The highest point of elevation on the Australian continent is Mount Kosciuszko of the Great Dividing Range at 2,228 metres (7,310 feet). What is lesser know, however, is that’s it’s not actually the highest point in the country of Australia. The nation does encompass territory beyond the continent.
That honour goes to Mawson Peak, the volcanic capstone of the Big Ben range. It pokes above the surface of the Great Southern Ocean on a tiny, remote speck known as Heard Island. Mawson Peak reaches 2,745 metres (9,006 feet) above the sea.
Heard Island and the nearby McDonald Islands are not much more than rocky outcrops jutting from the stormy seas surrounding Antarctica. They exist nowhere near mainland Australia. In fact they sit about 4,000 kilometres to the southwest. They are not near anything of much significance at all except to seals, birds, adventurers and the occasional scientist. These islands also provide Australia’s only location with volcanoes and glaciers.
Incredibly Remote
Heard Island is so remote that no human eyes likely observed it until the mid 19th Century. Glaciers cover its mountains. The weather is awful and there are no natural harbors. Additionally, the seas are horribly unforgiving. Few would ever want to live here. Once, American sealers occupied the island but only very briefly until about 1880. Of course they left once they decimating the local seal population.
In later years a number of research expeditions stopped there. One happened as recently as the Australian Expedition of 2003-04. There have also been five private expeditions, three commercial tourist visits and a handful of private yacht landings over the last several decades. The official Heard Island and McDonald Islands website faithfully tracks these data. The Australian Antarctic Division maintains the site at http://www.heardisland.aq/ (that “.aq” in the URL is the country code top-level domain designation for Antarctica by the way — you don’t see an address like that everyday!).
Pondering Mawson Peak
Climbers have reached the summit of Mawson Peak only three times, “by members of the Southern Indian Ocean Expedition in 1965, by members of the Anaconda expedition in 1983 and by members of the Australian Army Alpine Association in 1999/2000” according to the Australian Antarctic Division. They also offer some great maps of Heard Island if you want to learn some more about the geography of this fascinating place.
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