The Southern Ocean is one of the wildest places on Earth. It’s the furthest ocean south on the planet and wraps right around Antartica, beneath Australian, South America and South Africa.
There’s a pretty low amount of land in the Southern Ocean and because of the super cold temperatures in the south and the heat from the north, really strong winds are formed that travel west right around the world.
These strong winds and currents are known as the Roaring Forties and have helped to create a lot of history! The Dutch East India Company use to sail from the bottom of South Africa over to modern day Indonesia. Many years later, the English would sail to the south of Africa and use these winds to push them over to Australia.
During the Australian Gold Rush Era of the 1850’s-1920’s, millions of people migrated to the land down under and sailed through the Southern Ocean. Most of them arrived well-and-good, although thousands of people died when their ships crashed into the notorious Shipwreck Coast on the Great Ocean Road. The most famous being at Loch Ard Gorge in the Port Campbell National Park where two people survived.
The Southern Ocean is quite cold, but it has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world and most certainly the most diverse animal, plant life and geology of any ocean or coastline on the planet.
