Gun Island

Gun Island is one of the larger islands in the Pelsaert Group of the Houtman Abrolhos. It is nominally located at coord|28|53|10|S|113|51|35|E|scale:100000_type:isle|display=inline,title"Gazetteer of Australia" (1996). Belconnen, ACT: Australian Surveying and Land Information Group.] Gazetteer of Australia | name = Gun Island | id = 269879] , about 4 km north and east of Half Moon Reef and is a flat limestone outcrop of about convert|800|m by convert|420|m in size.

Between June 1727 and March 1728, crew of the Dutch VOC ship "Zeewyk" were stranded on the island after it struck Half Moon Reef. After a longboat with 11 seamen which had been despatched to go for help had failed to return, the remaining survivors constructed a convert|20|m sloop from the wreckage, which they named the "Sloepie". Of the 88 who survived the ordeal, 82 arrived in Batavia on 30 April 1728. [cite book|title=The wreck on the half-moon reef|author=Hugh Edwards|year=1970|publisher=Rigby Limited, New York|id=ISBN 0684135507]

During admiralty surveys of the north-west coast in 1840, crew from HMS "Beagle" discovered a brass gun of about three pounds calibre and an iron swivel on which paint was still adhered. Captain Stokes with Commander John Clements Wickham named the place Gun Island. [kimberly 1897 p. 15] They also discovered several coins, including one dated about 1707 and another dated 1720. Also seen was what appeared to be the beam of a ship with an iron bolt through it, and glass bottles and clay pipes. The material was presumed to have been left there by the "Zeewyk" castaways, 112 years earlier.

In 1883, Charles Edward Broadhurst, who had been granted a lease for guano export, discovered several campsites and seal bones there, which had evidentially been killed for sustenance by the Zeewyk crew.

Gun Island was one of the most heavily worked islands of the Abrolhos Islands for guano. [cite web|url=http://www.vocshipwrecks.nl/out_voyages7/zeewijk.html|title=Zeewijk|work=VOC Shipwrecks|accessdate=2007-12-02] Guano workings continued on a commercial scale from the 1880s to the 1920s, and again in the mid-1940s. A convert|100|m stone jetty built for loading guano on the south-eastern corner is still intact.

A yacht, the "Nautilus" was wrecked at Gun Island in 1897. [cite web|url=http://oceans1.customer.netspace.net.au/abrolhos-wrecks.html|title=Abrolhos Islands Shipwrecks|accessdate=2007-12-02]

An archaeological expedition by members of the Western Australian Museum was made to the island in 1974. [cite web|url=http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/collections/maritime/march/shipwrecks/Wreckfinder/Zeewijk.htm|title=Zeewijk|work=Western Australian Museum|accessdate=2007-12-02]

Gun Island is classified as having 'High' conservation significance and is one of the seven protected zones in the Abrolhos Islands. Protected zone restrictions mean that "visitors shall not carry out any digging or major earthworks within the zones around declared maritime archaeological sites unless permitted to do so", and that they shall also not take metal detecting devices onto the island. [cite web|url=http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/docs/mp/mp151/fmp151.pdf|title=Inventory of the land Conservation Values of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands|date=October 2003|id=ISSN 08194327|work=Department of Fisheries]

A convert|20|m wide rock called "Gun Islet" is situated about convert|30|m off the southern tip of the island.

References