Sunday Island and Hog Deer

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I wrote about Wednesday, Thursday and Friday Islands so I went looking for islands named for the other days of the week. I thought Sunday Island was worth writing about. It lies on the coast of Victoria and is a barrier island, low-lying and sandy. It’s 8 kms long by 3 km wide and has a maximum height of 15 metres above mean sea level (halfway between high and low tide). What makes it interesting is that it is a private property, a game reserve owned by the Para Park Co-operative Game Reserve Limited. Most of the members belong to the Sporting Shooters Association and purchased the island for the conservation, study and sustainable hunting of hog deer. Hog deer (Axis porcinus) are native to the Indian subcontinent and Ind-Gangetic Plain. The name comes from their habit of running with their head held low and ducking under obstacles in the forest rather than leaping over them like most deer. Males are around 70cm high and weigh 55 kg but females are smaller and lighter. They are the smallest of Australia’s feral deer species. Image courtesy: Tristan Jobin, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons7/4/2025