North Island (Houtman Abrolhos)
North Island is the northernmost island in the Houtman Abrolhos, a coral reef archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Mid West Western Australia. First recorded and surveyed in 1840, North Island has been a seasonal camp for western rock lobster fishermen since the beginning of the 20th century. It is about 14km from the nearest island group, and one of the few to support dune systems.
About North Island (Houtman Abrolhos) in brief
North Island is the northernmost island in the Houtman Abrolhos, a coral reef archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Mid West Western Australia. First recorded and surveyed in 1840, North Island has been a seasonal camp for western rock lobster fishermen since the beginning of the 20th century. It has relatively diverse flora dominated by chenopod shrubs and fauna that includes the introduced tammar wallaby, around seven species of reptile, and about 15 resident bird species. There is also a small amount of tourism, though for the most part it is reserved as conservation habitat for vegetation communities and rare birds. Two high points on the island are named Record Hill and Latitude Hill, although some other features have informal names: North Point and South Point. North Island is about 14km from the nearest island group, and one of the few to support dune systems. It is roughly 2km long from south to north, and 1.2km from west to east, giving it an area of about 180 hectares. Two high point in the northwest corner of the island was referred to as North Point in 1960, and in the southeast corner as South Point in the 1970s. It was first used as a base for crayfishers as early as 1902, and for many years it was used as an anchorage by anglers. The population grew to about 130 by 2003. An airstrip was built in 1979. A number of naturalists have visited the island, starting with the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the AbrolHos Islands in 1913.
More recent visitors have included P. Howden in 1974, Robert Ivan Taylor Prince in 1976, Ronald Eric Johnstone in 1981 and 1983, Phillip Fuller in 1992, and Judith Harvey and Vanda Longman in 1999. The island is sometimes treated as part of the Wallabi Group, but it is roughly separated from its nearest neighbours in the Wallabia Group by the South Passage. The most northerly and southerly point on the isle has been called Record Hill, and a diamond diamond point has been named South Point, after a diamond in the island’s north-easterly direction. The highest point on North Island was a high point called South Hill in the 1960s, and it was a diamond point in its north-east corner in the 1990s. The first recorded sighting of North Island occurred in May 1840, during the third survey voyage of HMS Beagle, commanded by John Clements Wickham. He left a letter in a bottle atop the highest hill, which he accordingly christened Record Hill. The following year, Wickham’s lieutenant, John Lort Stokes, published the first account of theIsland in his Discoveries in Australia. He observed: “The island was about a mile across, and nearly circular. It was surrounded by a range of hills, with a flat in the centre, covered with coarse grass, where a great many quails were flushed, affording good sport, but not a single wallaby”.
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This page is based on the article North Island (Houtman Abrolhos) published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
