Bass Strait isolated Tasmania’s Aboriginal peoples for eleven millennia
Tasmania sits 240 kilometres south of mainland Australia across Bass Strait, an island state cut off when seas rose. About 11,700 years ago that flooding isolated Aboriginal Tasmanians—today often called Palawa or Pakana—from mainland kin leaving nine distinct nations by the time British colonists arrived.
Abel Tasman sighted the island on 24 November 1642 and named it for sponsor Anthony van Diemen; British usage later shortened Van Diemen’s Land to Tasmania after the Dutch explorer. Permanent European settlement began in 1803 as a British penal colony, partly to check French claims during the Napoleonic Wars. Roughly 80,000 convicts were sent while the island was a separate colony from 1825 after breaking from New South Wales. Palawa kani reconstructs Lutruwita for the main island, and the Tasmanian government now accepts several dual Aboriginal–English place names drawn from historical records of Indigenous speech.
Today’s economy ranks second-smallest among Australian states and territories, leaning on tourism, agriculture, aquaculture, education, and healthcare. Ned Kelly’s 1879 Jerilderie Letter teased the nickname Dervon; locals still say Tassie with easy affection. Around 42% of the land sits in some form of reserve, 21% of it national parks and World Heritage areas, and the world's first environmental political party was founded here. The state of 573,479 people, as counted in June 2023, covers the 26th-largest island on Earth plus about 1,000 smaller ones, with roughly 40% of residents in Hobart.
Aboriginal people were living in Tasmania about 42,000 years ago, and when the British arrived their numbers are estimated at a few thousand. Within three decades violence known as the Black War, peaking between 1825 and 1831, and introduced disease had cut that population drastically. The rocks tell their own story: Tasmania has the largest expanses of dolerite anywhere, forming the columnar cliffs of the central plateau and the southeast, while ancient quartzite builds the sharp ridges of Federation Peak and Frenchmans Cap and granite shapes Freycinet. Much of Australia's glaciated scenery lies on the Central Plateau and in the southwest, where Cradle Mountain once poked above the ice as a nunatak.
Source: Tasmania
