Norfolk Island
Do you want to get away from it all – and we mean, really get away from it all? When a regular beach holiday just won’t cut it, why not jet away to one of Australia’s most isolated islands and discover what their appeal is, apart from the distance.
Christmas Island
You don’t hear much about Christmas Island, apart from the detention centre located on the island. But over half of this small Australian territory around 2600km from Perth (it’s much closer to Indonesia than Australia) is national park, which protects what might, in other circumstances, be called an island paradise.
Rising out of the ocean – Christmas Island is the top of an underwater mountain – much of the surface is covered with tropical rainforest. The most famous residents of the island’s rainforest are the huge crabs. These crabs aren’t like the ones you see in tanks in Chinatown. Robber crabs, one of the prominent species on the island, can grow to be as big as rubbish bins. You don’t want to find yourself in the way when these crabs start their annual migration to the beaches for the mating season.
If crabs aren’t really your bowl of seafood chowder, then Christmas Island offers great snorkelling, diving and fishing. The seas around the island are treacherous, and most areas of the island greet the sea with 20m-high cliffs, but there’s a selection of beaches with natural coves where you can safely swim. Oh, and the best thing about swimming here? The island is ringed by a coral reef, so the snorkelling is just offshore.
Cocos Keeling Islands
Joining Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, the Cocos Keeling Islands are like Australia’s version of the Maldives, a collection of small islands forming an atoll. And unlike Christmas Island, with its more controversial ties to immigration and mining, there’s nothing to mar your enjoyment of these islands. You can participate in all of the activities you’d expect at a tropical paradise – swimming, snorkelling, diving, windsurfing, bird-watching, island hopping – as well as some that are a bit more unexpected, like walking across the entire atoll at low tide on certain days.
Of the 27 islands that form that Cocos Keeling, only two are inhabited. Most people stay on West Island. From West Island, you can catch a ferry across to Home Island, home to the Cocos Malay people, where you try some spicy Malay food or check out the museum.
King Island
The island where dairy is king! King Island is famous for its cheeses, but there’s more to this island in the Bass Strait than its exports. Situated almost perfectly halfway between Tasmania and Victoria, King Island constantly braces itself against the Roaring Forties and has the shipwreck history to prove it. Luckily, the days of maritime disasters seem to be over, and you can take a self-guided shipwreck tour of the island. And if that doesn’t scare you off, there’s some world-class surfing spots you can try.
What else is there to do on the island? Well, apart from take in the incredible natural environment, buy some cheese and eat some beef, you should just … relax and embrace island life.
Macquarie Island
Macquarie Island
Just when you thought an Australian island couldn’t be more remote than the Cocos Keeling Islands, along comes Macquarie Island to burst that bubble. This Tasmanian State Reserve is halfway between the Australian mainland and Antarctica, around 1400km from Tasmania.
So here’s the good news: Macquarie Island is a truly unique natural environment (so unique it’s on the World Heritage List), with dramatic cliffs and mountains crafted from volcanic rock, and is home to king and emperor penguins, seals and a magnificent seabird population.
The bad news is that the only humans who get to visit Macquarie Island do so as part of Australia’s Antarctic program. But if we were you, we’d think about signing up.
Norfolk Island
From Australia itself, to Tasmania, to Cockatoo Island in Sydney – the early British inhabitants of Australia really liked using islands as prisons. And even though Norfolk Island was a difficult 1000km from the east coast of Australia, that didn’t stop the British from following their usual patterns and establishing Norfolk as a prison island, although the last prisoner was moved to Tasmania in 1855.
The remains of the prison on the island are now heritage listed, and the island has shaken off the rest of its penal past. It’s now a delightful holiday retreat, complete with a friendly community and a tropical island feel.
