Heard Island and McDonald Islands is an external territory of Australia located in the Indian Ocean at 53°00′S 73°00′E, about two-thirds of the way from ► Madagascar to ► Antarctica. It consists of uninhabited, barren islands which have the only two active volcanoes in Australian territory, one of which, Mawson Peak, is also the highest Australian mountain. The total area of the territory is 372 km². The closest land consists of islands that are part of the ► French Southern and Antarctic Lands.
Map showing the location of Heard Island and McDonald Islands
Map of Heard Island and McDonald Islands
Topographic map of Heard Island and McDonald Islands
History
Heard Island and McDonald Islands was originally a British overseas territory but became an external territory of Australia in 1947.
Satellite maps
Satellite image of Heard Island
Notes and references
General remarks:
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.