Ball's Pyramid is an uninhabited

islet An islet ( ) is generally a small island. Definitions vary, and are not precise, but some suggest that an islet is a very small, often unnamed, island with little or no vegetation to support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/ ...

in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

located southeast of

Lord Howe Island Lord Howe Island (; formerly Lord Howe's Island) is an irregularly crescent-shaped volcanic remnant in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, part of the Australian state of New South Wales. It lies directly east of mainland Port ...

, between

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and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. The steep rocky

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...

outcrop is the eroded plug of a shield volcano and

caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcanic eruption. An eruption that ejects large volumes of magma over a short period of time can cause significant detriment to the str ...

that formed 6.4million years ago. It is high, while measuring in length and only across, making it the tallest volcanic stack in the world. Ball's Pyramid, which is part of Australia's Lord Howe Island Marine Park, is positioned in the centre of a submarine shelf surrounded by rough seas, which makes any approach difficult.

History

Discovery

The pyramid is named after

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Lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a Junior officer, junior commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations, as well as fire services, emergency medical services, Security agency, security services ...

Henry Lidgbird Ball, who reported discovering it in 1788. On the same voyage, Ball also discovered Lord Howe Island, Ball's Pyramid's nearest landmass. In ''The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay with an Account of the Establishment of the Colonies of Port Jackson and Norfolk Island'' (1789), Arthur Phillip gives this description of the area around Ball's Pyramid before describing Lord Howe Island:

There lies about four miles from the south-west part of the pyramid, a dangerous rock, which shows itself a little above the surface of the water, and appears not to be larger than a boat. Lieutenant Ball had no opportunity of examining whether there is a safe passage between them or not.

Survey and exploration

In May 1853, Henry Mangles Denham with and surveyed the area around

including Ball's Pyramid, producing the first chart of the pyramid. The first recorded person to go ashore is believed to have been Henry Wilkinson, a

geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the structure, composition, and History of Earth, history of Earth. Geologists incorporate techniques from physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and geography to perform research in the Field research, ...

at the New South Wales Department of Mines, in 1882. In 1964, a team from Sydney attempted to climb to the summit of the pyramid. However, the climbers were forced to turn back on the fifth day as they ran short of food and water. The expedition was the idea of Australian adventurer Dick Smith, who was a member of Rover Scouts at the time. The expedition also involved other members of the Scouting movement and other people. Smith went on the expedition, but did not attempt the climb due to an unexpected medical operation two weeks before the expedition. Ball's Pyramid was first climbed on 14 February 1965 by Bryden Allen, John Davis, Jack Pettigrew and David Witham of the Sydney Rock Climbing Club. Jack Hill of New Zealand then climbed to the summit with Pettigrew on the following day. Don Willcox and Ben Sandilands were part of the support team. In 1979, Smith returned to the pyramid, together with climbers John Worrall and Hugh Ward. They successfully reached the summit and unfurled a flag of New South Wales provided to them by

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Neville Wran Neville Kenneth Wran, (11 October 1926 – 20 April 2014) was an Australian politician who was the Premier of New South Wales from 1976 to 1986. He was the national president of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1980 to 1986 and chairman o ...

. Climbing was banned in 1982 under amendments to the Lord Howe Island Act, and in 1986, all access to the island was banned by the Lord Howe Island Board. In 1990, the policy was relaxed to allow some climbing under strict conditions, which in recent years has required an application to the relevant state minister.

Geography

Like Lord Howe Island and the Lord Howe Seamount Chain, Ball's Pyramid is based on the Lord Howe Rise, part of the submerged

continent A continent is any of several large geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention (norm), convention rather than any strict criteria. A continent could be a single large landmass, a part of a very large landmass, as ...

Zealandia Zealandia (pronounced ), also known as (Māori language, Māori) or Tasmantis (from Tasman Sea), is an almost entirely submerged continent, submerged mass of continental crust in Oceania that subsided after breaking away from Gondwana 83� ...

. Ball's Pyramid has a few satellite islets. Observatory Rock and Wheatsheaf Islet lie about west-northwest and west-southwest respectively, of the western extremity of Ball's Pyramid. Southeast Rock is a pinnacle located about southeast of Ball's Pyramid. The shelf is in length and averages in width and lies under an average depth of of water. It is separated by a submarine canyon from another shelf on which Lord Howe Island is located. The cliffs of the stack continue under the water surface to the level of the shelf.

Flora and fauna

''Melaleuca howeana''

A ''

Melaleuca howeana ''Melaleuca howeana'', commonly known as tea tree, is a plant in the myrtle Family (biology), family, Myrtaceae and is Endemism, endemic to the Lord Howe Island, Lord Howe Island group, off the east coast of Australia. It is common in exposed a ...

'' shrub was found growing on Ball's Pyramid. The bush was growing in a small crevice where water was seeping through cracks in the underlying rocks. This moisture supported relatively lush plant growth which had, over time, resulted in a buildup of plant debris several metres deep.

''Dryococelus australis''

Ball's Pyramid supports the last known wild population of the Lord Howe Island stick insect (''Dryococelus australis''). Following the last sighting of the Lord Howe Island stick insect on Lord Howe Island in 1920, the species was presumed extinct. Evidence of continued survival on Ball's Pyramid was discovered during the 1964 climb when a dead specimen was found and photographed. Throughout the following years, several more dead specimens were discovered, but attempts to find live specimens were unsuccessful. In 2001, a team of entomologists and conservationists landed on Ball's Pyramid to chart its flora and fauna. As they had hoped, they discovered a population of the Lord Howe Island stick insect living in an area of , at a height of above the shoreline, under a single ''M. howeana'' shrub. The population was extremely small, with only 24 individuals. Two pairs were brought to mainland Australia, and new populations have been successfully bred with the ultimate goal of reintroduction to Lord Howe Island. In 2014, an unauthorised climbing team sighted live stick insects in an exposed position below the summit of Ball's Pyramid in a thicket of sedge plants, suggesting that the insect's range on Ball's Pyramid is more widespread than previously held, and that its food preferences are not limited to ''Melaleuca howeana''.

References

External links

* * * * * {{cite web , url= http://www.uq.edu.au/nuq/jack/Bryden.html , title= Mountaineering exploits: Ball's Pyramid , first= Bryden , last= Allen , publisher= University of Queensland Hotspot volcanoes Miocene shield volcanoes Shield volcanoes of Australia Stacks of Australia Uninhabited islands of Australia Tourist attractions in New South Wales Volcanic plugs of Australia Volcanoes of the Pacific Ocean Volcanoes of Zealandia World Heritage Sites in Australia Polygenetic shield volcanoes Islands of New South Wales Pyramids in Australia