Heard Island Permits: Rationed, Not Forbidden

The Australian Antarctic Division publishes a register of every permit it has granted for Heard Island and the McDonald Islands that the Minister has not withheld. It is a short document. It runs from March 2008 to December 2035, it contains tourism permits as well as science permits, and it can be read in about four minutes. The reason almost nobody goes to Heard Island is not that Australia says no. It is that Australia says yes in writing, five months in advance, on condition you bring your own ship.

Silence Index — D-200

Effectively unvisited

Ranks 16 of 99 scored dossiers — quieter than 85% of the others we have scored. A low score is not a warning; it describes who else will be standing next to you.

How the total is weighted. These are the fixed weights of the four inputs, the same on every dossier — not this place’s scores. We do not publish per-input bars, because the per-input values were never recorded article by article and inventing four plausible numbers that sum to the total would be a fabrication dressed as a chart.

Footfall pressure — visitors measured against the ground that absorbs them30%

Access friction — permits, caps, seasons, boats, weather windows30%

Acoustic floor — how close the nearest engine is20%

Unresolved questions — what the record still cannot settle20%

This dossier was scored before 2 September 2026, when the fourth input became night darkness. It keeps the input it was reasoned with until it is re-scored at its next source re-check; the methodology page records the change.

The index is a desk instrument scored by this publication, not a field measurement. How it is calculated, and where it fails.

What this dossier is built from

This is desk research, and it ends in a refusal. Nobody from this publication has been to Heard Island. Nobody from this publication has lodged an application to go, and the honest reason is not that we were turned away. It is that we read the conditions, worked out the lead time, looked for the vessel, and found that the journey does not exist for us at any price we could establish. That is a different sentence from nobody is allowed, and the gap between those two sentences is the whole subject of this piece.

What follows is assembled from the Australian Antarctic Division's own pages for the Territory — the permit conditions and the public register, the management plan page, the transitional arrangements, and the location, climate, human-activities and news sections; the text of the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve Management Plan 2014–2024; UNESCO's inscription file and two Bureau decisions from 1999 and 2000; the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program records for Heard and for the McDonald Islands; the Australian Fisheries Management Authority's page for the fishery in the surrounding waters; and the published account of the 1997 amateur-radio expedition that put twenty people ashore for eighteen days and left again.

The ledger, and the trouble with counting it

The register is the thing that makes this place unusual. Most closed territories are closed silently. Australia instead publishes a table: permit number, holder, activity, dates. You can sit and read who has been allowed to set foot on Heard Island this century.

The oldest entry is HIMI 08-08-01, granted to Kerry Steinberner of the AAD for "environment protection, monitoring and repair activities", running from 1 March 2008 to 1 March 2009. The newest is HIMI EPMO (25/1118), issued to Rhonda Bartley for work carried by the icebreaker RSV Nuyina — the "2025-26 Heard Island and McDonald Islands Campaign (2025-2035)" — valid from 18 September 2025 until 31 December 2035. Between those two sit the entries that make the argument for us. HIMI-11-12-QUARK, granted to Quark Expeditions Inc for one month across December 2011 and January 2012, permits "travel on foot within Main Use, Heritage and Visitor Access Zones at Spit Bay, Atlas Cove and Long Beach". HIMI-2012-001 gave Heritage Expeditions Ltd, aboard Spirit of Enderby, tourism activities in the same zones the following November. HIMI EPMO 2020-21 licensed Aleksei Leto of Children of the Polar Flowers for "sightseeing and photography" from the yacht SY Bazileus. Tourism permits for Heard Island exist, have been granted, and are printed in a government table.

The rest of the register is science and administration: the Institut Polaire Français tracking king penguins by satellite from the Marion Dufresne across January and February 2014; Professor Millard Coffin's submarine volcanism voyage on Investigator; Dr Robert Schmieder's Cordell Expeditions radio-and-field-science permit for the MV Braveheart in the autumn of 2016; two permits to the FV Cape Arkona, one for "monitoring bycatch in the HIMI Fishery and Marine Reserve" in 2023 and one for a random stratified trawl survey in 2025.

We cannot tell you exactly how long the register is, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Reading the page four times, we itemised nineteen distinct entries; other readings of the same page produced counts of sixteen and twenty-one. We publish the nineteen we could name and the span they cover — March 2008 to December 2035 — and we treat the total as unsettled. It hardly matters, because the register itself says the count is a floor. "Not all permits will be included in the register if the Minister decides that it is not in the national interest to do so, could result in risk to the environment, or could adversely affect the commercial interests of a person who has been granted a permit." Whatever number you arrive at, the true number is that or higher, and no outsider can close the gap.

What popular coverage gets wrong

Two errors travel together, and they travel a long way. The first is that Heard Island is forbidden — that it is "the most inaccessible place on Earth" where "nobody is allowed to go". The second is that it is part of Antarctica. Both are staples of remoteness content on video platforms and in aggregated listicles, and both fail against the first documents you open.

On the first: the register above is the answer. The territory is not closed, it is licensed. The AAD's own environmental approvals page states that it authorises "all activities in the Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI) Territory, regardless of nationality" — which is a statement that activities occur and are assessed, not that they are banned. Australia has granted at least two commercial tourism permits naming three landing beaches, plus a sightseeing permit to a private yacht. The honest description is rationing.

On the second: the AAD gives the islands' position as about 53°S, 73°30'E, roughly 4,100 kilometres south-west of Perth and 1,700 kilometres north of Antarctica, with Îles Kerguelen the nearest land at around 450 kilometres to the north-west. The Antarctic Treaty area begins at 60°S. The AAD's approvals page lists three separate jurisdictions it administers — the Antarctic Treaty area south of 60°S, the CCAMLR area, and the HIMI Territory — and HIMI is the third of those precisely because it is not the first. It is Australian sovereign territory in the southern Indian Ocean, administered under the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Act 1953 and the Environment Protection and Management Ordinance 1987, and it has been Australia's rather than Britain's since 1947.

The consequence of the second error is that a genuinely remarkable fact gets thrown away. Big Ben, the ice-covered volcano that is most of Heard Island, is crowned by Mawson Peak at 2,745 metres — described by the AAD as the tallest mountain in Australian territory excluding Antarctica. Australia's highest point outside its Antarctic claim, and its only active volcano, are both in the same place, and that place is not in Antarctica. UNESCO inscribed the property in 1997 under criteria (viii) and (ix), across 658,903 hectares, calling it the only known continuously active volcano on a sub-Antarctic island and one of the only sub-Antarctic island groups virtually free of introduced species. None of that survives being filed under "Antarctica, closed".

Five months, a form, an indemnity and a biocide

Here is the machinery, which we found more admirable the longer we looked at it.

An application goes to the AAD's Antarctic and Environmental Regulation Section on a HIMI environmental approval form, and it must be lodged "at least 5 months (or up to 7 months for more complex activities) before proposed departure for HIMI". Changing your mind afterwards takes its own lead time: requests to vary a permitted activity must be in "at least 3 months before any proposed changes". Assessment runs against the Environment Protection and Management Ordinance 1987, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and its Regulations 2000, and the Schedule 8 IUCN reserve management principles. A report is due by the permit's expiry date.

Then the sentence that quietly ends most private ambitions. "All visitors to the Territory must to be fully self-sufficient and will be required to indemnify the Commonwealth from any liability arising from an accident, and where appropriate, to have suitable public liability insurance." There is no station, no runway, no harbour and no rescue service. You are being asked to sign away Australia's responsibility for what happens to you 4,100 kilometres from Perth, in a place where the mean monthly wind runs 26 to 33.5 km/h, gusts above 180 km/h have been recorded on several occasions, and it precipitates on 75 per cent of days.

The biosecurity conditions are the part that outsiders mock and that we would defend in any company. Under the 2014–2024 plan, footwear taken ashore "must be thoroughly scrubbed to remove all organisms, soil and other contaminants (which if found must be removed and destroyed) and must be treated with a biocide". All outer clothing "must be new or thoroughly cleaned and appropriately treated to kill all organisms (including reproductive material)". Cargo must be hot-washed, disinfected, fumigated or otherwise treated. No brassicas, no fresh fruit or vegetables, no poultry or poultry products, no viable seed, no dried mushrooms. No wood at all unless it has passed a Department of Agriculture-recognised treatment. This is what it costs to keep the only sub-Antarctic islands without introduced species that way, and the price is one bottle of biocide and a boot brush. We are not going to be witty about it.

Where the coast does the refusing — and the plan that expired

Even inside the permit, the island is subdivided. Visitor Access Zones exist, and the plan names them without ceremony: "Visitor Access Zones are located at Atlas Cove, Long Beach and Spit Bay." The Atlas Cove zone is defined from a signpost at 53°01'10"S, 73°23'42"E; the Spit Bay zone is a 150-metre radius centred on a large rock; Long Beach runs about two kilometres east from the sealers' hut ruins near Cape Labuan to a set of low lava cliffs. Restricted Zones cover the rest of the sensitive ground: part of the Azorella Peninsula, Sail Rock, Shag Rock, Drury Rock, and the McDonald Islands.

For the McDonald Islands, the plan does something we have rarely seen a management document do. It concedes that the regulation is redundant. "The coastlines of the McDonald Islands are precipitous and rugged and provide a natural barrier to sea-borne landings. Very few landings have been made on the McDonald Islands." The AAD's own history page puts the number at two, in 1971 and 1980. Against roughly 240 shore-based visits to Heard Island since the first recorded landing in 1855, the McDonald Islands have a visitor book with two names in it. Meanwhile the islands have been busy: the Global Volcanism Program records that they emerged from perhaps 75,000 years of dormancy in the 1990s, and that between November 2000 and November 2001, unwitnessed, the island "more than doubled in area".

And now the awkward part, which we went looking for and would rather have not found. The management plan we have been quoting is dead. The AAD states plainly that the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve Management Plan 2014–2024 "has expired and has no legal effect". Following a proclamation signed by the Governor-General on 5 December 2024 and effective 24 January 2025, the reserve was expanded — from the 71,000 square kilometres of the 2014 plan to approximately 380,000 square kilometres — and since 25 January 2025 it has run on transitional management arrangements, with sanctuary, national park and habitat protection zones under IUCN categories I, II and IV, until a new plan is in effect. We could not find a successor management plan, and so we cannot give you current clause numbers for the biocide rule or the zone boundaries: the clauses we have quoted are from an instrument the AAD itself says has no legal effect. What the AAD does say is that during the transition, only activities specified in the approval instruments are permitted. The permit survived the plan.

There is no boat

Everything above is soluble with patience. This is not.

There has never been a scheduled service of any kind to Heard Island. There is no ferry, no airstrip, no supply run you could buy a berth on. Every visit in the register arrived on a vessel that someone specifically sent: a French polar research ship, an expedition operator's ice-class hull, a private yacht, a licensed toothfish trawler, or Australia's own icebreaker. The practical shape of the trip is a chartered vessel out of a southern port — Fremantle is the obvious one, though the 1997 radio expedition sailed from Réunion aboard the Marion Dufresne and the 2016 one staged through Cape Town — and roughly a fortnight of Southern Ocean each way. RSV Nuyina took two weeks from Hobart in September 2025 and stayed ten days.

What that costs, we will not tell you, because no primary source we opened publishes a figure. The one number we do have is from 1997, when the VK0IR expedition put a team of twenty ashore for eighteen days, logged 80,673 radio contacts in thirteen days of operating, and did it on a stated budget of $320K. That is nearly thirty years old, it is not a charter quotation, and we offer it only as an order of magnitude.

The register itself contains the best illustration of how thin the transport is. When the Bureau of Meteorology needed to repair an automatic weather station at Spit Bay in 2021, it did not send a ship. It took out permit HIMI EPMO Bureau of Meteorology 2021 and went out on the FV Atlas Cove, a commercial fishing vessel belonging to Austral Fisheries. Australia's national meteorological agency reaches its own weather station by hitching a lift with a toothfish boat. For scale, the Bureau's station on Macquarie Island — Australia's other sub-Antarctic island, with a permanent research base — has been recording continuously since 1948.

What the island did while nobody was watching

The 2025–26 campaign was the first of its kind in twenty years, and it is worth knowing what it found, because it is the closest thing to a status report this territory will get for a while.

Two voyages by RSV Nuyina: ten days at the islands in October 2025, then a 25-day programme over the turn of the year with 97 expeditioners and 32 projects aboard, 24 of them relating to HIMI. Teams installed the first permanent sea-level station on the island at Magnet Point, put eight "tophat" radar and optical calibration reflectors on the ground for satellite geodesy, mapped seafloor, and removed 800 kilograms of inert waste and 300 kilograms of asbestos from the abandoned ANARE station at Atlas Cove, which operated from 1947 to 1955. The ship also made contact with the ocean floor off the coast in October, which the AAD reported without drama and which we note only because an icebreaker touching bottom is a fair summary of the hydrography.

They also arrived in time to document a catastrophe. Six of nine vertebrate species tested positive for influenza A H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b — southern elephant seals, king and gentoo penguins, Antarctic fur seals, South Georgia diving petrels. Surveys across the two voyages found elephant seal pup mortality averaging 76 per cent, reaching 97 per cent in one area, and estimated around 13,000 dead pups island-wide; several hundred dead adult king penguins were counted. Genetic analysis points to arrival from the French Crozet Islands around August 2025, the first detection in an Australian external territory. No on-ground sampling was possible at the McDonald Islands. The scientists flew 120 drone flights over more than 1,600 kilometres instead — and when the Nuyina spent a day off the McDonald Islands in January 2026, under a permit valid until 2035, on a ship with helicopters, it still did not land. The coast refused, exactly as the expired plan said it would.

Meanwhile Big Ben has been erupting. The Global Volcanism Program gives Heard's last known eruption as 2026: an ash plume detected by the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre on 24 June 2026 rising to 11 kilometres and drifting north-east, falling to 9.1 kilometres by mid-morning, with a second plume that afternoon; a 7.3-kilometre plume in February; thermal anomalies on the summit and upper south-western flanks. Nobody was there for any of it. Observations of this volcano, the GVP notes, are infrequent, and the surveillance is satellite thermal imagery because there is no alternative.

Why the Silence Index is 88, and the refusal stated plainly

Physical remoteness is at the ceiling: 4,100 kilometres from Perth, 450 from the nearest land, a fortnight of Southern Ocean, no airstrip. Access friction is very high but deliberately not absolute — a five-month lead time, an indemnity and a biocide are obstacles, not a wall, and tourism permits have been granted. Visitor volume is close to zero: roughly 240 shore visits in 171 years, two of them on the McDonald Islands. For the fourth input we have reasoned about unresolved questions rather than darkness, and they are unusually numerous for a governed place — an uncountable register, a governing plan that has expired with no published successor, and a volcano monitored only from orbit. Ninety and above we reserve for places with no lawful route in at all. Heard Island has one. It is just extremely long.

So: this is the journey we are not taking, and we want to be precise about why. Not because it is banned — it is not. Not because we were refused — we never asked. Because the form goes in five months before a departure we cannot arrange on a vessel that does not run, to a beach where we would owe the Commonwealth an indemnity and the ecosystem a bottle of biocide, in a reserve currently held together by transitional instruments while its management plan is legally dead. Australia has done the harder, better thing here: it has written the conditions down and published who met them. Reading that ledger is not a substitute for going. It is, for almost everyone, the only part of the trip that is actually available — and it is more honest than most places manage.

Corner Codex — D-200

Place: Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Australian external territory
Position: About 53°S, 73°30'E — southern Indian Ocean, not Antarctica
Distance: About 4,100 km south-west of Perth; 1,700 km north of Antarctica
Nearest land: Îles Kerguelen (France), around 450 km to the north-west
Land area: Heard Island about 368 km²; McDonald Island about 3 km²
High point: Mawson Peak on Big Ben, 2,745 m — tallest in Australian territory outside Antarctica
Volcanic status: Active. Global Volcanism Program gives Heard's last known eruption as 2026
Landings recorded: First in 1855; about 240 shore-based visits since; two on McDonald Island, 1971 and 1980
Permit register: Runs 2008 to 2035. We counted nineteen entries; other readings give sixteen and twenty-one
Lead time: Five months before departure; seven for complex activities; three to vary a permit
Governing plan: The 2014–2024 plan 'has expired and has no legal effect'. Transitional arrangements since 25 January 2025
Scheduled transport: None has ever existed
Silence Index: 88 / 100

The Traveler's Panel · checked 25 August 2026

Changing information. Prices, permits, seasons and road access change, sometimes at short notice. Everything here is a starting point for your own confirmation — not a quote, and not a guarantee. Verify with the operator and the relevant official body before you book.

Status	Not closed — licensed. Tourism permits appear in the public register
Not Antarctica	53°S in the southern Indian Ocean, 1,700 km north of the continent
Permit lead time	5 months before departure; 7 for complex activities; 3 months to vary
Who needs one	Everyone. The AAD assesses all HIMI activity 'regardless of nationality'
Conditions	Full self-sufficiency, indemnity to the Commonwealth, public liability cover
Biosecurity	Footwear scrubbed and biocide-treated; outer clothing new or treated
Transport	None scheduled, ever. Charter only
Legal position	2014–2024 plan expired; transitional arrangements since 25 January 2025

Getting there — No scheduled service has ever existed. Chartered vessel from a southern port, roughly a fortnight of Southern Ocean each way, permit lodged five months before you sail

There is no route to describe, so this section describes the paperwork instead. An application goes on the HIMI environmental approval form to the AAD's Antarctic and Environmental Regulation Section, and it must arrive at least five months before your proposed departure — up to seven months if the activity is complex. If you later want to change what you do once ashore, that variation needs its own three months. A report is due by the date the permit expires.
Assessment runs against the Environment Protection and Management Ordinance 1987, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and its Regulations 2000, and the Schedule 8 IUCN reserve management principles. The AAD is explicit that this covers all activities in the Territory regardless of nationality, so a foreign yacht is in exactly the same queue as an Australian research vessel.
You must be fully self-sufficient, you must indemnify the Commonwealth against liability arising from any accident, and where appropriate you must hold public liability insurance. There is no station, no airstrip, no harbour and no rescue service. Read those three requirements together and they describe a place where the Australian government will not be coming to get you.
Then find a ship. Every visit in the register arrived on a vessel someone specifically sent: the French research ship Marion Dufresne, an expedition operator's ice-class hull, a private yacht, a New Zealand expedition vessel, a licensed toothfish trawler, or RSV Nuyina. Nuyina took two weeks from Hobart in September 2025 and stayed ten days. Budget a fortnight of Southern Ocean each way and assume the weather decides whether you land at all.
Note the legal caveat before you plan anything. The management plan whose zones and conditions are quoted throughout this dossier expired at the end of 2024 and, in the AAD's own words, has no legal effect. Since 25 January 2025 the reserve has run on transitional arrangements under which only activities specified in the approval instruments are permitted. Ask the AAD what is currently in force. Do not assume the 2014 plan still governs anything.

Indicative costs — verify before booking

What it costs	Nobody publishes a figure and we will not invent one. There is no ticket, no operator running a scheduled product, and no charter tariff in the public record
The only number we have	The 1997 VK0IR radio expedition stated a budget of $320K to put twenty people ashore for eighteen days. That is 1997 and is not a quotation
The permit	We found no published application fee. The cost is the five-month lead time
The insurance	Public liability cover plus an indemnity to the Commonwealth — priced by your underwriter, not by Australia
The honest position	For an individual traveller this is not a purchasable trip. Reading the register is the part of it that is actually available

What to pack

Footwear you are prepared to destroy. It must be thoroughly scrubbed of all organisms, soil and contaminants — anything found must be removed and destroyed — and then treated with a biocide.
Outer clothing that is new, or thoroughly cleaned and treated to kill all organisms including reproductive material. Not shaken out. Treated.
Nothing edible that could germinate or infect: no brassicas, no fresh fruit or vegetables, no poultry or poultry products, no viable seed, no dried mushrooms.
No untreated wood of any kind, including packing material, unless it has passed a Department of Agriculture-recognised treatment.
Documentation: the permit, the indemnity, the public liability certificate. And the working assumption that there is no shelter, no supply and no help ashore.

Where to stay

There is nowhere to stay. There is no accommodation on Heard Island, no settlement, no hut open to visitors and no permanent population; the ANARE station at Atlas Cove operated from 1947 to 1955 and its remains are now a clean-up site, from which the 2025–26 campaign removed 800 kilograms of inert waste and 300 kilograms of asbestos. Anyone who spends a night in the Territory does so aboard the vessel that brought them, or in a tent under the terms of a permit that required them to be fully self-sufficient before it was granted. The climate explains why nothing more permanent has ever taken hold: monthly mean temperatures at Atlas Cove of 0.0° to 4.2°C, precipitation on three days in four totalling 1.3 to 1.9 metres water equivalent a year, mean monthly winds of 26 to 33.5 km/h and recorded gusts above 180 km/h. Australia's other sub-Antarctic island, Macquarie, has a research base and a weather record running unbroken since 1948. Heard Island has an automatic weather station that the Bureau of Meteorology once repaired by taking a permit and riding out on a toothfish boat.

Safety & responsible travel

Do not describe this place as forbidden. It is rationed, and the register proves it — three tourism or sightseeing permits sit in it alongside the science. Overstating the ban makes the actual regime harder to explain and easier to resent.
Do not call it Antarctica. It is Australian territory at 53°S, 1,700 km north of the continent and outside the Antarctic Treaty area, holding Australia's only active volcano and its highest point outside its Antarctic claim.
Take the biosecurity seriously and say why. These are among the only sub-Antarctic islands virtually free of introduced species. That status is the reason for the biocide, and it survives only as long as every visitor complies.
Assume the islands are now a disease site. H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b was confirmed in six of nine vertebrate species tested, with elephant seal pup mortality averaging 76 per cent. Any future visit carries a two-way risk that did not exist before August 2025.
Respect the McDonald Islands refusal. The management plan itself records that the coast is a natural barrier and that very few landings have been made. Two are documented, in 1971 and 1980. In January 2026 an icebreaker with helicopters spent a day there and sent drones instead.

Nearby, and quieter

Nothing is nearby, which is the point. The closest land is Îles Kerguelen, French territory around 450 kilometres to the north-west, which has a permanently staffed base at Port-aux-Français and its own supply vessel — a genuinely different access regime a short hop away across the same plateau, and the probable source of the H5N1 that arrived at Heard Island via the Crozet group around August 2025. Antarctica lies 1,700 kilometres south. Australia's own sub-Antarctic comparator, Macquarie Island, sits far to the east and is reached from Hobart; it has a station and a continuous instrumental record. The McDonald Islands are 75 kilometres west of Heard and are, in every practical sense, further away than any of them: a Restricted Zone, two recorded landings in history, a volcano that more than doubled the island's area between November 2000 and November 2001 with nobody present to watch it happen.

Getting there, in order

1Mawson Peak, Big Ben
↓
2Atlas Cove Main Use Zone signpost
↓
3Wharf Point, Atlas Cove
↓
4Spit Bay zone rock

Each leg is a separate booking and a separate chance to be weathered out. Build spare days into the chain, not onto the end of it.

Where it is

Heard Island and McDonald Islands, southern Indian Ocean · 53.1060°S 73.5130°E · Open in Google Maps · OpenStreetMap

Key locations

Mawson Peak, Big Ben — 2,745 m summit of the active volcano; coordinates from the Global Volcanism Program
53.1060°S 73.5130°E
Atlas Cove Main Use Zone signpost — zone boundary origin at 53°01'10"S, 73°23'42"E in the 2014–2024 management plan
53.0194°S 73.3950°E
Wharf Point, Atlas Cove — 53°01'11"S, 73°23'26"E; the abandoned ANARE station site, occupied 1947–1955
53.0197°S 73.3906°E
Spit Bay zone rock — 53°06'26"S, 73°43'14"E; centre of the 150 m radius Main Use Zone, and the weather station coast
53.1072°S 73.7206°E
Cape Labuan sealers' hut ruins — 53°11'40.5"S, 73°29'58.5"E; western end of the Long Beach Visitor Access Zone
53.1946°S 73.4996°E
Long Beach eastern limit — 53°11'11"S, 73°31'16"E; where the beach meets low lava cliffs
53.1864°S 73.5211°E
McDonald Islands — Restricted Zone; 263 m phonolitic volcano about 75 km west, two recorded landings ever
53.0394°S 72.5950°E

Coordinates are for orientation and are accurate to roughly the width of the feature named, not to a doorway. Several of these points are inside protected areas or need a permit, a guide or a boat — read the access notes above before you plan a route to any of them.

Sources & further reading — checked 25 August 2026

Australian Antarctic Division — 'HIMI permits' and the HIMI permit register. The permit application requirements — at least 5 months before departure, up to 7 for complex activities, 3 months to vary a permit; the EPMO 1987, EPBC Act 1999 and Regulations 2000 and Schedule 8 IUCN principles; the self-sufficiency, indemnity and public liability requirement; and the published register of granted permits running from March 2008 to December 2035
Australian Antarctic Division — HIMI permit register (alternate site path). The same register read a second time via the site's older URL path, yielding the itemised list of nineteen distinct permits used in this dossier — including HIMI 08-08-01, HIMI-11-12-QUARK, HIMI-2012-001, HIMI-EPBC-13-14-01, HIMI EPMO Cordell Expeditions, HIMI-EPBC-22-23-STRUGNELL, HIMI-RSTS-EPBC-24-25-ZIEGLER and HIMI EPMO (25/1118)
Australian Antarctic Division — HIMI Marine Reserve management plan page. The statement that the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve Management Plan 2014–2024 'has expired and has no legal effect', and that the reserve will be managed under transitional management arrangements until a new management plan is in effect
Australian Antarctic Division — HIMI Marine Reserve transitional management arrangements. Commencement of the transitional arrangements on 25 January 2025 following the Governor-General's signature on 5 December 2024 and effect from 24 January 2025; the sanctuary, national park and habitat protection zones under IUCN categories I, II and IV; and the rule that only activities specified in the approval instruments are permitted during the transition
Australian Antarctic Division — Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve Management Plan 2014–2024 (PDF). Section 3.1.2(b) naming the Visitor Access Zones at Atlas Cove, Long Beach and Spit Bay; 3.1.2(e) on the Restricted Zones and the precipitous McDonald Islands coast; 5.4.29(b) on biocide-treated footwear; 5.4.10 on outer clothing; 5.4.7, 5.4.12 and 5.4.14 on cargo, prohibited foods and untreated wood; the 71,000 km² reserve; and the zone boundary coordinates
Australian Antarctic Division — Heard Island: location and geography. The position at 53°S, 73°30'E; Heard Island at around 368 km²; about 4,100 km south-west of Perth, 1,700 km north of Antarctica and around 450 km south-east of Îles Kerguelen; glacier cover falling from 80% in the 1940s to around 64% in 2014; and the marine reserve of about 380,000 km² with expanded boundaries in effect from 24 January 2025
Australian Antarctic Division — Heard Island: human activities. The first recorded landing in 1855; approximately 240 shore-based visits to Heard Island since; only two documented landings on McDonald Island, in 1971 and 1980; the ANARE station at Atlas Cove from 1947 to 1955; over 30 subsequent Australian Antarctic program expeditions; and Big Ben summited in 1965, 1983 and 1999/2000
Australian Antarctic Division — Heard Island: climate and weather. Monthly mean temperatures at Atlas Cove of 0.0° to 4.2°C; annual precipitation of 1.3 to 1.9 m water equivalent falling on 75 per cent of days; mean monthly wind speeds of 26 to 33.5 km/h; and gusts greater than 180 km/h recorded on several occasions
Australian Antarctic Division — Heard Island: protection and management. The Heard Island and McDonald Island Act 1953 and the Environment Protection and Management Ordinance 1987 as the governing instruments; World Heritage status in 1997; the marine reserve established in October 2002 with expansions in 2014 and 2025; and the transfer of administration from the United Kingdom to Australia in 1947
Australian Antarctic Division — Heard Island section overview. The territory described as about 4,000 km south-west of mainland Australia and 1,700 km north of Antarctica, unoccupied by humans and largely undisturbed, with World Heritage protection and marine reserve status, and the AAD's October 2025 visit described as the first in decades
Australian Antarctic Division — Environmental impact assessment, approvals and permits. The AAD's statement that it authorises all Australian activities in the Antarctic Treaty area south of 60°S, all Australian activities in the CCAMLR area, and 'all activities in the Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI) Territory, regardless of nationality' — the three separate jurisdictions that establish HIMI is not inside the Antarctic Treaty area
Australian Antarctic Division — Environmental management overview. The AAD's environmental approval framework and the index of sub-pages covering environmental impact assessment, approvals and permits, and environment policy and management, used here to locate the approvals page rather than for any figure
Australian Antarctic Division — 'Australian Antarctic Program heads to Heard Island for the first time in decades' (4 August 2025). RSV Nuyina departing Hobart in September 2025 with two helicopters and three inflatable research boats; a two-week voyage from Hobart followed by ten days at the islands; six project groups; and the campaign described as the first dedicated environmental management visit to Heard Island in more than 20 years
Australian Antarctic Division — 'Voyage 1 update: We arrive at Heard Island' (17 October 2025). Arrival off Big Ben on Sunday 13 October 2025; inflatable research boat drills; and the report that 'RSV Nuyina made contact with the ocean floor off the coast of Heard Island', with the hull assessed and no concern for safety
Australian Antarctic Division — 'Voyage 1 update: Project groups head to Heard Island' (24 October 2025). The first permanent sea level observing station installed at Magnet Point; beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone surveys of bird and seal colonies; eight tophat reflectors landed by helicopter at Atlas Cove; unusual elephant seal mortality consistent with H5 bird flu; and inspection of the abandoned Atlas Cove station
Australian Antarctic Division — 'Heard Island tips its tophats to satellite imagery' (22 August 2025). Eight unpowered radar and optical calibration reflectors with a 1.5-metre crown installed near existing survey markers, giving GPS-located reference points so imagery from different satellites can be precisely aligned for glacier, crevasse, erosion and volcanic monitoring
Australian Antarctic Division — 'Australian Antarctic Program resupplies station, returns to Heard Island on V2' (2 December 2025). Ten days at Heard Island in October followed by a 25-day HIMI programme; 97 expeditioners across 32 projects, 24 of them relating to Heard Island marine and terrestrial science; eleven SAEF scientists; and H5 bird flu impacts as a key focus for wildlife biologists
Australian Antarctic Division — 'Science work and clean-up continues on Heard Island' / eyes in the sky over the McDonald Islands (17 January 2026). RSV Nuyina spending a day near the McDonald Islands using drones rather than landing, recording a large macaroni penguin colony, king penguins, fur seals and elephant seals; and the installation of an ARTEMIS autonomous weather station with a high-resolution camera at Atlas Cove
Australian Antarctic Division — 'Australian Antarctic Program completes landmark Heard Island and McDonald Islands Campaign' (13 March 2026). Two voyages over the summer described as the first campaign of its kind in 20 years; albatross, penguin and seal population surveys; seafloor mapping; and the removal of 800 kilograms of inert waste including sharp glass and metal plus 300 kilograms of asbestos from the old station site
Australian Antarctic Division — 'Scientists determine extent of H5 avian influenza outbreak at Heard Island and McDonald Islands' (18 June 2026). Six of nine vertebrate species positive for influenza A H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b; elephant seal pup mortality averaging 76 per cent and up to 97 per cent in one area, around 13,000 pups island-wide; several hundred dead adult king penguins; 120 drone flights over 1,600 km; no on-ground sampling at McDonald Island; and probable introduction from the Crozet Islands around August 2025
Australian Antarctic Division — news index, 2025. The 2025 news listing used to locate the five Heard Island items cited in this dossier, establishing that the AAD published nothing on HIMI voyages between the 2000s and August 2025
Australian Antarctic Division — news index, 2026. The 2026 news listing used to locate the four Heard Island items of January, March and June 2026, including the campaign completion report and the H5 avian influenza findings
UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Heard and McDonald Islands (ref. 577). Inscription in 1997 under criteria (viii) and (ix) across 658,903 hectares; Big Ben as an active volcano rising to 2,745 metres and the only known continuously active volcano on a sub-Antarctic island; the islands as the only sub-Antarctic islands virtually free of introduced species; and McDonald Island's volcano reactivating after 75,000 years of dormancy
UNESCO World Heritage Centre — documents for Heard and McDonald Islands (ref. 577). The complete documentary record for the property: the 1997 IUCN advisory body evaluation, decisions 21COM VIIIA (1997), 22COM VII.27 (1998), 23BUR IVB.24 and 23COM XB.28 (1999), 24BUR IVB.24 (2000) and two 2012 decisions, plus periodic reporting for cycles 2 (2012) and 3 (2023)
UNESCO World Heritage Committee — Bureau decision 23 BUR IV.B.24, Heard and McDonald Islands (Australia), 1999. The Bureau's request for a report on Australia's desktop study assessing whether the 12 nautical mile territorial sea provided a representative sample of regional marine biodiversity, with IUCN describing a marine protected area as essential to protect marine biodiversity more effectively
UNESCO World Heritage Committee — Bureau decision 24 BUR IV.B.24, Heard and McDonald Islands (Australia), 2000. The Bureau commending Australia for a thorough report providing a sound technical basis for establishing a marine protected area to complement the World Heritage values, IUCN's acknowledgement of the fisheries impact assessment for Patagonian toothfish and mackerel icefish, and the request for a progress report in 2001
Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program — Heard (volcano number 234010). Heard at 53.106°S, 73.513°E, summit elevation 2,745 m, a composite stratovolcano in the Kerguelen hotspot group with last known eruption given as 2026; intermittent activity since 1910 including 1985–87, 1992, 2000–01, 2006–07 and 2012–13; and the note that observations are infrequent and monitoring relies on MODIS and ASTER thermal imagery
Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program — Heard weekly reports. The 25 June–1 July 2026 report: a Darwin VAAC ash plume at 0600 on 24 June rising to 11 km and drifting NE, falling to 9.8 km by 0620 and 9.1 km by 0920, a second plume at 1120, both dissipated by 0730 on 25 June; and the 12–18 February 2026 report of a 7.3 km plume with thermal anomalies on 8, 13 and 16 February
Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program — McDonald Islands (volcano number 234011). The McDonald Islands at 53.0394°S, 72.595°E, elevation 263 m, a phonolitic composite volcano with lava domes about 75 km west of Heard Island; a submarine eruption inferred from pumice in December 1992; and the island more than doubling in area, unwitnessed, between November 2000 and November 2001, with last known eruption in 2005
Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program — Holocene volcanoes of Australia. The national listing confirming Heard as the Australian entry with eruptions observed, placed in the Kerguelen Hotspot Volcano Group — the basis for describing Heard as Australia's only active volcano outside its Antarctic claim
Australian Fisheries Management Authority — Heard Island and McDonald Islands Fishery. Total allowable catches for 2025–26 of 2,119 tonnes of Patagonian toothfish and 1,427 tonnes of mackerel icefish, with the toothfish limit falling from 3,030 tonnes in 2020–21; a maximum of three trawl boats operating simultaneously; demersal longline, trawl and pot gear; an AFMA observer aboard at all times; and management under the CCAMLR convention
Bureau of Meteorology — Climate statistics for Macquarie Island (station 300004). 78 years of continuous record from 1948 to 2026 at 54.50°S, 158.94°E, with annual mean maximum 6.7°C, mean minimum 3.1°C, mean rainfall 1,005.2 mm and 221.1 rain days — used in this dossier only as the contrast with Heard Island, where the weather station is reached by fishing boat
Cordell Expeditions — Heard Island project and the 1997 VK0IR expedition. The 1997 expedition sailing from Réunion aboard the French vessel Marion Dufresne on 7 January and returning on 6 February; a team of 20 over a five-week period; eighteen days spent on Heard Island; 80,673 radio contacts logged in 13 days of operating; and a stated budget of $320K
VK0EK Heard Island 2016 expedition. The 2016 amateur radio expedition's operating window of 29 March to 11 April 2016 and its named operators — corroborating the AAD register entry for Cordell Expeditions, Dr Robert Schmieder and the MV Braveheart, permitted 10 March to 30 April 2016 for radio operations and field science

Official and scientific bodies are the authority for safety, regulatory and scientific claims. Commercial operators are used only for practical detail such as tour length, meeting points and indicative pricing — never for a safety or scientific statement.

How this was made

Desk research. Compiled from official bodies, scientific and conservation sources, established journalism and licensed operators. Not based on a personal visit.

Editor’s method note — what we checked, corrected and could not verify

Desk research only. Nobody from this publication has been to Heard Island or the McDonald Islands, and this dossier makes no claim to have seen either.
Every URL cited was opened and read before citation. Sources that could not be opened are listed in this note and are not cited anywhere in the piece.
We could not obtain a stable count of the permit register. Four readings of the AAD page produced totals of sixteen, nineteen, nineteen and twenty-one; the one complete itemisation we obtained listed nineteen distinct entries spanning 1 March 2008 to 31 December 2035, and those nineteen are what we describe. We print the disagreement rather than picking a number.
Regardless of the count, the register is a floor and not a total, and the piece says so. The page states that permits may be withheld from the register where the Minister decides publication is not in the national interest, could risk the environment, or could adversely affect a permit holder's commercial interests. No outsider can establish how many permits that covers.
The clause numbers we quote — 3.1.2(b), 3.1.2(e), 5.4.10, 5.4.29(b), 5.4.7, 5.4.12, 5.4.14 — are from the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve Management Plan 2014–2024, which the AAD states has expired and has no legal effect. We went looking for a successor management plan and could not find one published. What we found instead is a transitional management regime in force since 25 January 2025, and we say so in the body rather than implying the quoted clauses are current law.
We describe the access regime as rationing, not prohibition, because the register contains tourism permits: HIMI-11-12-QUARK to Quark Expeditions Inc, HIMI-2012-001 to Heritage Expeditions Ltd, and a 2020-21 sightseeing and photography permit to Children of the Polar Flowers. We have not established whether any tourism permit has been granted since 2012 and do not imply that one has.
The geography error we correct is checkable in one step: the AAD gives the islands' position as about 53°S, 73°30'E and 1,700 km north of Antarctica, and its own approvals page treats the Antarctic Treaty area south of 60°S, the CCAMLR area and the HIMI Territory as three distinct jurisdictions. HIMI is Australian sovereign territory in the southern Indian Ocean.
Coordinates in the panel are taken from the management plan's zone boundary descriptions (converted from degrees-minutes-seconds to decimal degrees by us) and from the Global Volcanism Program's records for Heard and the McDonald Islands. We could not read the Australian Antarctic Data Centre gazetteer, which now redirects to a JavaScript-only interface, so we did not use it.
The $320K figure for the 1997 VK0IR expedition is that expedition's own stated budget, is nearly thirty years old, and is not a charter quotation. It is offered as an order of magnitude and nothing more. We found no published price for reaching HIMI today and did not estimate one.
Sources we could not read, and therefore did not cite: ccamlr.org's Division 58.5.2 toothfish fishery page, which returned 403; the UNESCO state of conservation list at whc.unesco.org/en/soc/, robots-disallowed; the Federal Register of Legislation, whose search interface did not render and whose instrument identifiers we could not resolve, so the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Act 1953, the Environment Protection and Management Ordinance 1987 and the 2024 amendment proclamation are described from AAD pages rather than from their own texts; AustLII, 403; the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water and the Department of Infrastructure territory pages, both robots-blocked on a timeout; Parks Australia's HIMI marine park page, 404; the IUCN World Heritage Outlook assessment, which we could not retrieve; the AAD's Antarctic place names gazetteer, which now requires JavaScript; and AFMA's illegal fishing pages, 404.
Things we could not verify: the true number of permits on the HIMI register, our four readings having produced three different totals; how many permits exist that the Minister has withheld from publication; whether a successor to the 2014–2024 management plan has been made, and if so what its clause numbering is; the current legal text of the transitional approval instruments, which we could not locate on the Federal Register of Legislation; the cost of chartering any vessel capable of reaching HIMI, no primary source publishing a figure; whether any tourism permit has been granted since HIMI-2012-001 in 2012; the number of radio contacts, team size or cost of the 2016 VK0EK expedition, whose site would not serve its own logistics pages; whether any landing has been made on the McDonald Islands since 1980, the January 2026 visit having used drones only; and whether the elephant seal mortality figures from the 2025–26 campaign have since been revised.

AI is used to draft this text, and a human checks it. Every figure, date and quotation above was verified by Tony Hall against the source cited for it in the reference list; where sources disagree, the disagreement is shown rather than resolved, and where a claim could not be confirmed it is either marked unverified or left out. The illustrations are AI-created and labelled as such — no photograph on this site is presented as a record of a real place. Full disclosure · Editorial policy.

Access details change — recheck before you travel. Found an error? Tell us — corrections are dated and shown in place.

Rationed, Not Forbidden: Reading Australia's Heard Island Permit Ledger