“Seeing vapour emanating from both of Australia's active volcanoes and witnessing an eruption at Mawson Peak have been an amazing coda to this week's submarine research.”
Voyage chief scientist Mike Coffin describing the rare moment in late January 2016 when the crew of CSIRO research vessel Investigator witnessed Big Ben erupting.
— Mike Coffin, Heard & McDonald Islands
Source: Mike Coffin, quoted in CSIRO, 'Big Ben Erupts: Australia's active volcano cluster blows its lid', February 2016
More Proverbs from Heard & McDonald Islands
We were all the time nearing the object, and on looking again the Captain pronounced it to be land.
The moment aboard the Oriental in 1853 when Fidelia and John Heard realized the distant shape they had first mistaken for an iceberg was in fact an undiscovered island.
I think it must be a twin to Desolation Island; it is certainly a frigid looking place.
Fidelia Heard's first written description of the newly sighted island, comparing it to the already-known Kerguelen Islands, then commonly called Desolation Island.
We put up a flag and buried a capsule with the proclamation.
Stuart Campbell recalling how he improvised the formal claiming of Heard Island for Australia on 26 December 1947, having received orders with no instructions on how to conduct the ceremony.
Even here, at the edge of the world, the fingerprints of global warming are unmistakable.
A 2025 comment on new research showing Heard Island's glaciers had retreated by nearly a quarter since 1947, underscoring that climate change reaches even the planet's most remote, uninhabited places.
It was absolute magic, a magic that was never to fade.
Grahame Budd's description of his first impression of Heard Island, a feeling he said endured across his many later Antarctic expeditions.
Four days later the weather cleared, and after a nine-hour climb we reached the summit, elated and relieved to have climbed our mountain at last.
Budd recalling the moment on 25 January 1965 when he and four companions completed the first ascent of Big Ben (Mawson Peak) after days of storm delay.