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.
The maritime European exploration of Australia consisted of several waves of European seafarers who sailed the edges of the Australian continent. Dutch navigators were the first Europeans known to have explored and mapped the Australian coastline. The first documented encounter was that of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, in 1606. Dutch seafarers also visited the west and north coasts of the continent, as did French explorers.
Anthony van Diemen was a Dutch colonial governor.
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.
Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni, chevalier d'Entrecasteaux was a French naval officer, explorer and colonial governor. He is perhaps best known for his exploration of the Australian coast in 1792, while searching for the Lapérouse expedition. Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux is commonly referred to simply as Bruni d'Entrecasteaux or Bruny d'Entrecasteaux, each of which is a compound surname.
The Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, a former British colonial penal settlement, established on Sarah Island, Macquarie Harbour, in the former colony of Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, operated between 1822 and 1833. The settlement housed male convicts, with a small number of women housed on a nearby island. During its 11 years of operation, the penal colony achieved a reputation as one of the harshest penal settlements in the Australian colonies. The former penal station is located on the eight-hectare (twenty-acre) Sarah Island that now operates as a historic site under the direction of the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service.
Alexander Pearce was an Irish convict who was transported to the penal colony in Van Diemen's Land, Australia for seven years for theft. He escaped from prison several times, allegedly becoming a cannibal during one of the escapes. In another escape, with one companion, he allegedly killed him and ate him in pieces. He was eventually captured and was hanged in Hobart for murder, before being dissected.
Between 1788 and 1868 the British penal system transported about 162,000 convicts from Great Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia.
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 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 Australasian Anti-Transportation League was a body established to oppose penal transportation to Australia. Beginning in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in the late 1840s, it had branches in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Canterbury. The Colonial Office abandoned transportation to eastern Australia in 1852.
George III was a British penal transportation convict ship launched in 1810 in London. She was wrecked while transporting convicts from England to the Australian Colonies. She was wrecked in the southern end of the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, Van Diemen's Land; 134 of the 294 people on board died.
Frederick Henry Bay is a body of water in the southeast of Tasmania, Australia. It is located to the east of the South Arm Peninsula, and west of the Tasman Peninsula. Towns on the coast of the bay include Lauderdale, Seven Mile Beach, Dodges Ferry and Primrose Sands. The bay is accessible via Storm Bay from the south, and provides further access to Norfolk Bay to its east.
Tasmania, for its size and population, has a flourishing literary culture. Its history offers an eventful literary background with visits from early explorers such as the Dutchman Abel Tasman, the Frenchmen Bruni d'Entrecasteaux and Marion du Fresne and then the Englishmen Matthew Flinders and George Bass. Colonisation coincided with deteriorated relations with indigenous Aboriginal people and a harsh convict heritage. These events in Tasmanian history are found in a large number of colonial sandstone buildings and in place names. Environmentally, the landscapes and changeable weather provide a vivid literary backdrop. Tasmania's geographical isolation, creative community, proximity to Antarctica, controversial past, bourgeoning arts reputation, and island status all contribute to its significant literature. Many fiction and non-fiction authors call Tasmania home, and many acclaimed titles are set there or written by Tasmanians. The journal of letters Island magazine appears quarterly. Tasmania's government provides arts funding in the form of prizes, events and grants. Bookshops contribute book launches and other literary events. Tasmania's unique history and environment gave rise to Tasmanian Gothic literature in the 19th century.
Tasmanian Gothic is a genre of Tasmanian literature that merges traditions of Gothic fiction with the history and natural features of Tasmania, an island state south of the main Australian continent. Tasmanian Gothic has inspired works in other artistic media, including theatre and film.
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.
William Buelow Gould was a painter born in the United Kingdom and later working in Van Diemen's Land. He was transported to Australia as a convict in 1827, after which he would become one of the most important early artists in the colony, despite never really separating himself from his life of crime.
The Cyprus mutiny took place on 14 August 1829 in Recherche Bay off the British penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land. Convicts seized the brig Cyprus and sailed her to Canton, China, where they scuttled her and claimed to be castaways from another vessel. On the way, Cyprus visited Japan during the height of the period of severe Japanese restrictions on the entry of foreigners, the first ship from Australia to do so.
The Frederick escape was an 1834 incident in which the brig Frederick was hijacked by ten Australian convicts and used to abscond to Chile, where they lived freely for two years. Four of the convicts were later recaptured and returned to Australia, where they escaped the death sentence for piracy through a legal technicality.
The European exploration of Australia first began in February 1606, when Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon landed in Cape York Peninsula and on October that year when Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, Torres Strait islands. Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century, and dubbed the continent New Holland. Most of the explorers of this period concluded that the apparent lack of water and fertile soil made the region unsuitable for colonisation.
The Badger escape occurred in July 1833 when twelve convicts in the British penal colony of Van Diemen's Land used the government schooner Badger to escape to Macau, China. Most of the convicts involved were experienced seafarers who had been appointed to man the vessel soon after their transportation. For this, the colonial press accused the government of extreme negligence, and also called for the removal of lieutenant-governor George Arthur. In The History of Tasmania (1852), John West wrote that, of all the escapes from Van Diemen's Land, "never was the government more culpable, or the prisoners less so, than in the instance of the Badger".
