Qualla: Hardy Island

Hardy Island: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hameltion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Look at a chart of the Sunshine Coast and you will find Nelson Island and Hardy Island separated by about 250 metres of green water. The pairing is not an accident. On 21 October 1805, off Cape Trafalgar, Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson was hit by a French musket ball on the quarterdeck of HMS Victory and carried below, and the man he asked for, twice, as he lay dying in the cockpit was his flag captain, Thomas Masterman Hardy. Half a century later and eight thousand kilometres away, British surveyors charting a wet, fjord-cut coast on the far side of the world set the two men down on the water side by side - and there they remain, two granite islands at the mouth of Jervis Inlet, still keeping the same distance.

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Image: Hameltion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hardy Island: The Captain in the Cockpit

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hameltion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Hardy was the steady one. He had walked the quarterdeck of Victory beside Nelson through the approach at Trafalgar, in full view of French sharpshooters in the tops, and when Nelson was carried below he came down twice to report on the battle. The exchange between them is among t...

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Image: Hameltion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hardy Island: Where the Inlet Lets Go

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Hardy Island covers 7.25 square kilometres of rock and second-growth forest, and its position is more interesting than its size. Jervis Inlet - 89 kilometres long, 670 metres deep at its deepest, the deepest fjord on the British Columbia coast - reaches the open sea here, and the...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Hardy Island: Blind Bay in a Southeaster

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hameltion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Which is why Blind Bay matters far out of proportion to its size. Malaspina Strait is a funnel, and when a winter southeaster sets up in it, the water in the strait becomes a short, hard, unpleasant chop that tugboats hauling log booms cannot safely work in. Blind Bay, tucked bet...

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Image: Hameltion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hardy Island: A Park With No Trails and No Water

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hameltion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Near the island's southern tip, together with neighbouring Musket Island, lies Hardy Island Marine Provincial Park - reached from either Malaspina Strait or Jervis Inlet through Telescope Passage, and reached only by boat. It is a marine park in the most literal sense. There are ...

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Image: Hameltion | CC BY-SA 4.0