Tasmania is an island state of Australia. It is located 240 kilometres to the south of the Australian mainland, and is separated from it by the Bass Strait. The state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 1000 islands. It is Australia's smallest and least populous state, with 573,479 residents as of June 2023. The state capital and largest city is Hobart, with around 40% of the population living in the Greater Hobart area. Tasmania is the most decentralised state in Australia, with the lowest proportion of its residents living within its capital city.
Van Diemen's Land was the colonial name of the island of Tasmania used by the British during the European exploration and colonisation of Australia in the 19th century. The island was previously discovered and named by the Dutch in 1642. Explorer Abel Tasman discovered the island, working under the sponsorship of Anthony van Diemen, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. The British retained the name when they established a settlement in 1803 before it became a separate colony in 1825. Its penal colonies became notorious destinations for the transportation of convicts due to the harsh environment, isolation and reputation for being inescapable.
The history of Tasmania begins at the end of the Last Glacial Period when it is believed that the island was joined to the Australian mainland. Little is known of the human history of the island until the British colonisation of Tasmania in the 19th century.
Risdon Cove is a cove located on the east bank of the Derwent River, approximately 7 kilometres (4 mi) north of Hobart, Tasmania. It was the site of the first British settlement in Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, the island state of Australia. The cove was named by John Hayes, who mapped the river in the ship Duke of Clarence in 1794, after his second officer William Bellamy Risdon.
Richmond is a town in Tasmania about 25 km north-east of Hobart, in the Coal River region, between the Midland Highway and Tasman Highway. At the 2006 census, Richmond had a population of 880.
Davey Street is a major one way street passing through the outskirts of the Hobart City Centre in Tasmania, Australia. Davey street is named after Thomas Davey, the first Governor of Van Diemen's Land. The street forms a one-way couplet with nearby Macquarie Street connecting traffic from the Southern Outlet in the south with traffic from the Tasman Highway to the east and the Brooker Highway to the north of the city. With annual average daily traffic of 37,200, the road is one of the busier streets in Hobart.
Ben Lomond is a mountain in the north-east of Tasmania, Australia.
Evandale is an historic town in northern Tasmania, Australia. It sits on the banks of the South Esk River, 18 km south of Launceston. Named after early colonial explorer and Surveyor-General George Evans, the town is famous for its late-Georgian and early-Victorian buildings with relatively untouched streetscape, a popular Sunday market and as a host to the annual national Penny Farthing Bicycle Championships. At the 2016 census, Evandale had a population of 1,345.
The modern history of the Australian city of Hobart in Tasmania dates to its foundation as a British colony in 1804. Prior to British settlement, the area had been occupied definitively for at least 8,000 years, and possibly for as long as 35,000 years, by the semi-nomadic Mouheneener tribe, a sub-group of the Nuenonne, or South-East tribe. The descendants of theses indigenous Tasmanians now refer to themselves as 'Palawa'. Little is known about the region from prehistoric times. As with many other Australia cities, urbanisation has destroyed much of the archaeological evidence of indigenous occupation, although aboriginal middens are often still present in coastal areas.
The Tasmanian emu is an extinct subspecies of emu. It was found in Tasmania, where it had become isolated during the Late Pleistocene. As opposed to the other insular emu taxa, the King Island emu and the Kangaroo Island emu, the population on Tasmania was sizable, meaning that there were no marked effects of small population size as in the other two isolates.
Benjamin Duterrau was an English painter, etcher, engraver, sculptor and art lecturer who emigrated to Tasmania. There he became known for his images of Indigenous people and Australian history paintings.
Musquito was an Indigenous Australian resistance leader, convict hunter and outlaw based firstly in the Sydney region of the British colony of New South Wales and later in Van Diemen's Land.
Campbell Town is a town in Tasmania, Australia, on the Midland Highway. At the 2021 census, the town had a population of 823.
George Adams was an Australian publican and lottery promoter best known as the founder of Tattersall's.
Mount Barrow is a mountain in the northern region of Tasmania, Australia. With an elevation of 1,406 metres (4,613 ft) above sea level, the mountain is located 22 kilometres (14 mi) east-north-east of Launceston. The mountain habitat is a mixture of temperate old growth rainforest, subalpine and alpine landscapes.
The Colony of Tasmania was a British colony that existed on the island of Tasmania from 1856 until 1901, when it federated together with the five other Australian colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia. The possibility of the colony was established when the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the Australian Constitutions Act in 1850, granting the right of legislative power to each of the six Australian colonies. The Legislative Council of Van Diemen's Land drafted a new constitution which they passed in 1854, and it was given royal assent by Queen Victoria in 1855. Later in that year the Privy Council approved the colony changing its name from "Van Diemen's Land" to "Tasmania", and in 1856, the newly elected bicameral parliament of Tasmania sat for the first time, establishing Tasmania as a self-governing colony of the British Empire. Tasmania was often referred to as one of the "most British" colonies of the Empire.
Norman James Brian Plomley regarded by some as one of the most respected and scholarly of Australian historians and, until his death, in Launceston, the doyen of Tasmanian Aboriginal scholarship.
Richard Jarman was an artist, map-maker, and engraver who was active in London prior to 1857 and in Tasmania between 1857 and the 1870s.
The Roving Party is a 2011 novel written by Tasmanian author Rohan Wilson. Wilson's first book, it is published by Allen & Unwin. The Roving Party won the 2011 Vogel Award. The novel was also shortlisted for the 2011 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction.
On 11 and 12 February 1851, teams from Van Diemen's Land and Port Phillip District played the first cricket match between two Australian colonies, recognised in later years as the inaugural first-class cricket match in Australia. It took place at the Launceston Racecourse, known now as the NTCA Ground, in Tasmania. The match was incorporated into celebrations marking the separation of the Port Phillip District from New South Wales in 1851 as the colony of Victoria.
