Icebergs on Stamps…

Date of Issue : 7 June 2011

Here is a set of 4 new stamps and a MS issued by Australian Antarctic Territory depicting picturesque view of icebergs. In addition to stamps and MS, Stamp booklet and Max cards have also been issued.

Icebergs

Literally meaning ice mountain, an iceberg is a large piece of ice formed from freshwater that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice-shelf and is floating in open water.

The largest recorded icebergs have been carved, or broken off, from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Iceberg B-15, when photographed in 2000, measured 295 km long by 37 km wide, with a surface area of 11,000 kilometres. Icebergs are generally described by shape and include tabular, dome, pinnacle, wedge and dry-dockan eroded iceberg resulting in a "hole".

Including all its islands and ice shelves, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia, covering 13,661,000 square kilometres. The Australian Antarctic Territory is 5,896,500 square kilometres, or 42 per cent of the region.

The stamps in this issue capture the beauty of icebergs, revealing their different shapes, colours, effects and textures.

: Australia Post

Australian Antarctic Territory

The Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT) is a part of Antarctica. It was claimed by the United Kingdom and placed under the authority of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1933. It is the largest territory of Antarctica claimed by any nation. Since the Antarctic Treaty came into force in 1961, Article 1 of which states "The treaty does not recognize, dispute, nor establish territorial sovereignty claims; no new claims shall be asserted while the treaty is in force", most countries do not recognize territorial claims in Antarctica.

The territory is inhabited by the staff of research stations. The Australian Antarctic Division administers the area primarily by maintaining three year-round stations (Mawson, Davis and Casey), which support various research projects.

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: Ashwani Dubey, Gorakhapur