The Tasmanian opium poppy farming industry was established in Tasmania in 1966. [1] [2]
Farms in Tasmania produce about 50% [3] of the world's licit poppy straw that is later refined into opiates such as morphine and codeine. [4]
Tasmanian Alkaloids is Tasmania's largest corporate grower of opium poppies. [5]
A downy mildew outbreak in the 2014 poppy-growing season led to one Tasmanian company to look into growing poppies in the Northern Territory and Victoria of Australia. [3]
Hobart is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-smallest if territories are taken into account, before Darwin, Northern Territory. Hobart is located in Tasmania's south-east on the estuary of the River Derwent, making it the most southern of Australia's capital cities. Its skyline is dominated by the 1,271-metre (4,170 ft) kunanyi/Mount Wellington, and its harbour forms the second-deepest natural port in the world, with much of the city's waterfront consisting of reclaimed land. The metropolitan area is often referred to as Greater Hobart, to differentiate it from the City of Hobart, one of the five local government areas that cover the city. It has a mild maritime climate.
Tasmania is an island state of Australia. It is located 240 kilometres (150 miles) to the south of the Australian mainland, separated from it by the Bass Strait, with the archipelago containing the southernmost point of the country. The state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 1000 islands. It is Australia's least populous state, with 569,825 residents as of December 2021. The state capital and largest city is Hobart, with around 40 percent of the population living in the Greater Hobart area.
Devonport is a city in northern Tasmania, Australia, located on the lands of the Pannilerpanner clan of the Palawa nation. It is situated at the mouth of the Mersey River. Devonport had an urban population of 26,150 at the 2021 Australian census.
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Papaver somniferum, commonly known as the opium poppy or breadseed poppy, is a species of flowering plant in the family Papaveraceae. It is the species of plant from which both opium and poppy seeds are derived and is also a valuable ornamental plant, grown in gardens. Its native range is probably the eastern Mediterranean, but is now obscured by ancient introductions and cultivation, being naturalized across much of Europe and Asia.
Nicholas James McKim is an Australian politician, currently a member of the Australian Senate representing Tasmania. He was previously a Tasmanian Greens member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly elected at the 2002 election, representing the Franklin electorate from 2002 to 2015, and led the party from 2008 until 2014. On 21 April 2010, he became the first member of the Greens in any Australian ministry. From February 2020 until June 2022, he served as co-deputy leader of the Australian Greens.
Poppy tea is an herbal tea infusion brewed from poppy straw or seeds of several species of poppy. The species most commonly used for this purpose is Papaver somniferum, which produces opium as a natural defense against predators. In the live flower, opium is released when the surface of the bulb, called the seed pod, is pierced or scraped. For the purpose of the tea, dried pods are more commonly used than the pods of the live flower. The walls of the dried pods contain opiate alkaloids, primarily consisting of morphine.
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The Van Diemen's Land Company is a farming corporation in the Australian state of Tasmania. It was founded in 1825 and received a royal charter the same year, and was granted 250,000 acres (1,000 km2) in northwest Van Diemen's Land in 1826. The company was a group of London merchants who planned a wool growing venture to supply the needs of the British textile industry.
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Adam Richard Brooks is a former Liberal Party member for Braddon in the Tasmanian House of Assembly from 2010 to 2019. He was an endorsed Liberal Party candidate for the 2021 state election in the division of Braddon, and was re-elected on 1 May, but resigned two weeks after the election following charges being laid against him by Queensland Police for alleged firearms and document offences.
Extractas Bioscience is the largest opium poppy processing company in the Australian state of Tasmania. Approximately forty percent of the world's legal opiate crop is grown in Tasmania. Tasmanian Alkaloids was a subsidiary of the United States pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, but was formerly—as of 1980—a subsidiary of Abbott Laboratories.
The Glover Prize is an Australian annual art prize awarded for paintings of the landscape of Tasmania The prize was inaugurated in 2004 by the John Glover Society, based in Evandale, Tasmania, in honour of the work of British-born landscape painter John Glover, who lived and painted in the area from 1832 until his death in 1849. The current prize amount of A$ 50,000 is the highest for landscape painting in Australia. The 2012 award was controversial: the winning picture included a depiction of convicted Port Arthur massacre spree killer Martin Bryant in the landscape of Port Arthur.
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The 2016 Tasmanian energy crisis was an ongoing energy storage situation in the state of Tasmania, Australia in 2016. Two years of high volumes of energy exported to Victoria via the Basslink HVDC cable, followed by low rainfall, and a fault which rendered the cable inoperable, resulted in record low storage levels in Tasmania's hydro-electric system. This resulted in a number of contingency plans to be enacted by Hydro Tasmania and the Hodgman Government.
The Australian Federation Party (AFP), formerly known as the Country Alliance and the Australian Country Party, is an Australian political party. Founded in 2004 by four rural Victorians, the party lodged its initial registration with the Victorian Electoral Commission on 15 August 2005.
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