The Kent Group of islands is located in Eastern Bass Strait in an area of water lying between the north east of Tasmania and south east of Wilson's Promontory on mainland Australia. The group is approximately 70 km south east of Wilson's Promontory in Tasmanian state waters.

The Kent Group consists of three islands Dover, Erith and Deal. Deal Island is the largest of the three islands.

In a southeasterly direction from Wilson's Promontory, Victoria, the main island groups are the Moncoeur Group, the Hogan Group, the Curtis Group, the Kent Group and the Furneaux Group. Apart from the larger Furneaux Island group, of the smaller island groups the Kent Group provides sheltered anchorage and a resident caretaker on Deal Island. Deal Island lays claim to the highest lighthouse in the Southern Hemisphere. Although the lighthouse was decommissioned in 1992 the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania runs a program of placing volunteer caretakers on Deal Island to help look after the islands natural and historic heritage.

History

In 1798, on his way to Preservation Island to rescue survivors of the Sydney Cove, Matthew Flinders becomes the first non-Aboriginal to sight and record the Kent Group. Flinders named the group after Lieutenant Kent, the captain of the Supply, which sailed from England as a tender vessel to British Naval ship, the Reliance.

Lieutenant Murray on the Lady Nelson visited the group a few years on. Thinking that the island group was named after the English County of Kent, a sentimental Murray imaginatively named the three islands of the group as Dover, Erith and Deal Islands. As a reminder of his visit, his name makes it into the charts as Murray Pass.

Source:

Deal Island Network

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