Far East Kingdoms

Van Dieman's Land / Tasmania (Australia / Australasia) (Oceania)

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Considered in some quarters to be a watery continent in its own right, Oceania starts where South-East Asia ends, to the south-east of Indonesia and East Timor. Its territory is somewhat debatable, but the Australasia section which includes Australia, New Zealand, and some minor islands, also includes Tasmania. Australasia is located to the south of Papua New Guinea, and about seventy-two thousand kilometres to the north of Antarctica.

The first humans reached Australia from South-East Asia at some point around 50,000 BC (see feature link for more on this). That early Australian population, if it left any related communities behind it, quickly lost any connection with them. They were eventually replaced outside of Australia by populations of later South Asians and East Asians.

The first humans arrived in Tasmania before about 40,000 BC by crossing a land bridge which connected it to the Australian mainland. Around 10,000 BC, at the end of the most recent ice age maximum, sea level rises served to cut off Tasmania from the mainland, isolating its human population. Thereafter Tasmanian humans developed in isolation from those of Australia throughout the Neolithic Oceania period.

The Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman, left Batavia in the Dutch East Indies in 1642 as part of a voyage of discovery through western Oceania and the Indian Ocean. During his two year voyage he reached the north-western coast of early Australia before sailing through the Indian Ocean and back to reach what the Dutch referred to as Van Diemen's Land.

It was this land which later was renamed as Tasmania by its settlers of British origin. Van Diemen's Land would become part of New South Wales until it was hived off in 1825 as a separate colony.

In 1856, Van Diemen's Land became Tasmania and, in 1901, Tasmania joined the other five British colonies in Australia to form the independent commonwealth of Australia. The country consists of the entire continent and some surrounding islands. It is a parliamentary democracy on the British model, with the British monarch as its head of state of Australia, represented by a governor-general.

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(Information by John De Cleene & Peter Kessler, and the John De Cleene Archive, with additional information from Asia in the Modern World, Claude A Buss (Macmillan Publishing Company, 1964), from Hammond's Historical Atlas (C S Hammond & Co, 1963), from Historical Atlas of the World, R R Palmer (Ed, Rand McNally & Company, 1963), from The Horizon History of the British Empire, Steven W Sears (Ed, American Heritage Pub Co, 1973), from Millennium In Maps: Exploration (National Geographic Supplement, National Geographic Society, 1998), and from External Links: Historical Moments That Shaped Australia (Culture Trip), and Australia (Rulers.org), and Separation of Tasmania (National Museum Australia), and Lachlina Elizabeth Scott (Pauline Conolly).)

AD 1642 - 1644

The Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman, and the navigator, Visscher, leave Batavia in the Dutch East Indies to reach the north-western coast of early Australia in their search for a commercial route to South America. In doing so they effectively end the Neolithic Oceania period.

From there they sail through the Indian Ocean almost as far as Madagascar before returning to reach Van Diemen's Land and Australasia's New Zealand. Their final return to Batavia is by way of the northern coast of New Guinea. Van Diemen's Land is named for Anthony van Diemen, governor-general of the Dutch East Indies and the sponsor of these voyages of discovery.

1773 - 1777

Tobias Furneaux in HMS Adventure makes the earliest British chart of Van Diemen's Land in 1773. James Cook is on his third voyage of discovery in 1777 when he becomes acquainted with some aborigines there.

Any visit to Tasmania begins in Hobart, but other locations are also visit 'musts', such as Mount Field National Park, Cradle Mountain, Maria Island, and Bruny Island

1798 - 1799

European visits to Van Diemen's Land have been limited to the south-eastern part of the island. In fact European visitors have not even known it to be an island until Matthew Flinders and George Bass circumnavigate it in the sloop Norfolk between 1798-1799. From Australia's New South Wales, sealers and whalers operate in the surrounding waters and base themselves on the island starting from 1798.

1802

Australia's governor of New South Wales, Philip King, sends Lieutenant John Bowen to establish a military outpost on the River Derwent in Van Diemen's Land. The idea is to prevent the French from carrying out their own plans to take control of the island.

1803

The governor of Australia's New South Wales, Philip Gidley King, is anxious to pre-empt potential French settlement. In 1803 he sends forty-nine people under the command of Lieutenant John Bowen to establish a settlement in the Derwent estuary.

Born in the Netherlands around 1602, seafarer, explorer, and merchant Abel Janszoon Tasman was the first European to discover Tasmania and confirm Australia as an island continent

1804

In the following year, David Collins, newly-appointed lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen's Land, arrives in the Derwent from England with four hundred and thirty people. His settlement becomes Hobart.

Small and remote, Van Diemen's Land soon becomes a secondary punishment site for convicts who have re-offended after their arrival in New South Wales or who are not amenable to control. It becomes the principal penal colony in Australia until the abolition of 'transportation' in the United Kingdom in 1853.

The geography of the selected site at Port Arthur on the Tasman peninsula - Tasman Peninsula Prison - is exceptionally well suited to its role. The area is divided into two administrative divisions: Cornwall County (shown below in black text) in the north and Buckingham Country in the south (shown in red).

Britannia between Death and the Doctors shows an ailing Britannia being approached by Death in the guise of Napoleon, while her politicians squabble (LC-USZC4-8794)

1804 - 1808

Commandant at Port Dalrymple (Cornwall County).

1804 - 1810

Commandant at Derwent River (Buckingham County).

1804

Some seventy-thee thousand convicts, about forty percent of all convicts who are sent to Australia, are sent to Van Diemen's Land. Male convicts serve their sentences as forced labour in order to free up settlers, or in gangs which are engaged in public works. Female convicts become servants in free settler households or work in a female factory (a women's workhouse prison), of which there are five in Van Diemen's Land.

Most convicts who complete their sentences or earn tickets-of-leave promptly depart Van Diemen's Land. Many settle in Victoria, despite objections by the locals. Tensions between Victorians and 'Vandemonians', especially during the Victorian gold rush which brings in a flood of settlers from Van Diemen's Land, contribute to the abolition of transportation.

Prisoners arrive in Van Dieman's Land in 1804, with Australia and Tasmania fulfilling the function of convict colony for Britain following the American revolution

1808 - 1810

Lt-governor at Port Dalrymple (Cornwall County).

1810

Commandant at Derwent River (Buckingham County).

1810 - 1812

Commandant at Port Dalrymple (Cornwall County).

1810 - 1812

Commandant at Derwent River (Buckingham County).

1812

Commandant at Port Dalrymple (Cornwall County).

1812 - 1813

Commandant at Derwent River (Buckingham County).

1813

The division of Tasmania into two equal halves now ends and the area is united under one governorship. With John Brabyn being the only official governor, a series of commandants are replaced by Tasmania's second official governor, Thomas Davey.

Thomas Davey served as Tasmania's lieutenant-governor between 1813-1817, with Governor Lachlan Macquarie of New South Wales describing him as '...so dissipated in his Manners and Morals, so expensive in his habits, so very thoughtless and volatile, and so easily imposed upon by designing, plausible characters'

1825

Major General Ralph Darling, the somewhat autocratic and contentious governor of Australia's New South Wales, makes Van Diemen's land a separate colony, complete with responsible self-government and its own representative parliament.

1829

A convict mutiny occurs on board the brig Cyprus, which is carrying supplies and convicts from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour Penal Station. While the ship is in Research Bay, some of the convicts overcome their guards and take control of the brig. The mutineers maroon the loyal officers and anyone else who refuses to side with them.

The convicts sail to Canton, China, where they scuttle the ship and tell authorities that they are castaways from another vessel. Before reaching Canton, they stop off at Japan during an intense anti-foreign period. The Cyprus therefore becomes the first Australian ship to visit Japan.

Two Dutch ships shown in a reprinted Japanese woodblock, with Nagasaki their only permitted port of entry during the early modern Edo era

1856 - 1877

Van Diemen's Land is renamed Tasmania to honour the explorer Abel Tasman and to remove the unpleasant association with the island's earlier penal settlements. The last penal settlement is closed in 1877.

1901

On 1 January 1901 a new constitution is put into effect. It unites the British colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia as the collective states of the 'Commonwealth of Australia'. Eight months later, the first national flag is hoisted above the parliament of this new Australia.

1996

On 28 April 1996 a lone gunman kills thirty-five people and injures twenty-three more at the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania. It is the deadliest shooting rampage in Australian history. In response, the government introduces tight gun control laws which are amongst the strictest in the world.

The Port Arthur penal settlement began life as a small timber station in 1830, but it rapidly grew in importance within the colonies to become Tasmania's centre of penal operations

2003

Australia's governor-general, Peter Hollingworth, temporarily resigns on 15 May 2003, pending the outcome of an investigation into rape allegations against him. Sir Guy Green, the queen's representative in the state of Tasmania, is appointed to act in Hollingworth's place. Although the charges are dismissed, Hollingworth formally resigns on 28 May, and Green replaces him.