50 Fun Facts About Tasmania

What is the capital city of Tasmania?

Around 40 percent of Tasmanians live in the Greater Hobart area, the lowest share of any Australian state capital.

Which body of water separates Tasmania from mainland Australia?

The island sits about 240 kilometres south of the mainland.

Tasmania is named after an explorer of which nationality?

Abel Tasman sighted the island on 24 November 1642 and named it for his sponsor, Anthony van Diemen.

What was Tasmania called before it was officially renamed on 1 January 1856?

The change was partly to distance the free-settler society from its convict past.

What was Anthony van Diemen's job when Tasman named the island after him?

The British later shortened 'Anthony van Diemen's Land' by dropping the first name.

Which bushranger referred to Tasmania as 'Dervon' in his 1879 Jerilderie Letter?

The everyday nickname is simply 'Tassie'.

Roughly how many years ago did rising seas cut Tasmania off from the mainland?

Aboriginal people had already lived there for some 30,000 years by then.

Which pair sailed right through the strait north of Tasmania in 1798-99, proving it was an island?

Cook had turned back after two hours in the strait in 1770, unsure whether it was 'one land or no'.

Tasmania's capital is named after whom?

David Collins founded the settlement at Sullivans Cove in 1804 with 308 convicts.

Which river does Tasmania's capital sit on?

The 1975 Tasman Bridge collapse cut the city's only road crossing of it.

What proportion of all convicts transported to Australia were sent to Tasmania?

About 75,000 arrived before transportation ended in 1853.

Which of these was a notoriously harsh Tasmanian penal colony?

Macquarie Harbour on the west coast was the other infamous one.

The violent conflict between settlers and Aboriginal Tasmanians that peaked in 1825-31 is known as what?

Governor Arthur's martial law lasted more than three years, the longest in Australian history.

What was the 'Black Line' of November 1830?

Every able-bodied male colonist was ordered to join; it failed and was abandoned after seven weeks.

Where were most surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians moved after 1832?

Government agent George Augustus Robinson persuaded them to go; many died of introduced diseases.

Who, dying in 1876, was the last of the Aboriginal Tasmanians removed from the island?

Today's Aboriginal Tasmanians generally identify as Palawa or Pakana.

Tasmania became a colony separate from New South Wales in which year?

It got its own judicial establishment and Legislative Council on 3 December that year.

Where were Australia's first electric street lights switched on in 1886?

Launceston became the island's first fully electrified city the year before.

The flooding of which body of water for hydro power led to the founding of the world's first green party?

The United Tasmania Group formed in response; the Franklin Dam fight followed in the early 1980s.

Which Tasmanian became the first woman elected to Australia's House of Representatives in 1943?

She was also the first woman to serve in federal cabinet.

What struck the Tasman Bridge in 1975, causing its collapse?

The nearest alternative crossing of the Derwent was about 20 kilometres north at Bridgewater.

Australia's first legal casino opened in Tasmania in which year?

It came during a post-war tourism boom that sold the island as the 'Sanitorium of the South'.

The 1996 massacre at a former penal settlement prompted which national response?

Thirty-five people were killed and 23 injured; the National Firearms Agreement followed.

Which philanthropist opened MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, in 2011?

Within a year it was Tasmania's top tourist attraction; he also runs the Dark Mofo festival.

What is Tasmania's tallest mountain?

It stands 1,617 metres, in the Central Highlands.

Which globe-circling wind system lies directly in Tasmania's path?

The same winds blew Abel Tasman off course when he tried to follow the coast north in 1642.

Tasmania has the world's largest areas of which rock, seen in Mount Wellington's 'Organ Pipes'?

The Jurassic intrusions form the distinctive columns on many of the island's mountains and cliffs.

The Tarkine in the north-west is the largest area of what in Australia?

It covers about 3,800 square kilometres and includes Savage River National Park.

Which famous bay in Freycinet National Park is a landmark of Tasmania's east coast?

The park's coastal granites resemble those on the mainland.

Which is the most visited waterfall in Tasmania, in Mount Field National Park?

Its stepped drops total 58 metres, and it is an easy trip from Hobart.

In what year did the last thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, die out?

Its extinction made the Tasmanian devil the world's largest carnivorous marsupial.

What has made the Tasmanian devil an endangered species?

The animal now survives in the wild only in Tasmania.

Tasmania is home to the world's only three migratory what?

They are the orange-bellied, blue-winged and swift parrots; the swift parrot is also the world's fastest.

Tasmania has the world's worst rate of what, per kilometre?

About 32 animals are killed on its roads every hour, more than 300,000 a year.

The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area meets how many of UNESCO's ten criteria?

Only China's Mount Taishan matches that; most sites qualify on one or two.

Which cricketers, both former Australian captains, hail from Tasmania?

David Boon is another famous Tasmanian, and the state side is the Tasmanian Tigers.

Which Tasmanian side won the NBL basketball championship in the 2023-24 season?

It was the state's first title since Launceston Casino City in 1981.

On which day does the famous yacht race from Sydney to Tasmania start each year?

Boats usually reach Constitution Dock three or four days later, during the Taste of Tasmania festival.

When the AFL granted Tasmania a team licence in 2023, which year was set for its debut?

The Tasmania Devils licence was granted in May 2023, tied to a new stadium at Macquarie Point; AFL matches had been played in Launceston and Hobart since 2001.

A traditional Tasmanian scallop pie is flavoured with what?

Keen's Curry powder made the flavour popular in the 19th century.

Which part of Tasmania is famous for boutique cheeses and dairy products?

It lies off the north-west coast in Bass Strait.

Which two Tasmanian beer brands are known across mainland Australia?

Tasmania also produces wasabi, saffron, truffles and leatherwood honey.

The Australian Antarctic Division is headquartered in which Tasmanian town?

Hobart is Australia's main sea link to Antarctica and home port of the French supply ship l'Astrolabe.

The joke about 'two-headed' Tasmanians originally stemmed from what?

Colonists developed the swellings from a lack of iodine in the island's soil.

Which festival is held in Queenstown on the West Coast every two years?

Evandale, meanwhile, hosts penny-farthing championships every February.

What is the name for the main island of Tasmania in the reconstructed palawa kani language?

The name comes from the Bruny Island language; a dozen bilingual place names have been officially adopted by the state.

Which lieutenant founded the first British outpost in Tasmania at Risdon in 1803?

His party of 49 was sent to forestall French claims; Collins's larger settlement at Sullivans Cove soon replaced it and became Hobart.

Which Tasmanian city became the first on the island to be completely electrified, in 1885?

The mining town of Zeehan followed in 1900, and Hydro Tasmania's 1910 founding shaped the state's development for decades.

Tasmanian soldiers won the first two of which honour ever awarded to Australians, during the Boer War?

The island had raised its own defence force and voted for federation in 1901 by the largest majority of any colony.

Who was the first Englishman to land in Tasmania, at Adventure Bay in 1773?

He named the bay after his ship HMS Adventure; a French expedition under Marion du Fresne had landed the year before.