Today you’ll meet Bernard Salt, Australia’s most highly regarded trend spotter and demographer, author and columnist with Australia’s national newspaper, The Australian. You’ll learn Bernard’s pick of the best Australian islands within striking distance of a major job market on which to start a new life right now.

Bernard’s crunched the numbers on why regional areas including islands are likely to be Australia’s post virus property winners - we’re going to be talking about why.

Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss our Special Episode 27 November 2020, Australian Islands: Points of First Contact, with Bernard Salt.

Enjoy Bernard’s notes below on interesting Australian islands. To learn more about Bernard Salt and his work, go to: https://www.bernard-salt.com.au/. Bernard’s column in the Australia where he identified the rush to the regions was published on 20/6/20, you can find it here: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/Bernard%20Salt

Interesting Australian Islands
Notes by Bernard Salt AM
July 2020

•Coochiemudlo Island located 1 km off Victoria Point on the Brisbane Coast and forming part of the Moreton Bay island group. More than 700 people live on Coochie, which was first discovered by Europeans in 1799 when Matthew Flinders landed there. It’s possible to live on Coochie and commute to Brisbane CBD in about an hour.
•Kangaroo Island located 10 km off South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula coast. The island is home to 5,000 residents. It was cited by both Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin (who named it Ile Bouda) in 1802. The island’s biggest town, Kingscote, was the first colonial settlement in South Australia founded in July 1836 some five months prior to the founding of Adelaide.
•Browse Islet is a small uninhabited island 180 km off the Kimberley Coast (north of Derby). Browse Islet is the first place that a hostile force (the Japanese) landed in January 1944 when a party of 6 was on a reconnaissance mission to see whether the Americans were developing a naval base nearby. The used Browse Islet as a safe base from which to explore the (Kimberley) mainland, where they landed, wandered around for half a day or so, and left seeing and reporting nothing of interest.
•Boundary Islet is a small (2 ha) uninhabited island located 56 km southeast of Wilson’s Promontory which is the southernmost tip of Victoria. In 1801 Bass Strait was discovered by Europeans who then set about determining the boundary between Tasmania (then Van Diemen’s Land) and the then colony of New South Wales which extended from Wilson’s Promontory to Cape York. A latitude line was determined that allocated most Bass Strait Islands to Tasmania, but Boundary Islet’s precise location was incorrectly determined as being a km or so further north, placing it in what would have been Victoria’s offshore island remit. More accurate surveying two decades later found that the gazetted and agreed state boundary latitude actually dissected one island, namely Boundary Islet. Accordingly, the modern-day boundary between Victoria and Tasmania includes an 85-metre common land boundary running east-west through Boundary Islet in the Hogan Group of islands. And so, yes, it is possible to walk from Victoria to Tasmania… on Boundary Islet.
•Montague Island is located 9 km off the coast from Narooma; it is uninhabited; it was sighted by Captain Cook in 1770 and given its current name by the master of the second fleet in 1789.
•Tiwi Island is located 50 km off the Darwin coast and contains a largely indigenous population of just over 2,000. A catholic priest stationed on Tiwi saw and reported incoming ‘formation’ aircraft in February 1942 about 20 minutes in advance of the bombing of Darwin. The alert was miss-identified as returning American planes and so no action was taken to prepare Darwin for the imminent raid.
•Abrolhos Islands located 80 km west of Geraldton was the site of the Batavia shipwreck in 1629. This is a ripping (and tragic) yarn that took place just off the Australian coast but within what we would now call Australian sovereign territory.

This episode's key words: Coochiemudlo Island, Southern Moreton Bay Islands, Moreton Bay Islands, Brisbane, Moreton Bay Island Group, Redlands Coast, rush to the regions, work from home, demography, Australian islands, downshift, downsize, seachange, baby boomers, lifestyle, start a new life, living on an island, property, families, affordable housing, major job markets

About This Podcast: Join Rachael Krinks and guests from Australia and around the world who have started new lives on islands. We talk to ordinary folk who decided to start a new life living on an island, as well as bloggers, academics and other experts on all things island … we’ll help you figure out if island life is for you and how to make the shift successful. If you want to start a new life living on an island, this podcast is for you.
https://coochieislandnews.com/podcast

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