Coles Bay.

Location: Tasmania, Australia.

Map: www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/pacific/australia/tasmania/

Population: 473.

Famous for: the main entrance point for visitors to the Freycinet National Park and its scenery and outdoor activities.

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Facts about Tasmania:

Named after: Abel Tasman (1603-1659), a Dutch explorer.

Names of the island:

- Anthoonij van Diemenslandt/Anthony van Diemen's Land in 1642-1803.

- Van Diemen's Land in 1803-1856.

- Tasmania in 1856-today.

Nickname: Tas, pronounced Taz, and known colloquially as Tassie.

Area: 26,410 sq mi - almost as large as Ireland (27,133 sq mi).

Ranked: as the 26th biggest island in the world.

Population: 512,000.

Capital: Hobart, 217 000 inhabitants.

Highest Mountain: Mount Ossa, 5,305 feet (1617 metres).

Most famous animal: The Tasmanian devil.

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History

 

33 000 BC-1642 AD

Tasmania was inhabited by an indigenous population, the Tasmanian Aborigines, for at least 35 000 ago. They arrived to Tasmania via a land bridge between the island and the mainland Australia during the last glacial period. The island is believed to have been joined to the mainland of Australia until the end of the last glacial period approximately 10,000 years ago. In 1990 AD, archaeologists excavated materials in the Warreen Cave in the Maxwell River valley of the southwest proving aboriginal occupation from as early as 34,000 BC making indigenous Tasmanians the southernmost population in the world during the Pleistocene era. The Pleistocene is the geological epoch which lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the world's recent period of repeated glaciations.

 

Once the sea levels rose flooding the Bassian Plain, the people were left isolated from approximately 6,300 BC until the 17th century AD. The Aboriginal people who had migrated from mainland Australia became cut off from their cousins on the mainland. Because neither side had ocean sailing technology, the two groups were unable to maintain contact.

 

Some have claimed that because of the ocean divide, and unlike other populations around the world, the small population of Tasmania was not able to share any of the new technological advances being made by mainland groups such as barbed spears, bone tools of any kind, boomerangs, hooks, sewing, and the ability to start a fire thus making Aboriginal Tasmanians the simplest people on earth. It is claimed that they only possessed lit fires with the men entrusted in carrying embers from camp to camp for cooking and which could also be used to clear land and herd animals to aid in hunting practices. However, other scholars dispute that the Aboriginal Tasmanians did not have fire. A document from 1887 AD clearly describes fire lighting techniques used among Tasmanians. Another school of thought holds that because food was so abundant compared to mainland Australia, the Aboriginal people had no need for a better technology, pointing out that they did in fact originally possess bone tools which dropped out of use as the effort to make them began to exceed the benefit they provided.

 

It has been suggested that approximately 4,000 years ago, the Aboriginal Tasmanians largely dropped scaled fish from their diet and began eating more land mammals such as possums, kangaroos, and wallabies. They also switched from worked bone tools to sharpened stone tools. The significance of the disappearance of bone tools (believed to have been primarily used for fishing related activities) and fish in the diet is heavily debated. Some argue that it is evidence of a maladaptive society while others argue that the change was economic as large areas of scrub at that time were changing to grassland providing substantially increased food resources. Fish were never a large part of the diet, ranking behind shellfish and seals. Archaeological evidence indicates that around the time these changes took place the Tasmanian tribes began expanding their territories, a process that was still continuing when Europeans arrived.

 

Estimates made of the combined population of the Aboriginal people of Tasmania, before European arrival in Tasmania, are in the range of 3,000 to 15,000 people. Genetic studies have suggested much higher figures which is supported by oral traditions. A population as high as 100,000 can't be rejected out of hand. This is supported by carrying capacity data indicating greater resource productivity in Tasmania than the mainland. The Aboriginal Tasmanians were primarily nomadic people who lived in adjoining territories, moving based on seasonal changes in food supplies such as seafood, land mammals and native vegetables and berries. They socialised, intermarried and fought wars against other tribes.

 

The Paredarerme tribe (Oyster Bay) was estimated to be the largest Tasmanian tribe with ten bands totalling 700 to 800 people. The Paredarerme Tribe had good relations with the Big River tribe, with large congregations at favoured hunting sites inland and at the coast. Relations with the North Midlands tribe were mostly hostile. Generally, Paredarerme tribe bands migrated inland to the High Country for Spring and Summer and returned to the coast for Autumn and Winter, but not all people left their territory each year with some deciding to stay by the coast. Migrations provided a varied diet with plentiful seafood, seals and birds on the coast, and good hunting for kangaroos, wallabies and possums inland. The High Country also provided opportunities to trade for ochre with the North-west and North people, and to harvest intoxicating gum from Eucalyptus gunnii, found only on the plateau. The key determinant of camp sites was topography. The majority of camps were along river valleys, adjacent north facing hill slopes and on gentle slopes bordering a forest or marsh.

 

In 1642-1847

The first reported sighting of Tasmania by a European was on 24 November 1642 by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman (1603-1659), who named the island Anthoonij van Diemenslandt/Anthony van Diemen's Land after his sponsor, the Governor of the Dutch East Indies. The name was later shortened to Van Diemen's Land by the British. Tasman did not encounter any of the Tasmanian Aborigines when he landed in 1642. Abel Tasman was also the first known European expedition to reach New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands. His navigator François Visscher and his merchant Isaack Gilsemans mapped substantial portions of Australia, New Zealand and some Pacific Islands.

 

In 1772, a French exploratory expedition under Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne visited Tasmania. At first, contact with the Aborigines was friendly; however the Aborigines became alarmed when another boat was dispatched towards the shore. It was reported that spears and stones were thrown and the French responded with musket fire killing at least one Aborigine and wounding several others. The Resolution under the English Captain Tobias Furneaux, part of an expedition led by Captain James Cook, had visited in 1773 but made no contact with the Tasmanian Aborigines although he left gifts in unoccupied shelters found on Bruny Island. Tobias Furneaux was the first Englishman to land in Tasmania at Adventure Bay.

 

The first known British contact with the Tasmanian Aborigines was on Bruny Island by Captain Cook in 1777. The contact was peaceful. More extensive contact between Tasmanian Aborigines and Europeans resulted when British and American seal hunters began visiting the islands in Bass Strait as well as the northern and eastern coasts of Tasmania from the late 1790s on. Shortly thereafter, by about 1800, sealers were regularly left on uninhabited islands in Bass Strait during the sealing season from November to May. The sealers established semi-permanent camps or settlements on the islands, which were close enough for the sealers to reach the main island of Tasmania in small boats and so make contact with the Aboriginal Tasmanians. Trading relationships developed between sealers and Tasmanian Aboriginal tribes. Hunting dogs became highly prized by the Aboriginal people, as were other exotic items such as flour, tea and tobacco. The Aboriginal people traded kangaroo skins for such goods. However, a trade in Aboriginal women soon developed. Many Tasmanian Aboriginal women were highly skilled in hunting seals, as well as in obtaining other foods such as sea-birds, and some Tasmanian tribes would trade their services and, more rarely, those of Aboriginal men to the sealers for the seal-hunting season. Others were sold on a permanent basis. Sealers engaged in raids along the coasts to abduct Aboriginal women and were reported to have killed Aboriginal men in the process.

 

By 1810, seal numbers had been greatly reduced by hunting so most seal hunters abandoned the area. However a small number of sealers, approximately fifty mostly renegade sailors, escaped convicts or ex-convicts, remained as permanent residents of the Bass Strait islands and some established families with Tasmanian Aboriginal women. A shortage of women available in trade resulted in abduction becoming common and in 1830, it was reported that at least fifty Aboriginal women were kept in slavery on the Bass Strait islands. The raids for and trade in Aboriginal women contributed to the rapid depletion of the numbers of Aboriginal women in the northern areas of Tasmania. By 1830, only three women survived in northeast Tasmania among 72 men.

 

In 1803, the island was colonised by the British as a penal colony with the name Van Diemen's Land and became part of the British colony of New South Wales. By the time of European contact, the Aboriginal people in Tasmania had nine major ethnic groups. At the time of British settlement in 1803, the indigenous population was estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000 people, but through persecution and disease much of the population was eradicated. Through the introduction of infectious diseases to which they had no immunity, war, persecution, and intermarriage, the population dwindled to 300 by 1833. In 1820, Tasmanian roads were first macadamised and carthorses began to replace bullocks. Van Diemen's Land was proclaimed a separate colony from New South Wales, with its own judicial establishment and Legislative Council, on 3 December 1825. The island was established as Van Diemen's Land in 1825. The demonym for Van Diemen's Land was Van Diemonian, though contemporaries used Vandemonian.

 

The Black War of 1828-1832 and the Black Line of 1830 were turning points in the relationship between the Tasmanian Aboriginals and European settlers. The Black War refers to the period of conflict between British colonists and Tasmanian Aborigines in the early nineteenth century. Many Tasmanian Aborigines were killed by the British in 1828-1832. In combination with epidemic impacts of introduced Eurasian infectious diseases, to which the Tasmanian Aborigines had no immunity, the conflict had such impact on the Tasmanian Aboriginal population that they were reported to have been exterminated. By 1876, the Tasmanian Aborigines with only Tasmanian Aborigine ancestors were commonly regarded as extinct and most of their culture and language lost to the world.

 

The Black Line was an event that occurred in 1830. After many years of conflict between British colonists and the Aborigines known as the Black War, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur decided to remove all Aborigines from the settled areas in order to end the escalating raids upon settlers huts. He was also concerned to prevent the settlers from taking the law into their own hands and launching revenge attacks. To accomplish this, he called upon every able-bodied male colonist, convict or free, to form a human chain that then swept across the settled districts, moving south and east for several weeks in an attempt to corral the Aborigines on the Tasman Peninsula by closing off Eaglehawk Neck (the isthmus connecting the Tasman peninsula to the rest of the island) where Arthur hoped that they could live and maintain their culture and language. This action was only directed against Aborigines of the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, since the conflict was only with these two tribes. The incident was seen as a costly fiasco since only two Aborigines were captured and three were killed. Even though many of the Aboriginal people managed to avoid capture during these events such as the Black War of 1828-1832 and the Black Line in 1830, they were shaken by the size of the campaigns against them. This brought them to a position whereby they were willing to surrender to Robinson and move to Flinders Island.

 

From 1830, small remnant groups surviving the Black War were relocated to Flinders Island and the Bass Strait Islands. Almost all of the indigenous population was relocated to Flinders Island by George Augustus Robinson. These 160 survivors were deemed to be safe from European settlers here, but conditions were poor and the relocation scheme was short lived. In 1847, after a campaign by the Aboriginal population against their Commandant, Henry Jeanneret, which involved a petition to Queen Victoria, the remaining 47 Aboriginals were again relocated, this time to Oyster Cove Station, an ex-convict settlement 35 miles south of Tasmania's capital, Hobart, where Truganini died in 1876. Truganini (1812–1876) is generally recognised as the last Tasmanian Aborigine with only Tasmanian Aborigine ancestors. Strong evidence suggests that the last survivor was another woman, Fanny Cochrane Smith (1834–1905), who was born at Wybalena and died in 1905. Today, Tasmanian Aboriginals have ancestors from Tasmanian Aboriginals and Europe, America or other parts of the world. A mixed European-Tasmanian descendants live on Flinders Island today. Much of their languages, local ecological knowledge and original cultures are now lost to Tasmania, perhaps with the exception of archaeological records plus historical records made at the time.

 

In 1800-1856

From the 1800s to the 1853 abolition of penal transportation, known simply as transportation, Van Diemen's Land was the primary penal colony for British convicts in Australia. Following the suspension of transportation to New South Wales, all transported British convicts were sent to Van Diemen's Land. In total, some 75,000 convicts were transported to Van Diemen's Land, or about 40% of all convicts sent to Australia. Male convicts served their sentences as assigned labour to free settlers or in gangs assigned to public works. Only the most difficult convicts, mostly re-offenders, were sent to the Tasman Peninsula prison known as Port Arthur. In 1856, the colony was granted responsible self-government with its own representative parliament, and the name of the island and colony was changed to Tasmania. The last penal settlement in Tasmania at Port Arthur finally closed in 1877.

 

In 1856-1901

The Colony of Tasmania, more commonly referred to simply as 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 Westminster Parliament passed the Australian Colonies Government Act 1850, granting the right of legislative power to each of the six Australian colonies. The Colony suffered from economic fluctuations, but for the most part was prosperous, experiencing steady growth. With few external threats and strong trade links with the Empire, the Colony of Tasmania enjoyed many fruitful periods in the late 19th century, becoming a world-centre of shipbuilding. It raised a local defence force which eventually played a significant role in the Second Boer War in South Africa, and Tasmanian soldiers in that conflict won the first two Victoria Crosses awarded to Australians. Tasmanians voted in favour of federation with the largest majority of all the Australian colonies, and on 1 January 1901 the Colony of Tasmania became the Australian state of Tasmania.

 

 

In 1890-today

In 1890: the University of Tasmania opened at the Domain.

In 1891: Apsley Railway opened.

In 1898: electric street lighting began in Hobart.

In 1901: became the Australian state of Tasmania.

In 1912: Norwegian Roald Amundsen, first man to reach South Pole, arrived in Hobart on return from Antarctic expedition.

In 1920: visited by Prince of Wales, future King Edward VIII.

In 1954: Queen Elizabeth II became the first reigning monarch to visit the state, accompanied by Prince Phillip. As part of the 150th anniversary celebrations, she unveiled a monument to pioneer British settlers.

In 1980: Australian Maritime College opened at Beauty Point.

In 1986: archaeologists discovered Aboriginal rock paintings in South-West believed to be 20,000 years old.

In 2002: House and land boom began with East Coast blocks selling for almost three times the town's previous record.

In 2003: Tasmania's Mary Donaldson and Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik were engaged. They married later.

In 2011: The Museum of Old and New Art, known as MONA, opened to the public. Within 12 months, MONA became Tasmania's top tourism attraction.

In 2012: a writer for the Lonely Planet series of travel guides ranked Hobart as number seven of top ten cities to visit in 2013, citing MONA as a major tourist attraction in a small city, similar to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

 

Maps

Map 1: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tasmania_in_Australia.svg

Map 2: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glamorgan_land_district_T...

Map 3: www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/pacific/australia/tasmania/

Map 4: www.colesbayretreat.com/tasmaniamap.pdf

 

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Sources:

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmania

2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_area#Islands_25....

3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coles_Bay,_Tasmania

4. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tasmania

5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Aborigines

6. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bassian_plain_14000_BP.jpg

7. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War

8. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Line

9. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Diemens_Land

10. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Cochrane_Smith

The owner of the image above is Lc95.

Link: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Freycinet_Coles_Bay_Richt...

The image above is free for anyone to use for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

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