The Chesterfield Islands are in New Caledonia, to the extreme west of the rest of the country (nearly 300 miles).
The many tiny islets of the Chesterfields are little more than small beaches stranded in the middle of the South Pacific. Inhabited only by birds and nesting turtles (of which there are indeed very many), all there is to see is wildlife, all there is to do is sun, swim, and dive.
Captain Matthew Boyd of Bellona named the reefs for his ship. He had delivered convicts to New South Wales in 1793 and was on his way to China to pick up a cargo at Canton to take back to Britain for the British East India Company when he passed the reefs in February–March 1793.
Not to be confused with Minerva Reefs, south of Fiji and Tonga.
There are numerous cays occurring amongst the reefs of both the Chesterfield and Bampton Reefs. These include: Loop Islet, Renard Cay, Skeleton Cay, Bennett Island, Passage Islet, Long Island, the Avon Isles, the Anchorage Islets and Bampton Island.
South of Long Island and Loop Islet there are three small low islets up to 400 m across followed, after a narrow channel, by Passage or Bennett Island, which is 12 m high and was a whaling station in the first half of the 20th century. Several sand cays lie on the reef southeast of the islet.
The two Avon Isles 📍, some 188 m in diameter and 5 m high to the top of the dense vegetation, are situated 21 n.m. north of Long Island. They were seen by Mr. Sumner, Master of the ship Avon, on 18 September 1823, and are described by him as being three-quarters of a mile in circumference, twenty feet high, and the sea between them twenty fathoms deep. At four miles (7 km) northeast by north from them the water was twelve fathoms (72 feet) deep, and at the same time they saw a reef ten or fifteen miles (20–30 km) to the southeast, with deep water between it and the islets. A boat landed on the south-westernmost islet, and found it inhabited only by birds, but clothed with shrubs and wild grapes. By observation, these islands were found to lie in latitude 19 degrees 40 minutes, and longitude 158 degrees 6 minutes. The Avon Isles are described by Denham in 1859 as “densely covered with stunted trees and creeping plants and grass, and... crowded with the like species of birds."
Bampton Island 📍,
North Bampton Reef 📍,
Northeast Bampton Reef 📍,
Bampton Reefs - Renard Island 📍,
Bampton Reefs - Skeleton Cay 📍
Bampton Reefs - Renard Island 📍, Approximately tall sand islet lies 45 km northeast of the Avon Isles and is long, across and also high to the top of the bushes.
Southeast Bampton Reef 📍 Sand Cay elevation
Loop Islet 📍, which lies 85 nm farther north near the south end of the central islands of Chesterfield Reefs, is a small, flat, bushy islet 3 m high where a permanent automatic weather station was established by the Service Météorologique de Nouméa in October 1968. Terry Walker reported the presence of a grove of Casuarinas in 1990.
Anchorage Islets are a group of islets five nautical miles (9 km) north of Loop Islet. The third from the north, about 400 m long and 12 m high, shelters the best anchorage.
Passage (Bonnet) Island reaches a vegetative height of 12 m
The reefs and islands west of the Chesterfield Islands, the closest being Mellish Reef with Herald's Beacon Islet at Herald's Beacon Islet 📍, at a distance of 180 nm northwest of Bampton Island, belong to the Coral Sea Islands Territory.
There is only one method of travel, and that is private yacht—there are no commercial transport options. Owing to the extreme isolation of these islands and to the lack of any facilities or amenities, a trip here can only be called an expedition.
Plan to bring and/or fish for your food and drink.
There is beach camping, and there are your cabins on your boat. There are no other options.
The nearest land mass, aside from Grande Terre, is mainland Queensland nearly 480 km to the west.