Flinders Island

▪ island, Tasmania, Australia

      northernmost and largest island of the Furneaux Group, northern Tasmania, southeastern Australia. It lies in eastern Bass Strait, between Tasmania and the Australian mainland, and is named for Matthew Flinders, the English navigator who surveyed its coasts in 1798. The island, with an area of about 800 square miles (2,080 square km), is hilly, rising to Strzelecki Peaks, 2,552 feet (778 metres), in the south. It is indented with numerous bays; those on the west coast are rimmed with terra rossa (red earth) soils and support cattle and sheep. The main settlement is at Whitemark, on the west coast. The island produces fine-quality food products and is a sanctuary for the Cape Barren goose. It was long a major centre for people of mixed European and Aboriginal descent.

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