Gun Island facts for kids
Gun Island is a cool place! It's one of the bigger islands in the Pelsaert Group, which is part of the Houtman Abrolhos. This group of islands is located in the Indian Ocean, off the west coast of Australia.
The island is pretty flat and made of limestone. It's about 800 meters long and 420 meters wide. Gun Island is also part of an Important Bird Area. This means it's super important for many kinds of seabirds that come here to lay their eggs and raise their young.
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A Shipwreck Story: The Zeewyk
Gun Island has an amazing history, especially because of a shipwreck that happened a long time ago.
Stranded Sailors (1727-1728)
Between June 1727 and March 1728, a Dutch ship called the Zeewyk got into trouble. It hit a reef nearby, called Half Moon Reef, and its crew became stranded on Gun Island.
The sailors tried to get help. They sent a small boat with 11 seamen to find rescue, but it never came back. The remaining 88 survivors didn't give up! They used parts of their wrecked ship to build a new, smaller boat. They named this new boat the Sloepie.
It took them a lot of hard work, but 82 of the original 88 survivors managed to sail the Sloepie to a place called Batavia (which is now Jakarta, Indonesia). They arrived safely on April 30, 1728.
Discoveries by HMS Beagle (1840)
Many years later, in 1840, another ship arrived. This was HMS Beagle, a famous British ship that explored many parts of the world. Its crew was surveying the coast.
On Gun Island, they found some interesting things. They discovered an old brass gun and an iron swivel (a type of cannon mount). These items still had some paint on them! The captains, John Lort Stokes and John Clements Wickham, decided to name the place Gun Island because of this discovery.
They also found old coins, some from the early 1700s. There was even what looked like a piece of a ship and some old glass bottles and clay pipes. Everyone thought these items were left behind by the Zeewyk crew more than 100 years earlier.
Guano Mining and Other Events
In 1883, a man named [[Charles Edward Broadhurst found old campsites and seal bones on the island. The Zeewyk crew likely hunted seals for food to survive.
Gun Island became a very busy place for mining guano. Guano is a natural fertilizer made from seabird droppings. People dug for guano on the island from the 1880s to the 1920s, and again in the mid-1940s. You can still see a 100-meter-long stone jetty on the island, which was built to load the guano onto ships.
Another ship, a yacht called the Nautilus, was wrecked at Gun Island in 1897.
Archaeology and Protection
Gun Island is not just a historical site; it's also a protected area.
Exploring the Past
In 1974, a team of archaeologists from the Western Australian Museum visited the island. They studied the area to learn more about its history and the people who lived or were stranded there.
Protected Zone Rules
Today, Gun Island is considered to have 'High' conservation significance. This means it's very important to protect its natural and historical treasures. It's one of seven special protected zones in the Abrolhos Islands.
Because it's a protected zone, there are rules for visitors. For example, you are not allowed to do any digging or big earthworks near old shipwreck sites. Also, you cannot bring metal detecting devices onto the island. These rules help make sure that the island's history and environment are kept safe for everyone.
Gun Islet
Just off the southern tip of Gun Island, there's a small rock called Gun Islet. It's about 20 meters wide and only about 30 meters away from the main island.
