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The very first
piece of recorded information about Macquarie Island was written in
chalk on the under side of a table in a house in Sydney on evening of
6th. September 1810. It is said that Captain Hasselburgh, the island?s
discoverer, was persuaded to part with the " secret" location
of Macquarie Island to settle a bet!
The first chart of the island was made by a members of the crew of either the Vostok or Mirnyi, ships under the command of Captain Thaddeus Bellingshausen on a voyage of discovery to the Southern Ocean and South Pacific for Emperor Alexander I of Russia. Macquarie Island was sighted on 28th November 1820. Captain Bellingshausen traded rum and food with the sealers on the island for samples of animal skins and birds. After two days the weather thickened and a squall blow up from the west preventing Bellingshausen from completing his survey of the island so the two ships continued their voyage southwards.
Bellingshausen fixed the middle of the island at latitude 54? 38' 40" S., longitude 158? 40' 50" E. |
 Macquarie Island first chart, 1820 |
 Lieut. Langdon's chart of 1822 |
In 1822, Captain William Langdon R. N. visited Macquarie island in the sailing ship Lusitania on its way from Sydney to England. The ship brought some supplies for the sealing gangs on the island and loaded 30 tons of elephant seal oil. On the ship?s return to England, Lieutenant Langdon handed in a plan to the Hydrographic Department of the British Admiralty entitled "Plan of Macquarie Island'. This plan shows details of soundings and suitable anchorages and place names, some of which are quite different from the ones now in use. It has been suggested that the Admiralty did not use this plan to update its Chart 1022 which covers this area of the Southern Ocean until 1917 when Langdon?s sketch was acknowledge on the chart as an information source. By that time the Hydrographer had received Blake's map of Macquarie Island. Major sealing activities on Macquarie Island ceased around 1834. Reports in the Sydney Herald of 5 January 1835 state that the brig Bee, Captain Robertson, called at Macquarie Island.
A sealing gang which had been there for seven months had only secured one cask of oil. On its next trip between 3rd January and 26 February 1835 the brig picked up the remaining 12 members of a sealing gang but no oil or skins at all. Clearly interest in the island and therefore its charts had for the time being disappeared. |
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Apart
from a number of isolated visits, including that of the Countess
of Minto which was wrecked on the island while looking for guano,
there was little interest in Macquarie Island until about 1872 when
Joseph Hatch of Invercargill, New Zealand, started looking for fur seal
skins to fulfil a clothing order from London. But there is no evidence
of any Captains of visiting ships making any charts. Even J. S. I. Thomson,
owner of the Bencleugh which was wrecked on the island in 1877,
made no reference to any charts in his book 'Voyages and Wanderings
in Far-off Seas and Lands'. When the Gratitude started making regular visits to Macquarie island for Joseph Hatch from 1891 interest in producing a chart or map was renewed. Captain Macdonald took the Gratitude to the island on 11 of its 23 visits. During this time that he drew up his own chart of the area. A copy of this plan was given to Captain Post of the New Zealand steamer Tutanekai and it was printed in June 1899 at the Head Office of the Department of Lands and Survey, Wellington, New Zealand, apparently at the request of the NZ Marine Department. |
Capt. Macdonald's Chart, 1899 |
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chart shows quite a lot of valuable nautical information, including a
reliable latitude and longitude and a bearing to the Judge & Clerk Islands.
The land was sketched from a seafarer's view point but some clear indications
are given of the islands topography particularly towards the northern
end. It is of interest to compare the 'British Admiralty Chart of Macquarie Island of 1887 - corrected to 1911', as published by Mawson in his AAE Reports, with the Macdonald Chart printed in New Zealand. The similarities are too close to be coincidental. The hills, creeks, lakes and coastline of the island are practically identical.
Shortly after the Macdonald Chart was available in New Zealand, another smaller chart appeared in Launceston, Tasmania in 1901, prepared by H Gunderson. Gunderson supplied a copy to the Harbour Master of Launceston, Captain John Bradley, and said that his drawing came from information supplied by Hatch and Fisher. It was not until the arrival of the Mawson?s Australasian Antarctic Expedition in 1911 that the first attempt at a land survey of the island was made.
|  Gunderson's Chart, 1901 |
 Blake's Map of Northern Macquarie Is. 1914 |
Leslie Russell Blake, geologist and cartographer, was a member of the AAE party that spent 2 years on Macquarie Island from 1911-13. During that time Blake, assisted by H. Hamilton, measured a survey baseline on the northern plateau and erected sighting poles on all the prominent features so he could carry out a topographic triangulation of the island. He then surveyed the topographic features and 50 foot contours on the northern half of the island above Sandy Bay and 200 foot contours of the remainder. Shortly after returning to Australia, Blake left to serve in the Armed Forces in the First World War and was unfortunately killed in 1918. Under the circumstances prevailing in 1911-14, Blake's map-making achievements are remarkable. They are even more remarkable considering the many fruitless attempts made to improve on his excellent work in the past 80 years. The topographical
maps and the geological report on the island were left with Sir Douglas
Mawson. Mawson published the finished maps in the AAE Report; Series
A, Part V which was printed by the NSW Government Printer in 1943. Blake's
map of Macquarie Island was also included in Home of the Blizzard,
Mawson?s book on his 1911-14 Antarctic Expedition, published in 1915.
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US Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite imagery has been available since 1975 but none of it was cloud free and suitable for map making. Accurate survey control suitable for normal aerial photography was obtained on the island in 1982 in the hope that aerial photography would be obtained shortly after. This proved impossible.
In 1989 there was some success when one cloud free SPOT satellite image, viewing the Island from the east, was recorded. A second cloud free satellite image was recorded in December 1994 but no topographical maps have been made from the images. In 1992-3, further survey control points were measured to ground features identified on the SPOT satellite imagery.
A detailed geological survey of Macquarie Island was carried out in 1994-6 by Dr B. D. Goscombe and J. L. Everard of Mineral Resources Tasmania. This latest geological information was published in 1998 on topographic base maps compiled from the Division of National Mapping?s 1:50,000 map, SPOT satellite imagery and GPS position data.
Finally, news has been received indicating that a special airborne research laboratory belonging to NASA-JPL will be in Australia in May 2000. This four-engined DC8 aircraft plans to fly over Macquarie Island measuring it with special side-looking synthetic aperture radar equipment which creates three different data sets of the ground even though the ground may be completely obscured by cloud. Using special computing techniques, these data sets can create topographic maps of the surface of the island, determine the ocean currents around it and assist with the geological and tectonic interpretation of the island?s structure.
By using this multi-million dollar 'flying laboratory' with its sophisticated equipment it may be possible to improve upon that which a single man achieved virtually on his own in 1911-13.
Glyn Roberts
April 2000
References:
Cumpston J. S.,1968, ?Macquarie Island? Publication No 93; ANARE Reports Series A.Mawson D.,1943, ?Macquarie Island - Geography?; Scientific Reports Series A; Government Printers Office, NSW.
Ainsworth G. F., 1915, ?Home of the Blizzard? chapt. 24-26; Edited by Sir Douglas Mawson; William Heinemann, London.
Adamson D.A. & Selkirk P.M.,1994, ?Mapping Macquarie Island?.
PACRIM2 Pamphlet, NASA-JPL AIRSAR system deployed to the Pacific-Rim region in April - June 2000.
