Tristan da Cunha (Island Week 3)
Thursday, 4th September 2008 by James Turnbull
It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. It'll probably last about a week.
The island of Tristan da Cunha and its surrounding archipelago are located in the southern Atlantic ocean, 2816 km from the nearest continent, making it the most remote island in the world!
Tristan da Cunha is a dependency of the British overseas territory Saint Helena, and also a live volcanic island. The main settlement, "Edinburgh of the Seven Seas"1, had to be temporarily abandoned in 1961 due the volcano erupting.
As Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is 2,400 km from the main settlement on Saint Helena, it chalks up an additional record of the "most remote permanent settlement in the world".
The other islands in the archipelago include Gough Island, which has a temporary population of 6 South Africans who work at the small weather station…
… and the mysterious sounding Inaccessible Island. Officially uninhabited (presumably for obvious reasons), Inaccessible Island also appears to be inaccessible to high-resolution photography satellites (unlike the rest of the archipelago).
More info on Tristan da Cunha, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas and Saint Helena can be found at Wikipedia.
Thanks to Nico, Tom and Matt.
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The town is named after the second son of Queen Victoria, Prince Alfred the Duke of Edinburgh, who visited the island in 1867. ↩︎
A few years ago, the island was allocated a post code, TDCU 1ZZ, as residents had previously found they were unable to order goods on the internet. Apparently it takes four weeks for delivery from Amazon, which is quicker than some of my orders from them! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4129636.stm
Most remote in the Atlantic Ocean…
The Island of Hawaii is about 1000 km further from the closest continent. I think that would make it more remote… Somewhere in French Polynesia should be even more remote than that.
Trista is the most remote settled archipelago in the world. It is further from any other human settlement than any other place on earth. Hawaii is closer to other settled islands. Mail delivery on Tristan is not as reliable as that article makes it out to be. Tristan has no port so whether or not a ship can drop mail at Tristan is dependent on the weather.
Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is such a cool name for a town! I wanna live there! It’s a shame it was named after Prince Alfred, rather than the city in Scotland.
This island is perfect fantasy material, over 1500 miles from the nearest inhabited area (St. Helena) and more than 2000 miles from the nearest city Cape Town. The only way to get to the island is by boarding a whaling ship, or some ships that call on the island to keep the island well stocked. The population of this island is a little less than 300 and people on this island have only 7 surnames!! Despite having such a small population they have a Cafeteria, a Pub, two Churches, 4-hole Golf Course, Football Ground, Post Office, schooling for children up to 15 years, all the Depts have internet connections, all houses have telephone lines..phew!! How did they ever manage to get all that to that tiny speck of an island with not more than 10-15 ships calling every?? If any of you have Googled images of this island then I’m sure you would agree with me when i say Tristan is a treat to the eyes. Such a beautiful place in the middle of nowhere, it’s as if one were transported to another time. I hope i get to visit this place once in my life.
Imagine, a peaceful settlement over a thousand miles from crime, violence, war, religious persecution, famine, disease and corrupt governments. It makes me envious. I hear the people are warm and welcoming. I wonder if the residents of Tristan Da Cunha realize how lucky they are to have their own little piece of paradise in the middle of the Atlantic away from it all.
Uh oh! Wait a minute, how far to the nearest Burger King?