The ship's commander Captain Ernest Gaunt went ashore accompanied by five officers and around 200 seamen, erecting the Union Jack on a flagpole and singing "God Save the King", while Cambrian returned a 21-gun salute.

When self-government was granted to the Northern Territory on 1 July 1978, administration of Ashmore and Cartier Islands was retained by the Commonwealth.

The Age reported that Johnson had been unable to land due to rough seas and regarded the islands as "almost valueless".

This allows traditional Indonesian fishermen to access parts of Ashmore for shelter, freshwater and to visit grave sites.

[22] The Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs recommended in a 1991 report that the Northern Territory annex the islands.

[29] The area around the Ashmore and Cartier Islands has been a traditional fishing ground of Indonesian fishermen for centuries, and continues to be.

[4] As Ashmore Reef is the closest point of Australian territory to Indonesia, it was a popular target for people smugglers transporting asylum seekers en route to Australia.

[31] Once they had landed on Ashmore Island, asylum seekers could claim to have entered Australian migration zone and request to be processed as refugees.

The use of Ashmore Island for this purpose created great notoriety during late 2001, when refugee arrivals became a major political issue in Australia.

[citation needed] A number of measures were taken to discourage the use of the territory for this purpose, such as attempting to have the people smugglers arrested in Indonesia; the so-called Pacific Solution of processing them in third countries; the boarding and forced turnaround of the boats by Australian military forces; and finally excising the territory and many other small islands from the Australian migration zone.

[32] In October 2001, the Royal Australian Navy detained two Indonesian boats carrying asylum seekers for seven days in the Ashmore Island lagoon.