A Brief History of Tasmania Part 1:
The First Tasmanians, and European Discoveries and Invasion
No part of Australia is more tangibly steeped in history than Tasmania, both because it was the second settlement area in Australia after Sydney, and because it escaped much of the destruction of physical heritage that occurred elsewhere during the spree of "modernisation" that followed World War II. As a result, history is a common obsession: it has been said that there are more historians per square kilometre in Tasmania than anywhere else in Australia. Indeed, it has also been said that Tasmania has "too much history", the obsession with it becoming a mental shackle inhibiting the embrace of change. However, its human history is far more ancient than the brief 200 years of European settlement.
The First Tasmanians
Archaeological exploration has established the existence of human habitation certainly no less than 20,000 and possibly as early as 30,000 years ago, when Tasmania was physically part of greater Australia. As to who these early settlers were, some stone implements that have been found correlate with Pleistocene examples found on the Australian continent, suggesting a continuity with populations there up to that time. How those people relate to later continental Aboriginal people remains a matter of debate, though at the time of Western contact, the Aborigines of Tasmania were apparently physically, linguistically and culturally distinct from their nearest "mainland" neighbours.
It may be presumed that most Tasmanian settlement sites from that period of glaciation and low sea levels (c.18,000 BP), being coastal, were progressively flooded as sea-levels rose, isolating Tasmania c.12,000 BP and reaching present levels c.6,000 BP. From that time until European invasion of the island, though like other indigenous Australians the people had a nomadic life pattern, settlement sites remained well-defined and continuously re-visited, and socially connected groups (often inexactly called "tribes") clearly identified territories to which they had exclusive access. There were some ten mutually-incomprehensible languages among the 4-6,000 people living in Tasmania at the beginning of the 19th Century, and there was reportedly also considerable physical diversity between groups.
European discoveries
The first European to sight the mountainous west coast of the largest island was the Dutch commander Abel Janszoon Tasman at 4pm on 24 November 1642, in the 60-ton 3-masted yacht Heemskirk, accompanied by the smaller and faster flute Zeehaen. Believing it to be part of the "South-land" he had been sent to investigate, he named it "Anthoony Van Dieman's Landt" in honour of the Governor-General of the Dutch East India Company (stationed in Batavia), who had commissioned the expedition. Adjacent islands he named for other Commissioners of the Company, and Maria Island off the east coast he named for Van Diemen's wife. Most of these names remain today, though the main island was re-named Tasmania in 1856.
After his departure from these waters, Tasman sailed north-east and became the first European to encounter New Zealand (the North Island), which he named Staten Landt. He then sailed north again, and added to his list of "discoveries" the Tonga and Fiji archipelagoes. On a personal note, therefore, most of my life has been spent in islands that owe their entry to Western consciousness to this remarkable navigator - Fiji and Tasmania.
Van Diemen's Land was visited in the 18th Century by both the French (Marion du Fresne 1772, Bruny d'Entrecasteaux 1792, the latter of whose expeditions established the first European settlement in Tasmania) and British (Tobias Furneaux 1773, James Cook 1777, William Bligh 1788 & 1792, Cox 1789 and John Hayes 1794). In 1798 George Bass and Matthew Flinders circumnavigated the main island, finally establishing that Tasmania was separated from the mainland of Australia by the large body of water they named Bass Strait.
Cook had claimed Australia for Britain in 1777, but Van Diemen's Land was not included in that claim until 26 January 1788. Then, in a rush to pre-empt the possible ambitions of France, Governor Arthur Philip included a formal act of annexation when at Sydney Cove he read his orders to the settlers of the 11-ship First Fleet. The same fear of French designs led the British to establish a physical presence on the island in 1803 at Risdon Cove some miles up the Derwent River, then in 1804 first at Hobart, closer to the mouth of the Derwent, and later at Port Dalrymple, at the mouth of the Tamar River in northern Tasmania.
Invasion
From first contact, the British displayed fear of, and hostility toward, the indigenous people, whose initial response to the interlopers had been passive, even timidly friendly. As in mainland Australia (and New Zealand, the Americas, Africa and virtually every other place British or Europeans invaded) settlers' greed for land was accompanied by a contempt for any notions of, let alone rights attaching to, prior occupation. That Aborigines did not define their land-rights in the same terms as British land ownership permitted the legal fiction of terra nullius, or vacant domain. Aboriginal attempts to defend their millenia-long land rights inevitably resulted in bitter and protracted conflict.
Relatively small indigenous numbers and a swelling tide of settlers spelt inevitable armed defeat, and destruction of both the majority of the indigenous population and the integrity of their culture. In 1832 the last free groups were gathered together and transferred to what was effectively a concentration camp on Flinders Island, in Bass Strait. Their numbers dwindled, and in 1847 the survivors were returned to Oyster Cove near Hobart, but by 1876 the last of them had died. Their blood continued, however, to course through the veins of many descendants, both in the Bass Strait Islands and throughout mainland Tasmania. For many years this was held by the European community to be a stigma akin to the "stain" of convict ancestry, as a result of which the 1961 census listed only 38 Aborigines in Tasmania. Public awareness and a burgeoning pride in identity have radically altered this situation, and today some 12,000 Tasmanian citizens proudly declare their Aboriginal status and heritage, many with roots deep in Tasmania's prehistory.
The notes above are based on a number of sources, including the excellent short monograph by Lloyd Robson, revised by Michael Roe, "A Short History of Tasmania" (Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1997). Further suggested reading: Robson, LLoyd. History of Tasmania 2-volumes (Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1983+); Bonwick, The Last of the Tasmanians (London, Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1870); Turnbull, Clive. Black War: the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines (Melbourne, Cheshire Lansdowne, 1965); Reynolds, Henry. The Law of the Land (Ringwood Vic., Penguin, 1987); Taylor, H.G. The Discovery of Tasmania (Hobart, Cat & Fiddle Press,1973); Heeres, J.E. The Discovery of Tasmania: Extracts from the Journal of Abel Janszoon Tasman (Hobart, Government Printer, 1985).
LINKS: Tasmania's Historic French Gardens | Tasmanian historic dates | Further publications on Tasmanian history | Tasmanian Aboriginal Heritage | Tasmanian Aboriginal Historical Services
