Map - Middle Island (Western Australia) (Middle Island)

Middle Island  (Middle Island)
Middle Island (French: Île du Milieu) is an island off the south coast of Western Australia in the Recherche Archipelago, around 120 km south-east of Esperance. It is known for its pink lake, Lake Hillier. Goose Island lies just adjacent to the north.

The island was named by Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux. Matthew Flinders, along with his botanist Robert Brown, visited in January 1802 and Flinders climbed the peak (subsequently named Flinders Peak) to survey the surrounding islands. John Thistle, Investigator's master, collected some salt samples from the pink lake later known as Lake Hillier.

Sealers operated from the island throughout the 19th century.

The explorer Philip Parker King anchored off the island in 1818, and lost two anchors (which were later recovered in 1973).

Belinda was wrecked off Middle Island in 1824. In 1826 eight Englishmen who had been marooned on Middle Island by the captain of a sealing vessel Governor Brisbane were found by the French explorer Dumont d’Urville aboard Astrolabe.

Apocryphal accounts claim that the pirate Black Jack Anderson based himself on Middle Island – some time after 1826, when Anderson had arrived at the first British outpost in Western Australia, at King George Sound (later Albany). After being accused of murder, Anderson and a group of men reputedly fled to the islands, where they hunted seals for their skins, and plotted raids on ships travelling to and from the Australian colonies.

Bay whaling may have been carried out, from bases on the island, as early as the 1840s. By the 1870s, there was documented use of the island for such purposes.

Mary-Jane was wrecked off the island in 1875.

In 1889, Edward Andrews investigated the commercial possibilities of producing salt from Lake Hillier; Andrews briefly moved onto the island with both of his sons. They left after working the salt deposits for about a year.

Rodondo was wrecked off the island in 1894 and Eclipse met a similar fate in 1898. SS Penguin was wrecked off the island while sheltering from a gale in 1920. 
Map - Middle Island  (Middle Island)
Country - Australia
Flag of Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of 7617930 km2, Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, and mountain ranges in the south-east.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately 65,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Arriving by sea, they settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world. Australia's written history commenced with the European maritime exploration of Australia. The Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon was the first known European to reach Australia, in 1606. In 1770, the British explorer James Cook mapped and claimed the east coast of Australia for Great Britain, and the First Fleet of British ships arrived at Sydney in 1788 to establish the penal colony of New South Wales. The European population grew in subsequent decades, and by the end of the 1850s gold rush, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and an additional five self-governing British colonies established. Democratic parliaments were gradually established through the 19th century, culminating with a vote for the federation of the six colonies and foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system and wealthy market economy.
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