Cape Grim

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Kennaook / Cape Grim
Cape Grim North West Tasmania Australia.jpg
Cape Grim, looking North. The Doughboys on the left, Trefoil Island in middle distance, Hunter Island and Three Hummock Island beyond to the right.
Australia Tasmania location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Kennaook / Cape Grim
Coordinates: 40°38′31″S144°43′33″E / 40.64194°S 144.72583°E / -40.64194; 144.72583
Location Tasmania, Australia
Offshore water bodies Southern Indian Ocean
Bass Strait

Cape Grim, officially Kennaook / Cape Grim, [1] is the northwestern point of Tasmania, Australia. The Peerapper name for the cape is recorded as Kennaook. [2]

Contents

It is the location of the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station and of the Cape Grim Air Archive [3] which is operated by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology [4] in a joint programme with the CSIRO. The station was established in 1976 and has been operating ever since.

Geography

Cape Grim's isolated geographic location makes it unique. The next land mass directly west of Cape Grim is not Africa, but the southern tip of Argentina. Winds that make their way to Cape Grim from Antarctica and the Indian Ocean hit no significant land mass. Air pollution values collected at Cape Grim are the closest attainable representation of a global average. [5]

History

The headland was first charted and named Cape Grim by Matthew Flinders on 7 December 1798, as he sailed from the east in the Norfolk and found a long swell coming from the south-west, confirming for the first time that Van Diemen's Land was separated from the Australian mainland by a strait, which he named Bass Strait. [6]

In 1828, Victory Hill at Cape Grim was the site of the Cape Grim massacre of thirty Peerapper people by four shepherds. [7]

Cape Grim received dual naming in March 2021. [8] [9]

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Babel Island</span> Island in Tasmania, Australia

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The Cape Grim massacre was an attack on 10 February 1828 in which a group of Aboriginal Tasmanians gathering food at a beach in the north-west of Tasmania is said to have been ambushed and shot by four Van Diemen's Land Company (VDLC) workers, with bodies of some of the victims then thrown from a 60-metre (200 ft) cliff. About 30 men are thought to have been killed in the attack, which was a reprisal action for an earlier Aboriginal raid on a flock of Van Diemen's Land Company sheep, but part of an escalating spiral of violence probably triggered by the abduction and rape of Aboriginal women in the area. The massacre was part of the "Black War", the period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Australians in Tasmania from the mid-1820s to 1832.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cape Grim Air Archive</span> Scientific station in Tasmania

The Cape Grim Air Archive (CGAA) is a facility of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, Tasmania, that aims to collect air samples starting from 1978. The archive is a facility of CSIRO agency. The place was chosen for sampling because air masses there are unaffected by landmasses, with wind coming from the Southern Ocean.

References

  1. "Place Name Assignments List No. 561 (22089)" (PDF). Tasmanian Government Gazette. 2 June 2021. p. 489. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  2. Milligan, Joseph (1858). "On the dialects and languages of the Aboriginal Tribes of Tasmania, and on their manners and customs" (PDF). Papers of the Royal Society of Tasmania: 271.
  3. Cape Grim: Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station (Tas) (Profile – Facility)
  4. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 23 February 2002. Retrieved 9 March 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. Vaughan, Adam (6 May 2015). "Global carbon dioxide levels break 400ppm milestone". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 November 2019.
  6. Ernest Scott, p138, The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders, R.N., Angus & Robertson, 1914.
  7. Lyndall Ryan, pp135-137, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Allen & Unwin, 1996, ISBN   1-86373-965-3
  8. "30 Aboriginal men were killed at 'Suicide Bay' — now it's being renamed". www.abc.net.au. 31 March 2021. Retrieved 1 April 2021.
  9. "Official aboriginal and dual names". 1 April 2021. Retrieved 1 April 2021.