Map - Thistle Island (Thistle Island)

Thistle Island (Thistle Island)
Thistle Island / Noondala is in the Spencer Gulf, South Australia, some 200 km west of Adelaide, and northwest of the Gambier Islands. The city of Port Lincoln lies to the northwest of the island. Between them, the Gambier Islands and Thistle form a chain across the mouth of the gulf between the southern tips of the Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas, sometimes referred to as the Taylor Islands group.

The island is approximately 17 kilometres (10.5 mi) long and varies in width from 1 kilometre wide (0.6 mi) at its narrowest central part to 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) wide in the south-east part. Whaler's Bay is a wide bay on the east coast of the island, and Albatross Island is a tiny island to the south.

As of 2014 the Royal Australian Navy operated an acoustic range, the South Australian Acoustic Range (SAAR), to help develop sonar techniques for submarines in the waters west of Thistle Island, with a small control facility being located on the island itself.

The original Barngarla name for Thistle Island is Noondala.

Thistle island was named by British explorer Matthew Flinders in 1802, after a terrible accident in which a cutter that was mastered by John Thistle and carrying 7 other men, overturned in choppy seas while returning from the mainland to the ship. Despite frantic searching by the ships crew, the bodies of the men were never found. Flinders also named several smaller islands in the area after the lost crew.

Evidence of a failed settlement was noted by early whalers. It was speculated that the remains, which "the ruins of some cottages with signs of regular order in their arrangement and a cleared promenade between them, all the loose limestone for a distance of a bout 100 yards having been thrown on each side of a broad path." It was speculated that the ruins may have been built by survivors of the La Perouse expedition of 1788.

A small community of sealers, their Aboriginal "wives" and children were living on the island by 1832. They are thought to have had their camp on the shore of Waterhouse Bay.

The South Australian Company established a shore-based bay whaling station at Whalers Bay in 1838, during the period of British colonisation of South Australia. A team of experienced whalers were brought from Tasmania with H.B.T. McFarlane in charge as headsman. The operation had limited success during the 1838 season and none at all in the 1839 season. It was concluded the location was too far from the migration route of the southern right whale and the site was abandoned.

The historic Whalers Bay Whaling Site and Thistle Island Sealing Site are both listed on the South Australian Heritage Register.

 
Map - Thistle Island (Thistle Island)
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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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