McDonald Islands

The McDonald Islands are an uninhabited volcanic archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean, about 75 kilometers from Heard Island, together forming an external territory of Australia and sitting atop the Kerguelen Plateau as the emergent peaks of submarine volcanoes. After 75,000 years of dormancy, the islands began erupting again in 1992, with further eruptions, most recently in July 2005, thought to have doubled the size of the main island and transformed a once-flat, green, pumice-beached island favored by nesting penguins into one with two peaks, Maxwell Hill at 230 meters and Samarang Hill. The group comprises McDonald Island itself, Flat Island (which merged with McDonald Island during the volcanic activity), Needle Island and Meyer Rock, built mainly of phonolitic low-silica pumice, dikes and lava domes, and the islands are recognized as a World Heritage Site and part of an expanded marine reserve since 2002.