Cape Grim, officially Kennaook / Cape Grim, is the northwestern point of

Tasmania Tasmania (; palawa kani: ''Lutruwita'') is an island States and territories of Australia, state of Australia. It is located to the south of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland, and is separated from it by the Bass Strait. The sta ...

, Australia. The Peerapper name for the cape is recorded as ''Kennaook''. It is the location of the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station and of the Cape Grim Air Archive which is operated by the Australian

Bureau of Meteorology The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM or BoM) is an executive agency of the Government of Australia, Australian Government that is responsible for providing Weather forecasting, weather forecasts and Meteorology, meteorological services to Australia a ...

in a joint programme with the

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency that is responsible for scientific research and its commercial and industrial applications. CSIRO works with leading organisations arou ...

. The station was established in 1976 and has been operating ever since. The data from Cape Grim have been used extensively in assessments of

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

and

ozone depletion Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a lowered total amount of ozone in Earth, Earth's upper atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone (the ozone layer) around Earth's polar ...

Geography

Cape Grim's isolated geographic location makes it unique. The next land mass directly west of Cape Grim is not Africa, but the southern tip of Argentina. Winds that make their way to Cape Grim from Antarctica and the Indian Ocean hit no significant land mass.

Air pollution Air pollution is the presence of substances in the Atmosphere of Earth, air that are harmful to humans, other living beings or the environment. Pollutants can be Gas, gases like Ground-level ozone, ozone or nitrogen oxides or small particles li ...

values collected at Cape Grim are the closest attainable representation of a global average.

History

The headland was first charted and named Cape Grim by

Matthew Flinders Captain (Royal Navy), Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a British Royal Navy officer, navigator and cartographer who led the first littoral zone, inshore circumnavigate, circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then ...

on 7 December 1798, as he sailed from the east in the ''Norfolk'' and found a long swell coming from the south-west, confirming for the first time that

Van Diemen's Land Van Diemen's Land was the colonial name of the island of Tasmania during the European exploration of Australia, European exploration and colonisation of Australia in the 19th century. The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Aboriginal-inhabited island wa ...

was separated from the Australian mainland by a strait, which he named

Bass Strait Bass Strait () is a strait separating the island state of Tasmania from the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland (more specifically the coast of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, with the exception of the land border across Boundary Islet). The ...

. In 1828, ''Victory Hill'' at Cape Grim was the site of the

Cape Grim massacre The Cape Grim massacre was an attack on 10 February 1828 in which a group of Aboriginal Tasmanians gathering food at a beach in the north-west of Tasmania is said to have been ambushed and shot by four Van Diemen's Land Company (VDLC) workers, w ...

of thirty Peerapper people by four shepherds.Lyndall Ryan, pp. 135–137, ''The Aboriginal Tasmanians'',

Allen & Unwin George Allen & Unwin was a British publishing company formed in 1911 when Sir Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen & Co. It became one of the leading publishers of the twentieth century and established an Australian ...

, 1996, Cape Grim received dual naming in March 2021.

References

North West Coast of Tasmania {{tasmania-geo-stub

Geography

History

See also

References