Schouten Island (formerly Schouten's Isle), part of the Schouten Island Group, is an

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

with an area of approximately lying close to the eastern coast of

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

, Australia, located south of the Freycinet Peninsula and is a part of Freycinet National Park. The Paredarerme name for the island is ''Tiggana marraboona''. The locality of Schouten Island is in the local government area of Glamorgan–Spring Bay in the South-east region of Tasmania.

History

Schouten Island lies within the territory of the Oyster Bay tribe of

Tasmanian Aborigines The Aboriginal Tasmanians (Palawa kani: ''Palawa'' or ''Pakana'') are the Aboriginal people of the Australian island of Tasmania, located south of the mainland. For much of the 20th century, the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were widely, and ...

and kitchen

middens A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofac ...

indicates Indigenous tribes inhabited the island prior to European settlement. In 1642, while surveying the south-west coast of Tasmania,

Abel Tasman Abel Janszoon Tasman (; 160310 October 1659) was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first known European explorer to reach New ...

named the island after Joost Schouten, a member of the Council of the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

. Members of the Baudin expedition landed on Schouten in 1802. In the early 19th century,

sealers Sealer may refer either to a person or ship engaged in seal hunting, or to a sealant; associated terms include: Seal hunting * Sealer Hill, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica * Sealers' Oven, bread oven of mud and stone built by sealers around 18 ...

were active in the area and are known to have visited the island. Shore-based whaling stations operated on the island in the 1830s and 1840s at five different locations. The discovery of coal on the island in 1809 by a sealer, John Stacey led to between 1842 and 1925, several phases of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

and

tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

, where in 1880 a small number of Chinese men worked the ground for tin. Stacey found that of land could be suitable for cultivation. Plans to use convict labour to mine coal on the island in the 1840s were never realised. From 1850 Schouten was used for grazing sheep, with grazing leases only expiring in 1969.

Topography and geology

Schouten is a rugged island with the highest point, Mount Storey, above sea level. It is surrounded by cliffs, broken by sheltered bays. A north-south fault line divides the island where the eastern part of the island is composed of

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

while the western part is

dolerite Diabase (), also called dolerite () or microgabbro, is a mafic, holocrystalline, subvolcanic rock equivalent to volcanic basalt or plutonic gabbro. Diabase dikes and sills are typically shallow intrusive bodies and often exhibit fine-grain ...

overlying

sedimentary Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth's surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particles ...

and supergroup rocks.

Flora and fauna

The natural vegetation of the island is dominated by

eucalypt Eucalypt is a descriptive name for woody plants with capsule fruiting bodies belonging to seven closely related genera (of the tribe Eucalypteae) found across Australasia: ''Eucalyptus'', ''Corymbia'', ''Angophora'', '' Stockwellia'', ''Allosyn ...

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

on the dolerite

soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt Dirt is an unclean matter, especially when in contact with a person's clothes, skin, or possessions. In such cases, they are said to become dirty. Common types of dirt include: * Debri ...

s in the west, and by scrubland,

heathland A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a coole ...

and

sedge The Cyperaceae are a family of graminoid (grass-like), monocotyledonous flowering plants known as sedges. The family is large, with some 5,500 known species described in about 90 genera, the largest being the "true sedges" genus '' Carex'' ...

land communities on the granitic soils of the east. Areas associated with previous human disturbance, such as clearing,

grazing In agriculture, grazing is a method of animal husbandry whereby domestic livestock are allowed outdoors to roam around and consume wild vegetations in order to convert the otherwise indigestible (by human gut) cellulose within grass and other ...

and frequent burning, are dominated by

grass Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns a ...

es and herbs. Little penguins and short-tailed shearwaters breed on the island, along with other bird species such as the Tasmanian nativehen. Australian fur seals haul out on the eastern side. Reptiles present include the Tasmanian tree skink,

she-oak skink The she-oak skink (''Cyclodomorphus casuarinae'') is a large, long-tailed, snake-like skink endemic to Tasmania, Australia. It is viviparous Among animals, viviparity is development of the embryo inside the body of the parent. This is o ...

, southern grass skink and three-lined skink.

History

Topography and geology

Flora and fauna

See also

References

Further reading