 Royal Penguins, Macquarie Island |
Anthropomorphic behaviour abounds amongst the massed penguins of Macquarie Island’s vast rookeries, sometimes numbering hundreds of thousands of birds.
Stepping ashore at Sandy Bay, a windswept beach on this remote subantarctic island, we are the alien invaders, inspected and quizzed by fearless creatures which waddle up to greet us when not preoccupied with their own courtship and nesting rituals. Amidst these thousands of webbed feet lie dozens of corpulent elephant seals, strewn about like sacks of wadding, stretching and yawning as they moult.
At 54 degrees south latitude, a mere speck in the Southern Ocean, Macquarie lies halfway from Australia to the Antarctic continent, the only island on earth formed by rocks forced up from the ocean’s floor, and near-new in geological terms.
This is not the dry, icy expanse of the Antarctic continent – officially, it is Tasmanian territory – but it is a challenging and inhospitable outpost whose only human habitation is an Australian Antarctic research base.Visitors usually join an expedition cruise, often en route to Antarctic waters.
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