Literally meaning ice mountain, an iceberg is a large piece of ice formed from freshwater that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice-shelf and is floating in open water.

The largest recorded icebergs have been carved, or broken off, from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Iceberg B-15, when photographed in 2000, measured 295 km long by 37 km wide, with a surface area of 11,000 kilometres. Icebergs are generally described by shape and include tabular, dome, pinnacle, wedge and dry-dockan eroded iceberg resulting in a “hole”.

Including all its islands and ice shelves, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia, covering 13,661,000 square kilometres. The Australian Antarctic Territory is 5,896,500 square kilometres, or 42 per cent of the region. 

The stamps in this issue capture the beauty of icebergs, revealing their different shapes, colours, effects and textures.

Issue Highlights
The background image of the minisheet shows the changing colours and hues of opalescent blue projected against the white landscape of Antarctica. The stamps are presented in a block of four.

Technical details

published June 14th, 2011