Tag: indian ocean

Christmas Island, home of the migrating Red Crabs and endangered Abbott Booby birds, is a place of natural wonder and contradictions. Christmas Island has long been known as the "Galapagos of the Indian Ocean", but it is a place full of contradictions. Today this remote, rugged outpost of Australia is as likely to grab the headlines for its controversial phosphate mining and immigration centre as it is for the island's extraordinary fauna and flora. Christmas Island is so called because it was discovered on 25th December 1643 by Captain William Mynors aboard the ship Royal Mary. But it wasn't settled until 1888 when it was declared a British Colony. Tropical rainforest It is an isolated territory 2600km north of Perth and on the fringes of Asia. It's tropical rainforest ...