Tasmania

Tasmania is Australia's smallest state, covering only 1 per cent of the nation's total area. Its land area is 68,401 square kilometres and includes over three hundred islands, among them the islands of Bruny, Flinders and King. It also administers Macquarie Island near New Zealand. The Bass Strait separates Tasmania by about 310 kilometres from the continent's south-east coast. It is also bordered by the Southern Ocean and Tasman Sea. Tasmania is known for its wilderness and scenic beauty. It is home to numerous national parks and wilderness reserves, including the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Used by the British as a penal colony for fifty years, Tasmania's convict past has shaped its identity. Convicts and emancipated convicts made up a high proportion of colonial society, and most had a disdain for British social values, such as submission to authority and adherence to status and class distinctions. Instead, Tasmanians revered independence and displayed an irreverence toward authority. Today, Tasmania has the nation's highest percentage of people with a convict ancestor and its convict heritage is a matter of pride for many Tasmanians.

Historical Perspective

The first inhabitants of Tasmania were Aboriginal people who migrated to the island between thirty-five thousand and seventy thousand years ago. Subsequent migrations followed, and by the time the first European, Abel Tasman, a Dutch navigator, sighted the island in 1642, the island was populated by as many as one hundred Aboriginal bands. For the next century, the island was used by explorers as a waystation and by European whalers and sealers, but Europeans did not attempt to colonise it. In the early 1800s, a rumour that France intended to claim and occupy the island led the British to form permanent settlements on the island. The first ship, containing soldiers, officers and their wives, convicts and free settlers, landed in 1803 and settled at Risdon, on the Derwent River, in the south. The next year, ships brought two new groups, who settled at Port Dalrymple (now Launceston) in the north and Sullivans Cove (now Hobart) in the south. During the first several decades of the colony's growth, the Tasmanian Aboriginal resistance to the European occupation of their tribal lands led to the twenty-six-year Black War (1804–30). After the British won the war, they declared martial law and forced the removal of Tasmanian Aboriginals to Flinders Island in the Bass Strait. In 1847, the Tasmanian Aboriginals were relocated at Oyster Cove.

The British colony, named Van Diemen's Land by Tasman, served as a penal colony from 1803 to 1853. In 1856, the British colony was renamed Tasmania and granted self-government. It participated in Federation, joining the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.

In 1876, following the death of Truganini, a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman, the Tasmanian government declared the Aboriginal race extinct in Tasmania. In the mid-to-late twentieth century, Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples began to agitate for recognition and land rights. The national government first included Aboriginal Australians as citizens in the 1971 Census, after which the numbers of self-identified Tasmanian Aboriginals grew dramatically.

Geography and Climate

Tasmania was connected to mainland Australia until approximately twelve thousand years ago. When the last ice age came to an end, glaciers melted, causing sea levels to rise. The plain that stretched between southern Australia and Tasmania flooded, separating Tasmania from the mainland by what Europeans named the Bass Strait.

This separation and geographic isolation from the rest of the world led to the development of unique animal and plant species. The Tasmanian devil, thylacine, Tasmanian pademelon and long-tailed mouse are mammals found only in Tasmania. Other mammals include the wombat, platypus, echidna, possum, rat, mouse, bat, fur seal, sea lion, whale and dolphin. There are also three species of frogs, six species of skinks and twelve species of birds found nowhere else. Tasmania's plants include eucalpyts, several species of pine, deciduous beech, gum trees, conifers, ferns, lichens, liverworts and sphagnum moss, with many species—such as the pandani—found only in Tasmania. Several cool temperate rainforests contain some of the oldest species of plants known.

Most of Tasmania has a marine climate, with warm summers and cool winters and little deviation in temperature between seasons. Both Hobart and Launceston have marine climates, with annual average temperatures around 12 degrees Celsius and annual rainfall averaging about 600 to 700 millimetres. York Town and Bell Bay have a warm, fairly dry Mediterranean-type climate, and Macquarie Island has a tundra climate.

Economy

Tasmania's greatest natural resources are its soil, water, trees and minerals. During its development, Tasmania's economy was based on its agriculture, with wheat, wool and meat its main products; forestry, with logging for lumber and pulp; whaling and sealing; and mining of tin, copper, zinc, silver-lead ore and iron. Iron foundries and metalworking plants were founded in Hobart in the 1840s. Other manufacturers, such as textile mills, followed. Tasmania continued to capitalise on these resources as well as its human resources during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Service industries, including tourism, technology and the government sector, grew and, by the start of the twenty-first century, dominated the economy.

In the mid-2010s, Tasmania's economy weakened due to changes in the global marketplace and internal factors. Unemployment increased, and the economic growth rate slowed. In response, Tasmania restructured its economy. Manufacturing and mining declined, while private sector service industries expanded. Tasmania's economy continued to grow until 2020. The state experienced a drop in economic performance from 2020 to 2024. Increasing costs, a lack of jobs, and a lack of health care were driving many to leave Tasmania. In 2024, its unemployment rate rose to 4.5 per cent.

Demographics

Tasmania is the least populated state of Australia, with a population of 557,571 in 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The country's population continued to grow until 2021. However, after this, in 2020, the population declined by 2,600 people. Experts believe this trend may continue. Tasmania's economy is struggling and has continued to drop from 2020 to 2024.

Tasmania is a fairly homogeneous state. In the 2021 Census, the most commonly reported ancestries were Australian, English, Irish, Scottish and Aboriginal. More than 79 per cent of Tasmanians reported being born in Australia. Among those born overseas, the most common countries of birth were England, New Zealand, China, Nepal and India. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples made up 5.4 per cent of the population. English was the sole language spoken in about 96 per cent of homes.

Tasmania has an ageing population. The median age in 2021 was 42, while the median age for all of Australia was 38. About 6.3 per cent of Tasmania's population was aged 65 years or older.

Bibliography

Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania. Natural and Cultural Heritage Division, Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment, Tasmania Government, 25 Nov. 2015, www.aboriginalheritage.tas.gov.au. Accessed 17 June 2024.

Alexander, Alison, editor. The Companion to Tasmanian History. Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, 2006, www.utas.edu.au/library/companion‗to‗tasmanian‗history/index.htm. Accessed 17 June 2024.

Blackwood, Fiona. "Politicians Must Reckon with Tasmania's Slowing Economy and Shrinking Population, Experts Say." ABC News, 27 Feb. 2024, www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-28/tasmanian-state-election-economy-population-decline/103511658. Accessed 17 June 2024.

Boyce, James. Van Diemen's Land. Schwartz, 2008.

Reynolds, Henry. A History of Tasmania. Cambridge UP, 2012.

"Separation of Tasmania." National Museum of Australia, Commonwealth of Australia, https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/separation-tasmania#: Accessed 17 June 2024.