Heard Island and McDonald Islands are a sub-Antarctic group of barren volcanic islands.
Discovered in the mid-19th century, they became territories of Australia in 1947. In 1996 they became an external territory of the Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand. As with other uninhabited territories, their administration is divided among several departments. Since the mid-2000s an interdepartmental board meets annually to coordinate the different government activities related to them.
The group's overall size is 372 sq km (144 sq mi) in area and it has 101.9 km of coastline. The islands have no permanent population. They contain the only two active volcanoes in what is now ANZC territory, one of which, Mawson Peak, is the highest mountain in all of the ANZC.
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