Cape Grim

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

Cape Grim
(Kennaook)
LocationTasmania, Australia
Coordinates40°38′31″S 144°43′33″ECoordinates[1]
Offshore water bodiesSouthern Indian Ocean
Bass Strait

It is the location of the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station[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 represent the closest representation attainable of a global average.[5]

Cape Grim, looking North. The Doughboys on the left, Trefoil Island in middle distance, Hunter Island and Three Hummock Island beyond to the right.

History
See also: Cape Grim massacre

This 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 aboriginal Tasmanians from the Pennemukeer band of the North West tribe by four shepherds in response to sheep being driven over the cliff six weeks earlier by the Peerapper band.[7]

See also

References
  1. "Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station". Archived from the original on 23 February 2002.
  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.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


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