Not all people who come to Australia as tourists make it to Tasmania. I sympathize with them very much – this state of the Australian Union deserves a separate visit. The beauty of nature here is only slightly Australian, but mostly its own, Tasmanian. It takes just over an hour and a half to fly here from Sydney, and you find yourself in a completely different world!
When the Dutch mariner Abeltasman reached the shores of this huge island in 1642, he named it Vandyman’s Land, in honor of the Governor-General of the Dutch colonies in the East Indies, Anthony Van Diemen, who sent a naval expedition in search of new lands for his homeland, which at that time was one of the main colonial powers of the world. The island bore this name for more than 200 years, until it was renamed Tasmania by its new owners, the British, on January 1, 1856.
However, according to geologists, if Tasman had made his journey 10,000 years earlier (let’s assume such a historical fantasy), he would have seen Tasmania not as an island, but as a peninsula connected to the mainland by a wide isthmus. According to him, local tribes moved here about 40-50 thousand years ago.
Now there is a strait about 240 km wide on the site of the isthmus of Bass, and only photographs in museums and some geographical names remain of the indigenous people. The last pure-blooded aborigine died more than 100 years ago… The inhabitants of Tasmania turned out to be completely defenseless against the diseases that the Europeans brought with them, and British colonization in the 19th century did its job. Today, only descendants of mixed marriages live on the island.
By the time of its renaming, the island had been one of the overseas lands of Great Britain for more than half a century, where she sent her not very law-abiding citizens to hard labor. In some ways, the Tasmanian penal servitude was even stricter than the Australian mainland. The main penal colony was called Fort Port Arthur. This Port Arthur has no family ties with its namesake, known from the history of the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905: it is named after the governor of that time.
In the middle of the century before last, the deportation of convicts here stopped, but the prison “town”, which had everything: housing for prisoners, two churches, a prison with punishment cells for the guilty, staff houses, a hospital, a pier, a subsidiary farm with a garden and vegetable gardens, continued to exist. And in 1877 he became a victim of giant forest fires. Now it is a ruin, but the ruins are preserved, well-maintained and with many museum exhibitions. Tasmania’s penal history has been put at the service of tourism. Small cars ply the vast territory, which (for free) pick up tired tourists and take them to the right addresses.…
All Tasmanians move around the island on wheels. There are no “real” railways. Only a few narrow-gauge railways operate, serving enterprises in the forestry and mining industries. Passenger transportation was canceled half a century ago, although tourists can ride on a special train that will pull a late 19th-century steam train.
But the owners of yachts and motorboats are well off among the residents of the coast. The ocean is all around! However, every tourist can test themselves on a two-hour trip along the coast in that part of the ocean, which is famous for its storms. There was no storm when we sailed, of course, but two or three points gave the passengers of the boat the opportunity to feel like “real sailors”, splashing them with spray and piercing the cold wind.… But all the same, the sailing was wonderful: the coast was amazing in its beauty – steep, almost steep shores, grottos, rocks, a unique columnar structure of local diabases (igneous rock from the basalt family) and imperturbable families of seals and fur seals reclining on coastal rocks.
The nature, flora and fauna of the island are unique. 40% of Tasmania is occupied by nature parks, there are as many as 18 of them! The population of the island is small – just over half a million, of which almost half live in the state capital Hobart, and therefore problems with the land where you can put your hands are irrelevant. Although all land use is strictly regulated. Vineyards are in high esteem: Tasmanian wines are for every taste, take a look at any “vineyard” on the way and make sure of it. However, the local beer, among which there are varieties with fruity smells, is worth a try.
What do Tasmanians eat? The cuisine here is diverse (there are Greek, Italian and even French restaurants), but fish, of course, are in special honor: salmon, trout, marine life… Lovers enjoy the freshest oysters and freshly caught shrimps. However, the lamb, for example, in one of the famous metropolitan restaurants in Hobart under the charming name “Drunken Admiral” was delicious in our case.
And the wildlife of the island? In Tasmania, as well as in mainland Australia, there are many marsupial mammals inherited by our times from distant geological epochs. Kangaroos, possums, koalas, massive wombats that look like well-fed piglets, and insects of all kinds and degrees of danger are familiar to everyone from books and zoos.…
But the Tasmanian devil, the largest marsupial predator in these latitudes, can be considered the most famous and most exotic animal of the island. The Tasmanian devil has a very ferocious disposition: he is not too big in size, but his menacing roar, as well as his menacingly gaping mouth, made meeting him unpleasant for the inhabitants of the island and their sheep. The protection of sheep herds can explain the fact that by the twentieth century the “devil” was almost completely exterminated, and only a categorical ban on hunting allowed this animal to survive in the island’s protected forests. His image can be found in all souvenir shops in the state, on posters and postcards.
But the marsupial wolf became extinct (or rather, it was exterminated) by the beginning of the last century. In 1930, the last (believed to be) wild wolf became the hunter’s victim, and six years later, the last representative of this species who lived in the zoo died. But there is hope that somewhere in the wooded part of the island there are families of marsupial wolves that have not yet been found. What if?
A week spent here on this amazing island, one of the few corners of the planet where you can truly plunge into the wild and feel like a part of it, is certainly not enough. I recommend everyone to visit Tasmania if the opportunity arises.