Lyla Lindsey
Australia is often referred to as an island continent, and it has 8,222 islands within its maritime borders. These islands range in size from small rocks that are uncovered at high tide to islands that are more than twice the size of the Australian Capital Territory. Some of the larger islands include Tasmania, Melville Island, Kangaroo Island, and Groote Eylandt, which is an archaic spelling of the Dutch words for Big Island. Australia also has a number of large islands in the Pacific, Indian, and Southern Oceans, as well as the Coral and Timor Seas, which form Australia's External Territories. One of these external islands is Macquarie Island, which is one of Australia's most distant possessions and was nominated by the Australian Government for inscription on the World Heritage Register in 1996.
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What You'll Learn
K'gari, the world's largest sand island
K'gari, formerly known as Fraser Island, is the world's largest sand island. It is located in the Wide Bay–Burnett region of Queensland, Australia, and is part of the traditional lands of the Butchulla people. The island is about 122-123 km (76 mi) long and 22 km (14 mi) wide, and it is Australia's sixth-largest island. K'gari is known for its diverse and exceptional natural beauty, including sandy beaches, coloured sand cliffs, blowouts, tall rainforests, sand dunes, and freshwater dune lakes. The island is also home to a variety of plant and animal species, including mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.
The name K'gari means 'paradise' in the Butchulla language, and it is believed to be the name of "a beautiful white spirit". The Butchulla people describe K'gari as "She is beautiful to us - she is our mother. She provides food, water, and shelter, and in return, we protect and preserve her, as per the 3 lores that Yindingie gave us". In 2021, the World Heritage Area within the Great Sandy National Park, along with the surrounding waters and parts of the nearby mainland, was officially renamed "K’gari (Fraser Island)" in recognition of the traditional name and in consultation with the Butchulla people.
K'gari is also known for its coloured sands, which have been stained by decayed vegetation leaching into the sand for thousands of years. Some deposits are up to eight million years old. The island's sand has been accumulating for approximately 750,000 years on volcanic bedrock, which provides a natural catchment for the sediment carried by a strong offshore current northwards along the coast. The sand dunes on the island move at a rate of 1 to 2 metres per year due to year-round winds from the southeast and can grow to a height of 244 metres.
K'gari has a rich history and was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1992. It is home to the remains of the Maheno, a ship that was beached on the island in 1935 and later used for target bombing practice during World War II. The island also played a significant role in the protection of sand-mining, with a ban on this type of mining being implemented in the 1970s. Today, K'gari is a popular destination, with up to 500,000 people visiting the island each year.
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Tasmania, the largest island with a population of 570,000
Tasmania is an island state of Australia, located 240 kilometres (150 miles) south of the mainland. It is the 26th-largest island in the world, with an area of 64,519 square kilometres (24,911 sq mi) or 68,401 square kilometres (26,410 sq mi). The island was first inhabited by Aboriginal peoples, who today generally identify as Palawa or Pakana. Evidence indicates the presence of Aboriginal people in Tasmania about 42,000 years ago, with rising sea levels cutting Tasmania off from mainland Australia around 10,000-11,700 years ago. At the time of European contact, the Aboriginal people in Tasmania were organised into nine major nations or ethnic groups.
In 1803, Tasmania was permanently settled by the British Empire as a penal colony, with a convict population of around 75,000. This period also saw the arrival of 600 colonists from Norfolk Island, who established farms and occupied traditional kangaroo hunting grounds. By 1824, the colonial population had swelled to 12,600, and tensions between Tasmania's Aboriginal and white inhabitants rose, driven by competition for resources and violence. During this time, known as the Black War (1825-1831), nearly 1,100 Aboriginal people and settlers lost their lives.
Tasmania has a population of approximately 557,571-573,479 as of 2021-2023. The state capital and largest city is Hobart, with a population of 226,653 as of the 2021 census. In 2021, most people in Tasmania used only English at home (86.1%), with the main religious affiliation being Christianity (38.4%). The median weekly income for individuals in 2021 was $701, with households becoming smaller over time.
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Melville Island, the NT's biggest island
Melville Island, or Yermalner in Tiwi, is the NT's biggest island and Australia's second-largest island after Tasmania. It is located in the eastern Timor Sea, approximately 60 kilometres (37 mi) north of Darwin and west of the Cobourg Peninsula in Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. The island covers 5,786 square kilometres (2,234 sq mi) and is just outside the 100 largest islands in the world.
The island was first sighted by Abel Tasman in 1644. Explorer Phillip Parker King, the son of governor of New South Wales Philip Gidley King, named it after Robert Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville, the first Lord of the Admiralty. Melville Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is also named after Robert Dundas and is much larger than the Melville Island in Australia.
Indigenous people have occupied the area that became the Tiwi Islands, of which Melville Island is a part, for at least 40,000 years. The British made their first attempt to settle Australia's north coast on Melville Island at the short-lived Fort Dundas, which lasted from 1824 to 1828. Ownership of Melville Island was returned to the Tiwi people in 1978, and it is now run by the Tiwi Land Council. Milikapiti, Pirlangimpi, and Paru are the main communities on the island, which are serviced by schools, sports ovals, museums, and art and craft galleries.
The island has hot summer temperatures, with highs of approximately 34 °C and lows of approximately 24 °C. Its winter temperatures are also warm, with highs of approximately 33 °C and lows of approximately 16 °C. Melville Island has little infrastructure and is not open to the public for tourism, except on an organised tour.
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Macquarie Island, 200km closer to Antarctica than Tasmania
Macquarie Island is an oceanic island lying in the Southern Ocean, about 1,500 kilometres southeast of Tasmania, and approximately halfway between Australia and Antarctica. It is about 200 kilometres closer to Antarctica than Tasmania. Macquarie Island is about 34 kilometres long and 5 kilometres wide, with an area of 128 square kilometres. The island is the exposed crest of the undersea Macquarie Ridge, formed by the movement of the Indo-Australian and Pacific tectonic plates. This movement has resulted in uplift along the boundary, and in earlier geologic times, the separation of the plates allowed lava from the Earth's mantle to rise to the seafloor, forming basalt.
Macquarie Island is the only place on Earth where rocks from the Earth's mantle are exposed above sea level. These exposures include pillow basalts and other extrusive rocks. The island is of significant geoconservation value, providing a unique opportunity to study geological features and processes of oceanic crust formation and plate boundary dynamics. The island was nominated for inscription on the World Heritage Register in 1996 for its unique geological features and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The island was discovered by Frederick Hasselborough, an Australian, on 11 July 1810, while searching for new sealing grounds. Hasselborough claimed the island for Britain and annexed it to the colony of New South Wales. The island is named after Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821. Macquarie Island has been governed as a part of Tasmania, Australia, since 1880 and became a Tasmanian State Reserve in 1978.
The island is home to a vast congregation of wildlife, including penguins, seals, and seabirds, which find rich feeding grounds in the nutrient-rich waters of the Southern Ocean. The entire royal penguin population nests on Macquarie Island during their annual nesting season. The island was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1933 and is now managed as a nature reserve by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service.
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Groote Eylandt, Australia's 4th largest island
Groote Eylandt, Australia's fourth-largest island, is situated off the northeast coast of the Northern Territory, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The island is 25 miles (40 km) across the Warwick Channel and covers an area of 2,285 square kilometres (882 sq mi).
Groote Eylandt was originally inhabited by the Anindilyakwa people (also known as Warnindhilyagwa), an Aboriginal Australian group consisting of 14 clan groups that make up the two moieties on the island. They speak the Anindilyakwa language, also called Amamalya Ayakwa. The island was sighted by Dutch seamen in 1623 and was named Groote Eylandt, meaning "Big Island", by the Dutch navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman in 1644. The English explorer Matthew Flinders circumnavigated the island in 1803.
The Church Missionary Society established a mission and store on the island in 1921, and during World War II, the Royal Australian Air Force used the island's airstrip. Following the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act of 1976, Groote Eylandt was converted to Aboriginal freehold title land, with land rights granted to the Anindilyakwa people. The archipelago was declared the Anindilyakwa Indigenous Protected Area in 2006.
Groote Eylandt boasts a variety of habitats, including dense monsoon forests, coastal sand dunes, mangroves, and mudflats. Sandstone outcrops and laterite provide niches for shellfish, and the island is home to 27 species of native mammals, making it the third most mammal-diverse island in Australia.
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Frequently asked questions
Australia is surrounded by ocean and is often referred to as an "island continent". However, it is not an island but a continent. There are 8,222 islands within Australia's maritime borders, none of which are north of the country.
Yes, there are islands within Australia's maritime borders, such as Tasmania, Melville Island, Kangaroo Island, Groote Eylandt, K'gari, Flinders Island, King Island, and Mornington Island. There are also islands near Australia that are not within its maritime borders, such as New Caledonia and its archipelago.
The largest island in Australia is Tasmania, which has a land area of 64,519 square kilometres.
