In reply to Captain Fastrousers:
> I generally think of Australians as being surprisingly knowledgeable about the Antarctic/sub-Antarctic territories, but my view is probably a bit skewed by living in Tassie.
Nah, most Australians are pretty clueless about it all, unfortunately. We like to make fun of an American's geographical ignorance but we're not much better, and we should be, at least on this issue. Lots of people are amazed when I talk about climbing there because they didn't realise there were any mountains in Antarctica - just all flat. They know the government goes out of Hobart, Mawson got sick eating his dogs, and "we own a bit of it" and that's pretty much all. Oh, and it's melting, isn't it?
AntDiv controls the *permitting* for Heard Island, and to be fair, they're pretty open to visitation by non-government groups, but the logistical access itself is the main issue - having gone partway through this myself - and therefore SAR is virtually impossible, worse than for the Antarctic continent. Sailing there in a yacht is quite dangerous and there is no useful air access/evac. A rescue ship would be days away and then might not be able to land a response team. It really is a serious place and the Australian government doesn't want people getting into trouble there, all on top of the contamination and wildlife issues.