Furneaux Group
The Furneaux Group is a group of approximately 100 islands located at the eastern end of Bass Strait, between Victoria and Tasmania, Australia. The islands were named after British navigator Tobias Furneaux, who sighted the eastern side of these islands after leaving Adventure Bay in 1773 on his way to New Zealand to rejoin Captain James Cook. Navigator Matthew Flinders was the first European to explore the Furneaux Islands group, in the in 1798, and later that year in the . The largest islands in the group are Flinders Island, Cape Barren Island, and Clarke Island. The group contains  five settlements: Killiecrankie, Emita, Lady Barron, Cape Barren Island, and Whitemark on Flinders Island, which serves as the administrative centre of the Flinders Council. There are also some small farming properties on the remote islands. After seals were discovered there in 1798, the Furneaux Group of islands became the most intensively exploited sealing ground in Bass Strait. A total of 29 islands in the Furneaux Group have been found to have some tangible link with sealing in the 19th century. The Aboriginal matriarch, Dolly Dalrymple, was born on the Furneaux Islands. Her mother was one of two Aboriginal women who  had been kidnapped from northern Tasmania by the sealer George Briggs. King Island, at the western end of Bass Strait, is not a part of the group. Administration. The Furneaux Group consists of approximately 100 islands. The major ones are: Anderson Island, Babel Island, Badger Island, Billy Goat Reefs, Big Green Island, Briggs Islet, Cat Island, Chalky Island, Cooties Reef, Doughboy Island, East Kangaroo Island, Fisher Island, Fisher Island Reef, Forsyth Island, Great Dog Island, Inner Sister Island, Outer Sister Island, Isabella Island, Little Anderson Island, Little Chalky Island, Little Dog Island, Little Green Island, Long Island, Low Islets, and  another of the same name Low Islets, Middle Pasco Island, Mile Island, Moriarty Rocks, Mount Chappell Island, Neds Reef, Night Island, North Pasco Island, Passage Island (Tasmania), Pelican Island, Prime Seal Island, Puncheon Island, Puncheon Islets, Roydon Island, Rum Island, Samphire Island, Sentinel Island, South Pasco Island, Spences Reefs, Spike Island, Storehouse Island, Swan Island, Tin Kettle Island, Vansittart Island. The Furneaux Group, together with the groups of islands to the north-west Kent Group, Hogan Island Group, Curtis Group, Wilsons Promontory Islands (only Tasmanian part) form the Furneaux Islands Council. Geology. The islands contain granite from the Devonian period , as well as unconsolidated limestone and sand from Cenozoic periods. During the last ice age, a land bridge joined Tasmania to the Australian mainland through this group of islands.