Hinchinbrook Island

Hinchinbrook Island lies east of Cardwell and north of Lucinda, separated from the northern coast of Queensland, Australia by the narrow Hinchinbrook Channel. Hinchinbrook Island is part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and wholly protected within the Hinchinbrook Island National Park, except for a small and abandoned resort. It is the largest island on the Great Barrier Reef. It is also the largest island national park in Australia.Natural heritageHinchinbrook Island is made up of late Palaeozoic igneous rocks. The main 16km pluton in the east of the island, the Hinchinbrook Granite, is composed of various hypersolvus granites and intrudes volcanics, granodiorites, and granites. The island and coastal ranges are thought to have been thrust up as blocks with subsidence between them to form the coastal plain with the summit level of the island being an older dissected surface that has been uplifted to approximately 1km or more above sea level. The Hinchinbrook Channel that separates the island from the mainland is considered to be fault controlled.