Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Island
The island of Tasmania first appeared on a European map of 1644 as “Anthonio Van
Diemens Landt” (Jones
1948
:24). Dutchman Abel Janszoon Tasman was the first
to circumnavigate Australia, and “The Tasman Map of 1644” was a tangible fruit
of his achievement. The southern half of Tasmania was mapped in detail but separa-
tion from the Australian mainland remained unreported on Tasman's Map.
Tasman was more than a century ahead of subsequent visitors. Tasmania was
visited at the end of the eighteenth century by French and English expeditions; the
former largely with a view to scholarship, or at least that was the outcome, and the
latter with a view to conquest and the expansion of empire.
Unlike the generally happy interchanges between the French and the indigenous
Tasmanians (e.g. Labillardière's account in Duyker
2003
;
Le Jar du Clesmeur
1772
), the English settlement-cum-invasion of Tasmania out of Sydney beginning
in 1803 was an unhappy clash of cultures (Ryan
2004
).
The name 'Tasmania' was adopted in 1856. The island is Australia's most south-
erly state and is the only non-mainland state. Tasmania sits at a latitude is 42°
South, a longitude of 146° East. It is 360 km from north to south and 310 km from
east to west. The population is 500,000. The capital city of Hobart has a population
of 210,000. Tasmania is comparable in size to Sri Lanka, and is slightly smaller
than Ireland (UN
2008
). Contemporary industries are tourism, mining, agriculture
and manufacturing - the world's largest catamarans are designed and manufactured
in Hobart and exported to the world (Incat
2010
).
Tasmania is marketed as 'Pure Tasmania' (
www.puretasmania.com
) promoting
the green credentials of the state, its natural beauty, its wilderness, its wildness, and
its distinctive marsupial and monotreme fauna. One fifth of the state, 1.38 million
ha in the south west, is designated as the Wilderness World Heritage Area (PWS
2008
). Tasmania spawned the world's first green political party, the United
Tasmania Group, in 1972 (UTG
1972
), and one of the world's earliest associations
to promote organic agriculture, the Living Soil Association of Tasmania, which was
founded in 1946 (Paull
2009
).
Endemism
Tasmania was once connected to the Australian mainland by a 'land bridge', but
rising sea level created a 200 km stretch of rough water, Bass Strait, that marooned
the flora, fauna, and people of Tasmania, for a period of isolation of perhaps
10,000 years. When he encountered it, Abel Tasman retreated in fear from this living
museum. Montanus relates that: “From the forest he [Tasman] heard a shrill sound
from singing people. He took fright and went back on board” (Montanus
1671
:18).
In contrast, the French expeditions, particularly those of Marion Dufresne of 1792,
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