A Brief History of Tasmania

Tasmania, as you can plainly see, is a blue island half a centimeter to the south of Australia. At least 35,000 years ago there was an ice age and Tasmania was still connected to the mainland. Some Australian Aborigines migrated to Tasmania and were left there, isolated, when the glaciers melted and raised sea levels, about 14,000 years ago. Here is what one Aborigine looked like:





As the millennia passed, Tasmania's rainforests expanded, grasslands developed, and temperatures rose. The Aborigines were organized into different "bands" of 50 people or more. They hunted with clubs, short spears, and stones, claimed their own land, and numbered several thousand by the time Dutch navigator Abel Tasman first found them in 1642.


Europeans started settling in Tasmania around 1800, and proceeded to abduct, rape, and kill the Aborigines. Only 47 were alive fifty years later, and the last may have died in 1876. Currently there are Aboriginal-European survivors. In 1995 the state returned 12 sites to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, giving this genocide story a fresher feel to it.







As for the European settlers, they experienced moderate growth from 1800 until the 1870s, when gold, silver, and lead were discovered throughout the island. This prompted a deluge of international prospectors (especially the Chinese), creating several new settlements. Queenstown in particular was ravaged by mining, logging, fires, and heavy rains. It has regained some of its topsoil and terrain over the past few decades. Conservation and industry interests are still in contention.






Tasmania also served as Australia's prison, as ludicrous as that seems. Convicts who committed additional crimes in Australia would be shipped to Tasmania's prisons, where conditions were so terrible that inmates killed each other just so they could temporarily leave prison for a trial.


Well, that's where I'm headed tomorrow! Wish me luck! I'll try to leave a post in a week or so.