Macquarie Island 1968: From the old days

From an old slide. Macquarie Island was found by sealers in 1810. They promptly exterminated the resident fur seals for their pelts, then began on the elephant seals for their blubber to extract oil. By the late 1800s, there were too few elephant seals for that to be viable, so they began on the penguins. These rusty boilers were "penguin digesters", used to cook countless thousands of King and Royal penguins for their oil.

The trade was halted after the Australian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-13 raised public consciousness of what was being done. The explorer Sir Douglas Mawson began a campaign to have the island declared a sanctuary, though even in 1919 there were efforts (which were opposed) to revive the industry. To quote the photographer Frank Hurley (who had wintered in Antarctica with Mawson and Shackleton) writing in the Sydney Morning Herald of 17 August 1919: "I can only term the destruction there as grim tragedy, the remembrance of which makes me shudder still.... The penguins are mustered like sheep and ...." ... (I shall spare you the details) "....it is one of the most pitiful sights I have ever witnessed..... This wanton butchery takes a toll of some 150,000 birds annually..."

These digesters are at a point known as The Nuggets, others are at Lusitania Bay on the east coast.

These remains of the "bad old days" were still there in 2005, but they are in areas where tourists are not allowed to land. Maybe appropriately, best viewed on black (press Z).