Cape Grim, officially Kennaook / Cape Grim, is the northwestern point of

Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. The

Peerapper Northwestern Tasmanian, or Peerapper ("Pirapa"), is an aboriginal language of Tasmania in the reconstruction of Claire Bowern.Claire Bowern, September 2012, "The riddle of Tasmanian languages", ''Proc. R. Soc. B'', 279, 4590–4595, doi: 10 ...

name for the cape is recorded as ''Kennaook''. It is the location of the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station and of the

Cape Grim Air Archive 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 ...

which is operated by the Australian

Bureau of Meteorology The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM or BoM) is an executive agency of the Australian Government responsible for providing weather services to Australia and surrounding areas. It was established in 1906 under the Meteorology Act, and brought together ...

in a joint programme with the

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentar ...

. 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.

History

The headland was first charted and named Cape Grim by

Matthew Flinders Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to u ...

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 Van Diemen's Land was the colonial name of the island of Tasmania used by the British during the European exploration of Australia in the 19th century. A British settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land in 1803 before it became a sepa ...

was separated from the Australian mainland by a strait, which he named

Bass Strait Bass Strait () is a strait separating the island state of Tasmania from the Australian mainland (more specifically the coast of Victoria, with the exception of the land border across Boundary Islet). The strait provides the most direct waterwa ...

. In 1828, ''Victory Hill'' at Cape Grim was the site of the Cape Grim massacre of thirty Peerapper people by four shepherds.Lyndall Ryan, pp135-137, ''The Aboriginal Tasmanians'',

Allen & Unwin George Allen & Unwin was a British publishing company formed in 1911 when Sir Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen & Co. It went on to become one of the leading publishers of the twentieth century and to establish an ...

, 1996, Cape Grim received dual naming in March 2021.

References

North West Coast of Tasmania {{tasmania-geo-stub

Geography

History

See also

References