23 September 2008
Victorian / Tasmanian land border
Posted by Mick under: Maps; Victoria .
Until yesterday i never even suspected that Victoria and Tasmania shared a land border.
It’s on a little piece of rock which measures 85m east-west and 160m north-south, is located about 40km from the south-east tip of Wilsons Promontory and is called Boundary Islet.
Image from wikipedia
Latitude and Longitude details:
Latitude: -39 degrees 11 minutes 54.7362 seconds
Longitude: 147 degrees 1 minute 16.8954 seconds-39.198537926698286, 147.02136039733887
From the GeoScience Australia website:
Of all the land-based borders in Australia, this is by far the shortest. Officially, the border between Victoria and Tasmania is a parallel of latitude 39°12′. Off the coast of Wilson’s Promontory in Victoria, there is a group if islands and islets known as The Hogan Group. Within this group is one islet, about six hectares in size, that straddles this boundary. Once called North East Islet, the name was changed to avoid confusion with another islet of the same name in the Kent Group, a short distance to the south east. In honour of the islet’s position, lying across the border between Victoria and Tasmania, it was renamed Boundary Islet.
From the Wikipedia entry:
Boundary Islet is an islet about 60,000 square metres in size in the Hogan Group of islands and islets at latitude 39°12′ S, south of the Wilson’s Promontory, the southernmost part of
both mainland Australia and mainland Victoria. The boundary between Victoria and Tasmania is a parallel similarly at latitude 39°12′; on it is thus Tasmania’s only land boundary, and at 85 metres long it is the shortest land border between any Australian states. The position of the island was surveyed in 1801 by Captain James Black, who erred in placing the islet further north than it is. It was later found that the border at 39°12′ S actually passed through the islet.Boundary Islet was once known as North East Islet.
This article in The Age from 2005 talks about Boundary Islet.
Hmmm…i wonder how hard it would be to get a boat to take you out to Boundary Islet? It would certainly make for a great little expedition :)
3 Comments so far...
aletheia kallos Says:
25 September 2008 at 02:27.
hi
i am curious if anyone knows whether the boundary has been marked
or how the 85 meter distance was arrived at
thanx
Mick Says:
25 September 2008 at 14:12.
Hi aletheia,
I’m sure at some point that either GeoScience Australia (or the agency that looked after this stuff before them) went out and measured the island when the realised that the border ran through it.
The only photo i could dig up was the one from the article in The Age, and all of the online mapping services don’t provide a close enough image to see what is actually on the tiny rocky outcrop.
aletheia kallos Says:
26 September 2008 at 08:23.
well i am not convinced because the victorian land administration at least is still officially confused about this supposed border
per page 22 of
http://www.sli.unimelb.edu.au/subjects/451/418/418_2008/Lectures/Lecture%2024-%20JT%20%20Land%20Admin&%20LS%20-May2008.pdf
but if the border really has been marked then some public documentation must exist in addition to the marker or markers
& in that case the date & survey technology & geodetic datum that were used for determining the location of the supposedly proclaimed boundary latitude would be of some interest too
because otherwise i think it is just that the islet is said to be roughly 85 meters wide
& this is not necessarily the same thing as actually having an 85 meter border upon it
so please let me know if you should learn anything more definitive
& thanx again
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