Tasmania

Aboriginal people reached Tasmania on foot more than 35,000 years ago, and rising seas cut the island off from the mainland roughly 10,000 years ago, leaving its people, the palawa, in isolation until Europeans arrived. The Dutch navigator Abel Tasman named it Van Diemen's Land in 1642.

Britain founded settlements at Risdon Cove in 1803 and Hobart in 1804, and the island became the destination for tens of thousands of convicts. The colony's frontier conflict, the Black War of the 1820s and early 1830s, brought martial law in 1828 and the "Black Line" of 1830, an attempt to drive Aboriginal people from the settled districts. Most of the few hundred survivors were removed to Wybalenna on Flinders Island by George Augustus Robinson, where many died. Truganini, who died in 1876, was long wrongly called the last Tasmanian Aboriginal person; descendants, many from the Furneaux Islands, sustain a living community today.

The penal settlement at Port Arthur operated from 1830 to 1877, and transportation ended in 1853; three years later the colony was renamed Tasmania. In the 20th century, hydroelectric dams brought industry but also conflict: the flooding of Lake Pedder in the 1970s helped give rise to one of the world's first green parties, and the campaign to stop the Franklin Dam, won in the High Court in 1983, made wilderness a national issue. In 1996 a gunman killed 35 people at Port Arthur, an attack that led to Australia's national firearms agreement.

Tasmanians call their island "Tassie", call Australians from elsewhere "mainlanders", and often joke about being left off maps of the country. Life is slower and smaller in scale than on the mainland, and a north–south rivalry runs between Hobart and Launceston.

Hobart's cultural reputation was transformed by MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art opened by the gambler and collector David Walsh in 2011. Its festivals — Dark Mofo in midwinter, with its nude winter-solstice swim and night-time art, and the summer MONA FOMA — have made the city a destination. The Sydney to Hobart yacht race finishes in Hobart around New Year, and Salamanca Market fills the waterfront on Saturdays.

Wilderness and environmental politics are part of the island's identity, and debates over logging, dams and salmon farming run deep. The Tasmanian Aboriginal community has revived a language, palawa kani, reconstructed from historical records, and many places now carry dual names, such as kunanyi/Mount Wellington. Australian rules football is the main code, and the state's long campaign for its own AFL team, the Tasmania Devils, is due to bear fruit when the club joins the AFL in 2028.

Tasmania has about 575,000 people, making it the smallest state by population. Greater Hobart has about 250,000 residents, Launceston about 90,000, and Devonport and Burnie on the north-west coast are the other main towns. Many young people leave for the mainland.

The economy is built on tourism, agriculture, salmon farming, forestry and mining on the west coast around Queenstown and Rosebery. Hydroelectric dams on several of the largest rivers generate electricity, and Hobart is a base for Australian and other Antarctic programmes, with research ships sailing from its port.

Current issues include housing costs in Hobart, pressure on the health system, the environmental impact of salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour and elsewhere, and a divisive plan for a new stadium on Hobart's waterfront.

Tasmania markets itself on clean, cool-climate produce. Atlantic salmon and ocean trout farmed in the channels and harbours are a major industry, alongside oysters from Bruny Island and Pittwater, abalone and rock lobster. The scallop pie is a local speciality sold in bakeries.

The island grows cherries, berries, potatoes and truffles. Leatherwood honey comes from a tree found only in Tasmania's western rainforests. Cheese is made on Bruny Island and on King Island in Bass Strait, known for its brie and other cheeses.

Cool nights suit sparkling wine, pinot noir, chardonnay and riesling, grown in the Tamar Valley, the Coal River Valley and on the east coast. Tasmanian whisky revived in the 1990s after the founders of Lark Distillery persuaded authorities to lift a long-standing ban on small stills, and the island's single malts have since won international prizes. Hobart's Cascade Brewery, founded in 1824, is the oldest operating brewery in Australia.

Hobart has Salamanca Place, the old cottages of Battery Point, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Cascades Female Factory — part of the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage listing — and the summit of kunanyi/Mount Wellington. MONA stands on a peninsula at Berriedale, reached by ferry up the Derwent. South of the city, Bruny Island offers the Neck, Adventure Bay, sea-cliff cruises and the Cape Bruny lighthouse.

The Tasman Peninsula holds the Port Arthur Historic Site, with its penitentiary and church ruins, as well as Tasman Arch, the Devils Kitchen and the Three Capes Track along some of Australia's highest sea cliffs. Up the east coast lie Maria Island, a national park with convict ruins at Darlington; Freycinet National Park, with the Hazards and the lookout and beach at Wineglass Bay; and the Bay of Fires, whose lichen-covered boulders stretch north from Binalong Bay.

Cradle Mountain–Lake St Clair National Park offers the walk around Dove Lake and the Overland Track, a multi-day hike south to Lake St Clair. Launceston has Cataract Gorge and the Tamar Valley wineries, while the west coast has Strahan, Gordon River cruises into the wilderness, the convict ruins of Sarah Island and the Russell Falls at Mount Field National Park on the road back to Hobart. Stanley's flat-topped headland, the Nut, marks the north-west.