Talk:Maatsuyker Islands

Are the Needles really in the south?

Are the Needles really in the south?
I am not sure. I just guessed it because in the article http://www.lighthouse.net.au/lights/TAS/Maatsuyker%20Island/Maatsuyker%20Island.htm, the following sentence is written:
The Lighthouse is situated on southern tip of island for best visibility and all round view.
Because of the picture where the Needles are visible in the background of the picture just below the lighthouse, I concluded that they are further south than the lighthouse itself. This is not sure at all since the direction of view on the Needles could also lead sidewards to the south coast, therefore not necessarily being south. Furthermore, there could be other rocks/islets surrounding Maatsuyker Island lying still further in the south not being mentioned there. -- Citylover 17:40, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes they are further south, just off the coast - see the map I added. I could not see any other islands nearby to the south. Though elsewhere there is Mewstone and Pedra Branca. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:47, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Move Pedra Branca to separate article

A check of the map (I clicked on the coordinates and followed the Multimap link) shows that Pedra Branca is at least 70 Kilometres from Maatsuyker and cannot reasonably be included as part of the Maatsuyker Group. I intend to split it off into a separate article in a couple of weeks unless anybody objects. Phaedrus86 01:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Remove references to Whites and Brothers named islands

This is related to the topic above. I also see that Eddystone (which is next to Pedra Branca) is clearly not part of Maatsuyker. Chicken Island and Isle du Golfe are questionable. Looking at the map, they don't look to be part of the group, and "Small Southern Islands Conservation Management Statement 2002" (PDF). Tasmanian Government Parks and Wildlife Service. 2002. Retrieved 2006-07-13. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) does not list them in the group.

I think the time has come to remove White's and Brothers' books as references for the location of the islands. The problem is they refer to lots of islands in the area, but this is quite misleading if we are trying to pin down what consistutes the Maatsuyker group. We now have plenty of other references which are more accessible and which much more precisely define the locations of the islands and the Maatsuyker Group.

Therefore in a week's time I intend to remove all reference to White's and Brothers books ( and to "Named Islands", unless there are any objections.

Note this was all prompted by User:SatuSuro's idea of putting positions in the article. Once I did that and saw where that puts things on the map, then previous inaccuracies became obvious. An excellent idea, that was. Phaedrus86 23:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

User:SatuSuro wasn't sure about this idea, so I posted the following to explain it more:

If you mean my suggestion to remove references to White's and Brothers' books, then I apologise, haven't explained myself properly. My argument is that while White's and Brother's books were initially very useful because they identified islands in the area such that otherwise we would have had no clue as to what islands actually made up the group, their usefulness has passed, to the extent that they are actually a bit misleading. Things have changed a bit as we have learnt more. For example, try this:

• go to the Maatsuyker article and click on the coordinates for e.g. Maatsuyker.
• click on the third "find this location" line, the one for Multimap
• set the scale to 1:500000

You will now see the Maatsuyker Group labelled. De Witt, Maatsuyker itself are labelled and are clearly part of the group. You have to search way to the south-east to find Pedra Branca - it is quite clearly not part of the group. Looking at Ile du Golfe, it looks a bit questionable to me and looks like it is an island not far away, but not part of the group. If it is not part of the group, then it doesn't really belong in an article about the group, unless maybe in a section called "Nearby Islands". Even then, I question the value of mentioning islands that are not part of the group when we aren't even sure we can identify the islands that _are_ in the group.

Now look at reference 4 at http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/IslandCare/southern_islands.pdf. This gives the location of all the islands it describes, and also indicates where the islands are part of the Maatsuyker Group (might mention other groups, I haven't read it all). It's actually a pretty comprehensive description of all the islands, and gives a lot of material to expand Flora and Fauna, as well as giving positions for everything.

From reading all this I conclude that White's and Brothers books are very likely good references for the area generally, particularly from a historical viewpoint, but they suffer from two defects now:

• they are not immediately accessible, which makes them lower quality references for our purposes. I think this is a significant point. Being able to get to a book is at least as important as the fact of the book's existence. For example I doubt I would be able to get acceptance of the origin of the name Maatsuyker had it not been for such a high-quality immediately accessible reference as Abel Tasman's log in Project Gutenberg. I don't mean to denigrate White and Brothers at all. Brothers features in several other references, and is obviously a skilled and experienced scientist and author....but his CSIRO magazine articles are more use to us for the Maatsuyker article than his book.
• they are misleading when looking at the Maatsuyker Group becuase they are not focussed on that group, they are focussed on ALL the islands in the area. This means they are less useful when trying to identify what islands are in the group.

Possibly I am being a bit extreme in suggesting reference to White's and Brothers' books be removed entirely. I am quite happy to agree to this. Maybe they should be retained as external references. However I don't think they should be retained in the current place in the article, and I don't think the section "Named Islands" has any value any more - there are simply too many other, better, references now.

Phaedrus86 02:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I looked up the location of a few more of the "named" islands. Breaksea Island, Kathleen Island, Trumpeter Islets, are all the other side of South-West Cape from Maatsuyker, so quite a distance away.

One solution to the confusion might be to create a new article such as Islands of Southern Tasmania, but there a _lot_ of these islands. Just looking at the map near Breaksea Island, which is in Port Davey, I can see a bunch of islands not even mentioned so far: Big Caroline Rock, Hay Island, Swainson Island, Sugarloaf Rock, Muttonbird Island. An article for each of them seems a bit overkill - some of these rocks are pretty insignificant.

However an article listing all the known islands and groups, with their positions, plus references that apply to the islands generally, such as White's and Brothers' books and the Small Southern Islands Conservation Management Statement 2002 seems useful. Such an article could maybe list for each island:

• position
• nearby islands or group it is a member of
• brief details of what it is noted for (penguin colony, seals, shipwrecks etc)
• references - i.e. where referred to

Maybe group them by locality, such as Port Davey to South-West Cape, South-West Cape to South-East Cape, and so on.

Phaedrus86 13:42, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

That won't do, too specific. They should have category Islands of Australia added, and use the See Also section to link to nearby or otherwise relevant other islands or places.

Phaedrus86 22:42, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

See List of islands of Tasmania. Rangasyd (talk) 12:36, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

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