Pulu Keeling National Park

Twenty-four kilometres north of the inhabited atoll, North Keeling rings its lagoon as Pulu Keeling National Park - the group's sanctuary absolute, uninhabited and landing-restricted, where the seabird metropolis compensates the emptiness: red-footed boobies in tens of thousands, frigatebirds, terns and the endemic Cocos buff-banded rail holding its recovered numbers on the one ring where cats and rats never ruled. The park's history includes the SMS Emden's 1914 end on the reef - the wreck's remnants a protected footnote. Landings run rare, permitted and swell-dependent through the park's arrangements; the sanctuary's point is precisely how seldom.

Background

North Keeling is a coral atoll of approximately 1.2 square kilometres. It lies about 25 kilometres to the north of Horsburgh Island. It is a single C-shaped island, a ring almost closed around a lagoon of about 0.5 square kilometres, with a small opening of about 50 metres on its eastern side. The national park dates from 12 December 1995 and reaches 1.5 kilometres out to sea. It became Ramsar Site 797 on 17 March 1996. A Swedish captain, Ekeberg, sketched the island in 1749 with coconut palms on it. In 1836 Robert FitzRoy and Charles Darwin came by in the Beagle but could not land. After Cyclone John hit the red-footed booby colony in 1989, legal hunting stopped.

Source: Wikipedia, "North Keeling"

What you'll find

• The booby metropolis - tens of thousands on the ring.
• The endemic rail - the recovered island survivor.
• The sanctuary lagoon - the closed ring's green-blue heart.
• The Emden footnote - the 1914 wreck's protected trace.

When to go

April to October in principle - permits, park arrangements and swell govern the rare landings entirely.

Before you go

Access is deliberately exceptional - most visitors meet the park as a horizon and a story; that scarcity is the conservation working.

Nearby

The southern atoll's islands across the open water.

Key facts