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Aboriginal History
The first Tasmanians walked across the land bridge from the mainland of Australia tens of thousands of years ago. When sea levels rose after the last Ice Age, Tasmanian Aborigines were isolated for 10,000 years until the Europeans arrived in the early 19th century.
Early Tasmanians were highly self-sufficient people. They made their tools and containers from bone, wood, stone, seaweed, bark, grass and sinew (the shredded fibres of animal tendon). They were hunters and collectors who managed their land carefully by moving around to utilise seasonal food resources and using fire to control grasslands and expose an abundance of wildlife for hunting.
The sea was the source of food for the people living on the coast. Scale fish were eaten up until about 3,500 years ago and the women collected abalone, oysters, mussels, and other shellfish. The remains of these feasts can still be seen as middens all around Tasmania's coastline. Canoes were made from bark to travel offshore and catch muttonbirds and seals during the warmer months.
Groups of families camped together to form a band and these bands were the land-holding group in the society of that day. Several bands spoke the same language and at the time of first European contact, there were nine tribes (language groups) in Tasmania.
The first interactions between the settlers of Hobart Town and the Aboriginal people were generally friendly although both had their own expectations. The Aboriginal people may have believed the small group could have been accommodated had they been willing to trade and share their food and other items. However, the colonists expected the Aboriginal people to 'move over' and felt they had a greater right to make use of the land because the Tasmanians didn't occupy it effectively – that is, use it for agriculture. As a result, settlers, ex-convicts, run-a-ways and bushrangers all moved into Aboriginal land, abducting children for forced labour, raping and torturing the women and shooting whole parties of Aboriginal people.
The last ‘tribal’ Tasmanian, Truganini, passed away in Hobart in 1876.
Colonial History
Van Diemen’s Land, as it was known until 1856, was initially discovered by Europeans when Dutch explorer, Abel Janszoon Tasman, sailed past the West Coast. He gave the land its name after the governor of Batavia.
The first Europeans to take foot on the island (although at the time it was not known as one) were from the expedition of the French explorer, Marion du Fresne. In 1772 they landed on the East Coast at an area now known as Marion Bay.
In 1798, George Bass and Matthew Flinders set sail in the Norfolk to prove their suspicions that Van Diemen's Land was an island, by sailing around it. They proved to be correct and as a result Bass Strait and one of its islands were named after them. Five years later, Lieutenant John Bowen, a British soldier, chose a site at Risdon Cove on Hobart’s eastern shore as the site for the first European settlement. In 1804, Lieutenant-governor David Collins realised the site was unsuitable and he moved the settlement to Sullivans Cove where Hobart (proclaimed a city in 1842) now stands. In the same year, Europeans also settled near the mouth of the Tamar River. Two years later the settlement was moved further inland and Launceston, Tasmania’s second largest and oldest city, was founded. By 1829, Europeans had colonised the north coast and this settlement was later named Burnie.
In 1822, the potential of penal colonies on Van Diemen's Land was realised and the first penal settlement, Sarah Island, was established in Macquarie Harbour, on the west coast. Eight years later, the infamous Port Arthur Historic Site was established and up to its closure in 1877, approximately 12,500 transported convicts were imprisoned there. One in seven of them died at Port Arthur. Convict transportation reached its peak in 1842 at 5,329 in a single year. By then, penal colonies had been extended to Maria Island (the Island’s second penal colony) on the east coast and the Coal Mines near Port Arthur.
Van Diemen’s Land, which had been part of the colony of New South Wales, became a colony in its own right in 1825 and after the 1850s it underwent a number of other major political advances. In 1852, elections were held for the first municipal councils in Hobart and Launceston. Two years later, the two houses of Parliament (upper and lower) were established and once the Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed in 1901, Tasmania was officially recognised as a State of Australia.
