Hobart

Hobart stands on muwinina land. The muwinina, one of the bands of the South East nation of Tasmanian Aboriginal people, did not survive the first decades of colonisation; the wider Tasmanian Aboriginal community, the palawa, continues today. The British came in 1803 to Risdon Cove on the eastern shore and moved the next year to Sullivans Cove, where fresh water ran down off the mountain. The settlement grew into Australia's second-oldest capital city.

Whaling, shipbuilding and the trade of the southern ocean made the town. Warehouses went up along Salamanca Place, and sandstone quarried nearby built the docks, churches and barracks that still stand. Tens of thousands of convicts were transported to Van Diemen's Land, and the prison for women at the Cascades, in the valley above the town, held thousands of them. The frontier war of the 1820s and early 1830s, and the removal of survivors to Flinders Island, destroyed Aboriginal society in the settled districts.

Transportation ended in 1853, the colony renamed itself Tasmania three years later, and Hobart Town dropped the word Town from its name in 1881. A long quiet period followed, built on apples, hops, zinc and hydro-electric power. In 1967 the Black Tuesday bushfires burned to the city's edge and killed 64 people across southern Tasmania; in January 1975 a bulk carrier struck the Tasman Bridge, dropping spans into the Derwent and killing twelve.

The modern change came in 2011, when David Walsh opened the Museum of Old and New Art up the river. Tourism, food and drink have reshaped the city since, and so has the housing shortage that followed.

For most of its history Hobart was thought of as the quietest of the Australian capitals. The museum at Berriedale changed that: cut into a sandstone peninsula and entered at the top, it made the city a destination and gave it the midwinter festival of fire, noise and night-time art that now fills June.

The water sets the rest of the calendar. The Sydney to Hobart fleet arrives at Constitution Dock after Christmas; the Royal Hobart Regatta has been sailed and rowed since 1838; and every second February the docks fill with wooden boats. On Saturdays the Salamanca market runs the length of the warehouses, and on Sundays a smaller producers' market takes over a city street.

Hobart is also Australia's Antarctic city. The national Antarctic programme is based at Kingston to the south, research ships lie at Macquarie Wharf between voyages, and several countries use the port for southern expeditions, which gives the place a population of scientists and a quiet pride in the far south.

Australian rules football is the main code, followed with a long grievance about the lack of a state team, which is due to be settled when the Tasmania Devils enter the league in 2028; the ground at Bellerive holds international cricket. Tasmanian Aboriginal culture is increasingly visible, with dual place names in official use and palawa kani, the revived language, in signs and welcomes. Manners are small-town: drivers wave, strangers talk and the pace is slower than Melbourne's.

Greater Hobart has about 250,000 residents, close to half the population of Tasmania, spread along both shores of the Derwent and up the valleys behind the city. The centre is small and empties in the evening; most people live in weatherboard and brick suburbs on hillsides, from Glenorchy in the north to Kingston in the south and the eastern shore across the bridges.

Government is the largest employer, with the state parliament and its departments, the University of Tasmania and the main hospital all in or near the centre. Tourism and hospitality, salmon farming, port work, Antarctic and marine science and construction account for much of the rest. Wages are lower than on the mainland, and many young Tasmanians still leave for work.

Housing has become the dominant local issue: prices and rents rose sharply through the 2010s as visitors, retirees and short-stay letting arrived, and homelessness has risen with them. A proposed roofed stadium on the waterfront at Macquarie Point divides the city much as salmon farming and forestry divide the state.

Winter shapes the routine. Days are short, the mountain is often white, and wood smoke settles in the valleys on still evenings. Two bridges carry the eastern shore's traffic, so trouble on the Tasman Bridge stops the city. Weekends go on the water, on the mountain tracks, or driving out to beaches and valleys within an hour of home.

Tasmania sells itself on cool-climate produce, and Hobart is where it is eaten. The scallop pie, curried scallops in shortcrust pastry, is the local classic and a standard of bakery counters, while the floating punts at Constitution Dock do fish and chips, scallops and crayfish rolls to eat on the quay. Oysters come from Bruny Island and Pittwater, abalone and rock lobster from the coasts, and Atlantic salmon and ocean trout from the channels south of the city.

The markets are the city's larder. Salamanca on Saturdays brings cheese from Bruny and King Island, leatherwood honey from the western rainforests, berries, cherries, apples, bread, cider and hot food; the Sunday market in the centre limits its stalls to growers and makers.

Cool nights make the wine. The Coal River Valley around Richmond, the Derwent Valley and the channel country grow pinot noir, chardonnay, riesling and the sparkling wines the island is known for, with cellar doors half an hour from town. Whisky is the other drink: small distilleries in and around Hobart have won international prizes since the industry revived in the 1990s, and Cascade, brewing in South Hobart since 1824, is the oldest brewery in the country.

North Hobart's Elizabeth Street carries the widest choice of restaurants, and Asian and Middle Eastern cooking has spread through the city in the past decade. Muttonbird, or yolla, remains a traditional food of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, harvested in the Bass Strait islands.