has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA). The main feature making it an IBA is that it supports a large proportion of the small population of critically endangered Orange-bellied Parrots on their migration route between their breeding grounds in south-western Tasmania and their wintering grounds in mainland south-eastern Australia.[11]
The IBA includes the nearby Christmas, New Year and Councillor Islands which support breeding seabirds and waders.[11] The IBA supports significant numbers of Hooded Plovers, Flame Robins and Fairy Terns, over 1% of the world populations of Short-tailed Shearwaters, Pied and Sooty Oystercatchers, Black-faced Cormorants and Pacific Gulls, as well as populations of ten bird species endemic to Tasmania, including seven subspecies endemic to King Island.[12]
| Climate data for King Island | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °C (°F) | 38.4 (101.1) |
37.6 (99.7) |
35.0 (95.0) |
30.0 (86.0) |
23.1 (73.6) |
18.6 (65.5) |
18.0 (64.4) |
19.6 (67.3) |
26.5 (79.7) |
29.5 (85.1) |
33.0 (91.4) |
36.0 (96.8) |
38.4 (101.1) |
| Average high °C (°F) | 20.3 (68.5) |
20.6 (69.1) |
19.6 (67.3) |
17.2 (63.0) |
15.1 (59.2) |
13.5 (56.3) |
12.9 (55.2) |
13.2 (55.8) |
14.3 (57.7) |
15.6 (60.1) |
17.0 (62.6) |
18.7 (65.7) |
16.5 (61.7) |
| Average low °C (°F) | 12.5 (54.5) |
13.1 (55.6) |
12.6 (54.7) |
11.2 (52.2) |
9.8 (49.6) |
8.5 (47.3) |
7.8 (46.0) |
7.8 (46.0) |
8.3 (46.9) |
9.0 (48.2) |
9.9 (49.8) |
11.3 (52.3) |
10.2 (50.4) |
| Record low °C (°F) | 6.4 (43.5) |
7.0 (44.6) |
6.1 (43.0) |
−0.6 (30.9) |
1.1 (34.0) |
1.0 (33.8) |
−0.5 (31.1) |
−0.5 (31.1) |
−2.2 (28.0) |
0.0 (32.0) |
0.6 (33.1) |
4.6 (40.3) |
−2.2 (28.0) |
| Precipitation mm (inches) | 35.6 (1.402) |
38.8 (1.528) |
48.0 (1.89) |
67.8 (2.669) |
98.0 (3.858) |
102.4 (4.031) |
124.1 (4.886) |
114.7 (4.516) |
84.2 (3.315) |
74.8 (2.945) |
59.8 (2.354) |
52.3 (2.059) |
900.2 (35.441) |
| Avg. precipitation days | 6.4 | 6.2 | 8.3 | 11.6 | 15.3 | 16.5 | 19.3 | 18.8 | 15.4 | 13.1 | 10.3 | 8.7 | 149.9 |
| Source: Bureau of Meteorology."[13] | |||||||||||||