Lord Howe Island is an island territory of the Australian state of New South Wales situated in the Tasman Sea some 550 km east of the mainland. Lord Howe Island was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1982 on account of its beauty and biodiversity.
Lord Howe Island is crescent-shaped, approximately 10 km long and 1.5 km wide at its greatest width. The island forms the top of an extinct underwater volcano and seamount, projecting above the surface of the ocean. It has the southern-most coral reef in the world.
The population of Lord Howe Island is approximately 350 people. Only 400 tourists are permitted to visit the island at any one time.
Lord Howe Island was discovered on 17 February 1788 by HMS Supply, commanded by Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball, RN, who was on his way from Botany Bay to Norfolk Island with convicts to start a penal settlement there.
On his return journey on 13 March 1788 he sent a party ashore on Lord Howe Island. It was uninhabited, and it seems that it had not been known to any of the Polynesian peoples of the South Pacific.
Mount Lidgbird on the island and the nearby Ball’s Pyramid are named after Ball. The island itself was named after Richard Howe, 1st Earl Howe who was First Lord of the Admiralty.
Many government ships sailing between New South Wales and Norfolk Island stopped at the Lord Howe Island, as did some whaling and trading vessels. Some ships left goats and pigs on the island for food for future visitors but a permanent settlement wasn’t established until 1834 at an area known today as Old Settlement.
Until 1974 there was no airstrip on Lord Howe Island and the only way to reach it by air was in a flying boat from Rose Bay in Sydney that landed on the lagoon surrounded by the coral reef. In 2002 the Royal Navy Destroyer HMS Nottingham struck Wolf Rock, a reef at Lord Howe Island, and almost sank.
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