Flag: Heard & McDonald Islands Emoji

The flag of Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI), an Australian external territory in the sub-Antarctic Indian Ocean, roughly 4,000 km southwest of Perth and 1,700 km north of Antarctica. The territory has never had a permanent population and has never adopted its own flag. On most platforms the 🇭🇲 emoji renders as the Australian National Flag (Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter/X), which is what flies at the ruins of the ANARE station at Atlas Cove during infrequent scientific visits.

There are two inhabited realities for 🇭🇲. ISO 3166-1 assigns the territory the alpha-2 code HM, which is why the emoji exists as a distinct regional-indicator sequence at all (U+1F1EDU+1F1ED + U+1F1F2U+1F1F2). In practice, the flag is only ever raised by visiting Australian Antarctic Division expeditions, Royal Australian Navy patrols, and the handful of CCAMLR-licensed toothfish fishing vessels working Australia's HIMI exclusive economic zone.

The emoji landed in Unicode Emoji 1.0 (2015) alongside most regional-indicator flag sequences. For five years it sat in the bottom 1% of flag usage on social. Then in April 2025 the entire thing went spectacularly viral for a reason nobody had planned for.

🇭🇲's social history has two clear phases: before April 2025 and after.

Before April 2025, the flag was posted by roughly three audiences in vanishingly small numbers: Australian Antarctic Division scientists and AAD social accounts on the rare occasions HIMI-adjacent fieldwork was being done; the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program posting about Mawson Peak eruption reports (most recently in January 2024, when French oceanographers observed a lava flow from the Sibex expedition); and penguin-conservation accounts referencing the king penguin rookery, estimated at 200,000+ breeding pairs.

Then on 2 April 2025, the Trump administration's Reciprocal Tariffs announcement included Heard Island and McDonald Islands on the list of jurisdictions facing a 10% tariff on US imports. HIMI has no exports, no population, no economy, no phone service, and no internet-accessible infrastructure. The idea that the US had imposed a tariff on a place inhabited entirely by penguins, seals, and one active volcano became one of the most-shared trade-policy moments of 2025.

The viral response was enormous. Penguin memes filled r/whenthe, X, Bluesky, and TikTok. Newsweek ran a 'Penguins to Stage Protest' headline; the conservation group Penguins International livestreamed the April 16 penguin migration as the 'Protest March of the Penguins.' Al Jazeera ran a straight-faced diplomacy explainer. For a week in April 2025, HIMI was probably the fifth or sixth most-discussed flag emoji on the internet, which is an unprecedented outcome for a territory with zero humans.

Post-April, 🇭🇲 has settled at an elevated but quieter baseline. The tariff window reminded a global audience that the territory exists and has a meme-ready combination: penguins, a volcano, no people, an Australian flag flying over it.

• 🏛️
  Capital: None (uninhabited). Atlas Cove has ANARE station ruins.
• 👥
  Population: 0 permanent residents. Rotating scientific crews of up to ~14 people, roughly every 10-15 years.
• 🏝️
  Area: ~412 km² (Heard 368 km², McDonald 2.45 km², Shag Islet and other outliers)
• 🏔️
  Highest point: Mawson Peak / Big Ben (2,745 m). Australia's highest mountain.
• 💵
  Currency: Australian dollar (no in-territory transactions)
• 🗣️
  Languages: English (administration only)
• 📞
  Calling code: No telephone service
• ⏰
  Time zone: Indian/Kerguelen (UTC+5)
• 🌐
  Internet TLD: .hm (rarely used, <1,000 active registrations)
• 🇦🇺
  Sovereign territory: Australian external territory since 26 December 1947. Administered by the Australian Antarctic Division.

Heard Island was first sighted on 25 November 1853 by Captain John Heard of the American merchant vessel Oriental, on a cargo run from Boston to Melbourne. Heard claimed the island for the United States, but the US government declined to endorse the claim. A few weeks later, on 4 January 1854, Captain William McDonald of the Samarang sighted the smaller McDonald Islands about 44 km to the west. Neither captain landed.

The first recorded landing came in 1855, when Captain Erasmus Darwin Rogers of the American sealer Corinthian went ashore at Oil Barrel Point to hunt elephant seals. The island was occupied by sealers between 1855 and 1882: more than 40 vessels collectively made over 100 visits, boiling seal blubber into oil. By 1882 the elephant-seal population had collapsed and the sealers left. The island reverted to being uninhabited.

The UK claimed HIMI in 1908 as part of post-imperial tidying of sub-Antarctic territories. It was never inhabited under UK administration. On 26 December 1947, the territory was transferred to Australia as part of the same Commonwealth sub-Antarctic settlement that moved Norfolk Island fully under Australian administration. On 11 December 1947, the first Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition (ANARE) landed at Atlas Cove and established a research station with 14 men. It operated until 1955 with rotating 12-14-month crews.

Since 1955, HIMI has had no permanent human presence. Short scientific expeditions have visited roughly every 10-15 years. The AAD's last overland expedition was in 2016; winter storms and a collapsing Atlas Cove station have made longer stays impractical. Mawson Peak, the 2,745 m summit of the Big Ben volcano, has been in continuous intermittent eruption since 2012. At 2,745m it is Australia's highest point, higher than the mainland's Mount Kosciuszko.

The territory was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1997 on the basis of being one of the only sub-Antarctic island groups virtually free of introduced species and human modification. There are no invasive rats, cats, dogs, or grazing mammals. The flora and fauna are almost exactly what evolved in situ.

• •Heard Island was discovered on 25 November 1853 by Captain John Heard of the merchant vessel Oriental. He claimed it for the United States; the US government declined to endorse the claim.
• •Mawson Peak at 2,745 m is Australia's highest mountain, higher than mainland Mount Kosciuszko (2,228 m). Most Australians do not realise this.
• •The king penguin colony on Heard Island is estimated at around 200,000 breeding pairs, among the largest on earth.
• •The territory is one of very few sub-Antarctic island groups with virtually no introduced species. No rats, no cats, no rabbits, no sheep. The flora and fauna are essentially what evolved on their own.
• •The MSC-certified HIMI toothfish and icefish fishery began in April 1997, targets Patagonian toothfish and mackerel icefish, runs up to five vessels per year, and is worth about A$100 million annually to the Australian fishing industry.
• •HIMI has never had a permanent civilian population and has never adopted its own flag. The Australian National Flag is used for all official purposes.
• •The territory has the .hm top-level domain. It is rarely used; the domain has fewer than 1,000 total registrations globally.
• •On 2 April 2025, the Trump administration's Reciprocal Tariffs put a 10% tariff on HIMI despite the territory having no exports, no population, and no economy. The 'Trump tariffs penguins' meme dominated social media for the following week.