Hobart sits on the world's second-deepest natural harbour beneath kunanyi / Mount Wellington
Australia's southernmost capital began in 1804 as a penal colony and became the Southern Ocean's leading whaling port. Today it launches Australian and French Antarctic missions, hosts the Southern Hemisphere's largest private museum, and holds the highest share of Australian-born residents of any capital. Mark Twain called it the neatest town the sun shines on.
Aboriginal Tasmanians occupied the area for possibly 35,000 years, and the local Muwinina people called the western shore nipaluna, a name recorded in January 1831 from Woureddy, a chief from Bruny Island who spoke five dialects. British settlement began in 1803 with a military camp at Risdon Cove, prompted partly by worries about French explorers, before Captain David Collins moved it the next year to Sullivans Cove and named it after Lord Hobart, the colonial secretary. Violence and disease devastated the Indigenous population, and in 1832 a group of 26 who came in to negotiate a truce were exiled to Flinders Island ten days later.
The deep Derwent estuary made the town a hub for whaling, sealing and shipbuilding. Charles Darwin stopped by in February 1836 during the Beagle voyage and noted the census of 1835 had counted 13,826 people. Hobart Town was declared a city in 1842 and dropped the Town in 1881. Penal transportation ended in the 1850s, followed by uneven decades of boom and slump.
The 20th century brought milestones good and grim. One of the last known thylacines died at the Beaumaris Zoo on 7 September 1936. Australia's first legal casino, Wrest Point, opened in 1973. The 1967 bushfires killed 64 people in Hobart and destroyed more than 1,200 homes, and in 1975 an ore carrier struck the Tasman Bridge and brought down a span linking the city to its eastern suburbs.
The city is built largely on Jurassic dolerite, with a skyline dominated by the 1,271-metre bulk of kunanyi / Mount Wellington. Pademelons and wallabies turn up in town, and threatened residents include the swift parrot and eastern quoll. Nearly half of Tasmanians live in Hobart, yet it remains the least-populated state capital.
Source: Hobart
