McDonald Islands (volcano) McDonald Islands (volcano) The McDonald Islands () are the peaks of a volcano in the southern Indian Ocean in the vicinity of Heard Island (). The islands are Australian external territory. Prior to 1992, the volcano had not erupted in the previous 75,000 years. The McDonald Islands volcano comprises three islands: McDonald Island, Flat Island (which later merged with McDonald Island) and Meyer Rock. The islands are mostly composed of phonolitic low-silica pumice, dikes and lava domes, and sit atop a submarine plateau, the Kerguelen plateau. They are located about 75 km from Heard Island. McDonald Island is the largest
Under the Volcano 1984 it served as the basis of a film of the same name. In 1998 the Modern Library ranked "Under the Volcano" at number 11 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Lowry had already published one novel, "Ultramarine" (1933), by the time he was working on "Under the Volcano", and in 1936 wrote a short story called "Under the Volcano" containing the kernel of the future novel. That story was not published until the 1960s; passages of it are found also in the account of Sigbjorn Wilderness, found in "Dark as the Grave