Jervis Bay Territory
Acquired in 1915 to give landlocked ACT access to the sea—67 km² for a port that never materialized. Naval college came, commercial shipping didn't; now conservation refuge and military training base. 310 people inhabit Australia's appendix—vestigial federal territory repurposed, too awkward to remove.
Jervis Bay Territory is Australia's appendix—acquired for a function that never developed, too awkward to remove, quietly repurposed. When parliament carved the Australian Capital Territory out of New South Wales in 1911, someone noticed the new federal territory had no coastline. The Seat of Government Act of 1908 specified that the ACT should have access to the sea, 110 miles away. In 1915, the Commonwealth convinced NSW to cede 67 square kilometres of spectacular coastline at Jervis Bay. The plan: build a naval base and commercial port for landlocked Canberra.
The base came; the port didn't. HMAS Creswell opened in 1915 as the Royal Australian Naval College, training officers on shores surrounded by what would become Booderee National Park. But the industrial shipping facilities—the docks, the warehouses, the rail connection to Canberra—never materialized. Why haul goods 180 kilometres inland when Sydney's port sat closer to everywhere else? The territory remained federal land, administered from Canberra, but the economic justification evaporated.
By the 1990s, most of Jervis Bay Territory had become Booderee National Park, handed back to the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community in 1995 under joint management with Parks Australia. Hyams Beach, within the territory, holds the Guinness World Record for the whitest sand on Earth—pure quartz particles ground fine over millennia. Tourism replaced the port that never was. Summer 2024-25 saw Booderee expect bumper visitor numbers, with park passes requiring advance booking. Road upgrades through 2025 accommodate visitors, not freight.
As of 2021, only 310 people live in the Jervis Bay Territory permanently. Most residents work at HMAS Creswell or in park management. The territory generates no significant tax revenue, contributes no electoral votes, and exists in administrative limbo—not part of the ACT despite being acquired for that purpose, not returned to NSW despite the original rationale disappearing. It's governed by federal ministers for territories, its laws made in Canberra, its identity somewhere between military enclave and ecological showcase.
By 2026, Jervis Bay Territory represents the opposite of the ACT's problem: instead of monoculture vulnerability to government employment cuts, it's a vestigial structure that found new purpose. The whitest sand on Earth doesn't need a deep-water port. Sometimes evolution discards the original function and keeps the shell.