Geography

The area of ​​Tasmania is 68,401 km². The island is located in the "roaring forties" latitudes in the path of stable storm westerly winds. It is washed by the Indian and Pacific oceans and is separated from Australia by the Bass Strait.

The island is a structural extension of the Great Dividing Range of Australia. The shores form numerous bays (Macquarie, Storm, Great Oyster, etc.).

Geology

It is believed that the island of Tasmania until the end of the last ice age (approximately 10,000 years ago) was part of mainland Australia. Much of the island consists of Jurassic diabase intrusions (magma outcrops) into other rocks, sometimes forming extensive columnar structures. Tasmania is the world's largest diabase area, which forms many peculiar mountains and rocks here. It mainly consists of the central plateau and the southeastern part of the island. Mount Wellington near Hobart, with its unique columns of diabase organ pipes, is a typical example. In the southern part, at about the level of Hobart, diabase passes through layers of sandstone and similar sedimentary rocks. In the southwest, Precambrian quartzites from very ancient marine deposits form strikingly sharp ridges and mountains, such as Federation Peak (Federation Peak) and Frenchman's Cap. In the northeast and east, continental granites can be seen, similar to the coastal granites of mainland Australia. The northwest and west are characterized by mineral-rich volcanic rocks. In the south and northwest there are also limestones with magnificent caves.

Zones of quartzites and dolerites in high mountains bear traces of glaciation, especially on the central plateau and in the southwest of the island. For example, Mount Cradle was formerly a nunatak. The combinations of these different rock formations create stunning, unique landscapes. At the extreme southwestern tip of the state, the rock is almost entirely quartzite, giving the false impression of year-round snow caps on the mountaintops.

Relief

Since there was no volcanic activity on the island in recent geological time, isolated steep plateaus and highlands 600-1000 m high prevail in the relief, which makes Tasmania the most mountainous state of Australia. The lowlands of the Midlands, located along the course of the Macquarie River (flowing into the South Esk, and then into the Taymar), with relatively flat relief and used mainly for agricultural purposes, separates the Eastern Highlands (the most high point- Mount Legs-Tor, 1572 m) from the Central Plateau (the highest point is Mount Ossa, 1617 m - highest peak Tasmania).

Minerals

Climate

The absolute maximum temperature in Tasmania of 42.2 ° C was recorded on January 30, 2009 in the village of Scamander. The minimum temperature of -13 ° C was recorded on June 30, 1983 in the village of Tarralia.

reservoirs

Due to the mountainous terrain in Tasmania, there is a large number of rivers, many of which are blocked by hydroelectric dams that fully meet the state's electricity needs. Most of the rivers originate in the Central Plateau and descend to the coast. On the banks of river estuaries, as a rule, there are large settlements.

Flora and fauna

Animal and vegetable world Tasmanians are very original - a large number of representatives are endemic. Even those arriving from mainland Australia are subject to additional environmental controls in Tasmania, similar to those arriving in Australia.

In Tasmania, 44% of the territory is covered by rain forests, and 21% is occupied by national parks. Such relationships are rare. Lakes, rivers and waterfalls teeming with trout, replenished with rain and melt water, feed forests where euphoria tirucalli, regal and Hanna eucalyptus, myrtle, Cunningham's notophagus, blackwood locust, sassafras, brilliant eucriphia, phyllocladus asplenia leaf, dixonia antarctica and dacrydium franklinia grow - and environmentalists are still at war with miners, papermakers and hydroelectric builders. The bare desert of Queenstown, a mining and industrial city, is a harsh reminder of the consequences of the thoughtless waste of natural resources.

The fauna of these places also suffered, especially the thylacine, or marsupial wolf, a gray-yellow animal resembling a dog. For the dark stripes on the back and sacrum, he was nicknamed the tiger. It's a pity, but this lean, shy carnivore got into the habit of carrying poultry and sheep. Killed thylacines were rewarded, and by 1936 they were gone.

Another unique marsupial in Tasmania, the Tasmanian devil, may be in danger of extinction due to a unique cancer, the facial tumour. Currently, intensive work is being carried out by scientists in Australia to prevent the spread of this disease among Tasmanian devils. Tasmania is also famous for the slender-billed petrel. Starting a flight in the Tasman Sea, and practically flying around Pacific Ocean, the petrel returns to its sandy nests from year to year.

Not far from the nests of slender-billed petrels, where they fly only at night, there lives another bird that "flies" under water, a small penguin - with a short beak and weighing no more than a cat.

Population

In 1991, the population of Tasmania was 359,383. Most of the inhabitants are Anglo-Australians (more than 80%). This nation was formed mainly by the descendants of immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland. They are used to counting their history from 1788, when the first colonists arrived on the island. About 1% are aborigines, indigenous people Tasmania (Australoid race). It is believed that they have been living on the island for about 40 thousand years. There are also Chinese, Indians and other nationalities.

The official language is English with a local accent. The overwhelming majority of the population, including the natives, are Christians (most of all Catholics, followed by Protestants and parishioners of the Anglican Church, after - Orthodox). About 4% are Buddhists and Muslims.

Story

Name etymology

Aboriginal period

Photograph of the last four full-blooded Tasmanians, 1860s. Far right - Truganini, considered the last of them

Tasmania was originally inhabited by the Tasmanian Aborigines (Tasmanians). Finds that testify to their presence in this region, which later became an island, are at least 35 thousand years old. Rising ocean levels cut off Tasmania from mainland Australia about 10,000 years ago.

By the time of contact with Europeans, the Tasmanians were divided into nine main ethnic groups. Estimated [ whom?], during the appearance of British settlers in 1803, the local population ranged from 5 to 10 thousand people. Due to infectious diseases brought by Europeans, to which the natives had no immunity, war and persecution, the indigenous population of the island was reduced by 1833 to 300 people. Nearly all of the Aboriginal people were resettled by George Augustus Robinson on Flinders Island.

A woman named Truganini (-) is believed to be the last full-blooded Tasmanian. However, there is evidence that the latter was another woman, Fanny Cochrane Smith, who was born in Waibalenu and died in 1905.

First Europeans

Tasmania at the end of the 19th century

The first European to see Tasmania was the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman on November 24, 1642. The Tasman landed in Blackman Bay. In 1773, Tobias Furneaux became the first Englishman to land on the Tasmanian coast at Adventure Bay. A French expedition led by Marc Joseph Marion-Dufren landed on an island in Blackman Bay in 1772. Captain James Cook, with young William Bligh on board, stopped at Adventure Bay in 1777. William Bligh returned here in 1788 (on a ship Bounty) and in 1792 (on the ship Providence along with young Matthew Flinders). Many other Europeans have visited the island, leaving behind a colorful array of names of topographical objects. Matthew Flinders and George Bass in 1798-1799 first proved that Tasmania is an island.

The first settlement of Risdon Cove was established by the British in 1803 on the east bank of the mouth of the River Derwent. A small party of settlers was sent from Sydney under the command of John Bowen to prevent French claims to the island. The alternative settlement of Sullivans Cove was founded by Captain David Collins in 1804 five kilometers south on the west coast, where there were more sources of drinking water. The settlement was later named Hobart, after the then Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Hobart. The Risdon settlement was later abandoned.

The first settlers were mostly convicts and their armed guards. They were tasked with the development of agriculture and industry. Numerous settlements sprang up on the island, including the hard labor prisons at Port Arthur to the southeast and Macquarie Bay to the southeast. west coast. During the 50 years from 1803 to 1853, about 75,000 convicts were transported to Tasmania. Van Diemen's Land was separated from New South Wales and proclaimed an independent colony with its own judiciary and legislative council on December 3, 1825.

Colony of Tasmania

The British colony of Tasmania existed on the island from 1856 to 1901, when it, along with five other Australian colonies, became part of the Commonwealth of Australia. The possibility of colony self-government came in 1850 when the British Parliament passed the Australian Colonies Act, giving them all the right to legislate. The Legislative Council of Van Diemen's Land adopted a constitution in 1854, which was sanctioned by Queen Victoria in 1855. At the end of the same year, the Privy Council approved the change of the name of the colony from "Van Diemen's Land" to "Tasmania". In 1856, the newly elected bicameral parliament met for the first time, thus establishing Tasmania as a self-governing colony of the British Empire.

The colony's economy was subject to cyclical fluctuations, but experienced steady growth throughout most of the time. With few external threats and strong trade links with the Empire, the colony of Tasmania went through a series of favorable periods in the second half of the 19th century, becoming one of the world's shipbuilding centers. The colony created its own armed forces who played a significant role in the Second Boer War in South Africa. During the course of this war, Tasmanian soldiers were awarded the first two Victoria Crosses for Australians. The Tasmanians voted in favor of a federation with the largest majority of any Australian colony, and on January 1, 1901, the colony of Tasmania became the Australian state of Tasmania.

20th century

The state was significantly affected by the 1967 fires, which resulted in property damage and loss of life. In the 1970s, the government announced plans to fill Pedder Lake, which is of great environmental importance, with water. The destruction of the Tasman Bridge, which was hit by the bulk carrier MV Lake Illawarra in 1975, made it almost impossible to cross the Derwent River in the Hobart area. International attention was drawn to the campaign against the Franklin Dam project on the Gordon River in the early 1980s. This campaign contributed to the development of the green movement. On April 28, 1996, an incident known as the Port Arthur Massacre occurred when Martin Bryant shot and killed 35 people (both locals and tourists) and wounded 22. After this, the rules for the use of firearms were immediately revised, new gun laws were passed throughout the country, and Tasmania's state law became the most stringent in Australia. In April 2006, a small earthquake caused the collapse of the Beaconsfield Mine. One person died, two remained cut off underground for 14 days. Tasmanian society was for some time divided between supporters and opponents of the construction of the Bell Bay Pulp and Paper Mill. Supporters advocated the creation of new jobs, while opponents pointed out that environmental pollution would have a negative impact on both the fishing industry and tourism development.

Political structure

Tasmania's political form is determined by a constitution dating from 1856, although many changes have been made to it since then. Tasmania is a state of the Commonwealth of Australia, and its relationship with the Commonwealth and the distribution of powers between the various levels of government are governed by the Australian Constitution.

Parliament House in Hobart

In the 2002 Tasmanian parliamentary elections, the Labor Party won 14 out of 25 seats in the lower house. The number of votes cast for the Liberal Party dropped significantly and it was only able to win 7 seats. The Greens won 4 seats, representing over 18% of the popular vote, the largest representation of the Greens in any parliament in the world. On February 23, 2004, Prime Minister Jim Bacon resigned after being diagnosed with lung cancer. During his last month in office, he launched a vigorous anti-smoking campaign that resulted in a ban on smoking in many public places, including pubs. He died four months later. Bacon was replaced as prime minister by Paul Lennon. After two years in power, the party he led won the 2006 elections. Lennon resigned in 2008. He was replaced by David Barlett, who formed a coalition government with the Greens after the 2010 elections. Barlett resigned in January 2011. He was succeeded by Lara Giddings, the first female Prime Minister of Tasmania.

Tasmania has several relatively unpolluted ecologically significant regions. In this regard, local economic projects must comply with strict environmental requirements, otherwise they are automatically rejected. Projects for the construction of hydroelectric power plants put forward at the end of the 20th century turned out to be controversial. In the 1970s social movement against the dam project on Lake Pedder resulted in the creation of the United Tasmanian Group - the first green party in the world.

In the early 1980s, there was a heated debate in the state around the construction of the Franklin Dam. Arguments against the construction of the dam were shared by many Australians outside of Tasmania, which was one of the factors in the 1983 election of the Labor government of Bob Hawke, which halted the construction of the dam. After the 1980s, the attention of environmentalists turned to the clearing of relic forests - an issue that caused great controversy. Non - governmental organizations have recommended that clear cutting of protected relict forests be stopped by January 2003 .

Economy

Mineral map of western and southwestern Tasmania from 1865

Tasmania's traditional economic sectors are mining (copper, zinc, tin and iron), agriculture, logging and tourism. An important export item is fish and seafood (Atlantic salmon, galiotis, lobsters).

Over the past 15 years, Tasmania has been actively developing the production of new agricultural products for the state: wine, saffron, chamomile, cherry).

During the 1990s, Tasmania's industry experienced a decline, leading to an exodus of some skilled workers to the mainland, mainly to large industrial centers such as Melbourne and Sydney. However, since 2001, the situation in the Australian economy began to improve. A favorable economic climate throughout Australia, low air fares and the commissioning of two new ferries have created the conditions for a tourist boom on the island.

Today, the bulk of the population of Tasmania works in government organizations. Among other major employers Federal Group, owner of several hotels and two casinos, and Gunns Limited, the state's largest lumber company. In the late 1990s, following the introduction of fiber optic broadband with low-cost access, many Australian companies moved their call centers to Tasmania.

Due to undervaluation in the early 2000s and increased levels of domestic and international immigration to Tasmania, the state's real estate market experienced last years rapid growth even against the backdrop of the booming housing market in Australia. The lack of rental housing creates problems for many low-income Tasmanians.

Tasmania's business environment is considered to be challenging enough for small businesses to survive. However, there are a number of successful examples of the growth of private companies to large corporations, for example, Incat, Moorilla Estate, Tassal.

Transport

Communication with the mainland is provided by regular flights, as well as a daily ferry service "Melbourne - Devonport".

international Airport Hobart

Tasmania's main air carriers are Qantas, with subsidiary Jetstar Airways, and Virgin Blue, with direct flights to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide. Low cost airline Tiger Airways began flights between Melbourne and Launceston in November 2007 and Hobart in January 2008. Main airports: Hobart International Airport (regular international flights not operated since the 1990s) and Launceston Airport. From the smaller Burney Airport and Devonport Airport, flights to Melbourne are operated by Regional Express Airlines and QantasLink, respectively.

Coastal sea routes are served by TT-Line's Bass Strait car-passenger ferries. Since 1986, the MS Abel Tasman has operated 6 night voyages a week between Devonport and Melbourne. It was replaced in 1993 by the MS Spirit of Tasmania operating on the same schedule. It was replaced in 2002 by two fast ferries, the MS Spirit of Tasmania I and MS Spirit of Tasmania II, which increased the number of overnight services to 14 per week, plus one daytime service during the peak period. In January 2004, a third, slightly smaller ferry MS Spirit of Tasmania III began operating on the Hobart to Sydney route. This line was closed by the Tasmanian government in June 2006 due to insufficient passenger traffic. Ferry lines also operate from Bridport to Flinders Island and to Port Welshpool. Two container ships owned by Toll Shipping operate daily between Burnie and Melbourne. Cruise ships also call at the port of Hobart.

The Spirit of Tasmania ferry links the island to mainland Australia

The state is home to Incat, a manufacturer of aluminum-hulled high-speed catamarans that have set a number of speed records. The state government tried to use them for transportation through Bass Strait, but was eventually forced to abandon this idea due to doubts about the survivability and suitability of these vessels to work in the extreme weather conditions that sometimes occur in the strait.

Tasmania, in particular Hobart, serves as the main base for Australia's maritime connection to Antarctica. The Australian Antarctic Division is located in Kingston. Hobart is the base port for the French ship l'Astrolabe, which supplies the French Southern and Antarctic Territories. Hobart is the world's second deepest port, second only to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

The main transport within the state is automobile. Since the 1980s, many highways have been upgraded. In particular, the southern bypass of Hobart, the southern bypass of Launceston were built, the Bass and Huon highways were reconstructed. Public transport represented by company buses Metro Tasmania.

Tasmania's rail transport is represented by narrow gauge lines connecting 4 main cities and mining and logging enterprises on the west coast and in the northwest. The network operator is TasRail, subsidiary Pacific National. Regular Passenger Transportation in the state were discontinued in 1977. At present, only freight traffic is carried out, there are also tourist trains in certain areas, for example, tourist cog Railway West Coast Wilderness Railway.

culture

Kitchen

During the colonial period, typical English cuisine prevailed in most areas of Tasmania. The arrival of immigrants from other countries and the changing cultural patterns have resulted in Tasmania now having a wide range of multi-cuisine restaurants. Tasmania has many wineries located in various areas throughout the island. Tasmanian beer, in particular, brands Boag's And Cascade known and sold on the mainland. King Island, off the northwest coast of Tasmania, has a reputation for being a cheese and dairy boutique. Tasmanians also consume a large amount of seafood (lobsters, bigheads, salmon).

cultural events

To promote tourism, the Tasmanian government encourages and supports a number of annual events on the island. The most famous Sydney-Hobart regatta, starting in Sydney on Boxing Day and finishing at Constitution Dock in Hobart 3-4 days later, during the annual food and wine festival Taste of Tasmania.

The first season of the Australian version of the reality show The Mole was filmed primarily in Tasmania, with the finale taking place at the well-known prison in Port Arthur.

Movie

The most famous films shot in Tasmania are Ruby Rose Story, The Last Confession of Alexander Pierce and a recent picture Van Diemen's Land. In all of them, the Tasmanian landscape is an important element, and the plots of the last two were episodes from the history of convict settlements in Tasmania. In 2011, the film "The Hunter" was released, which was also filmed in Tasmania.

visual arts

Biennale Tasmanian Living Artists Week is a ten-day festival of Tasmanian visual artists held at various venues across the state. More than 1000 artists participated in the fourth festival in 2007. Two local artists have won Australia's prestigious Archibald Prize for Portraiture: Jack Carington Smith in 1963 for his portrait of Professor James McAueland and Geoffrey Dyer in 2003 for his portrait of writer Richard Flanagan. Photographers Olegas Tručanas and Piotr Dombrovskis are known for their iconic work in the movement against the Pedder Lake Dam and Franklin Dam projects. English-born artist John Glover is best known for his Tasmanian landscapes.

Mass media

A television

Tasmania has five television companies broadcasting through local television channels:

• ABC Tasmania(digital and analog), daily local news release at 19-00
• SBS One(digital and analog)
• Southern Cross Television Tasmania Seven Network
• WIN Television Tasmania(digital and analogue), network owned Nine network
• Tasmanian Digital Television(digital only), network owned Network Ten

In addition to their own production, TV companies rebroadcast national channels.

Sport

Spectators at the Bellerive Oval

Sports are not only an important element of leisure for Tasmanians. Several well-known professional athletes have grown up in the state, and a number of major competitions have been held here. The Tasmanian Tigers cricket team has successfully represented the state in the Sheffield Shield national championship (2007 and 2011 champions). Its home stadium, Bellerive Oval, hosts international matches. Notable local players include David Boon and current Australia captain Ricky Ponting. Australian football is popular, although the state's bid for a Tasmanian team in the Australian Football League has yet to be granted. Several league matches have been played at York Park in Launceston. In particular, since 2007, the Melbourne Hawthorn Football Club has been holding part of the games at this stadium, which declared it as a reserve home arena. In 2006, the stadium hosted the infamous match between St Kilda Football Club and Fremantle Football Club, which ended in a draw after the referees did not hear the final siren and the last point was earned after playing time.

see also

Notes

Links

Administrative divisions of Australia
States

…Are we dealing with intelligent monkeys or very lowly developed people?
Oldfield, 1865
The only sane and logical solution to an inferior race is to destroy it.
H. J. Wells, 1902

In the photo: the last indigenous people of Tasmania

One of the most shameful pages in the history of English colonial expansion is the extermination of the native population of Fr. Tasmania.,

British settlers in Australia, and especially in Tasmania, for their own prosperity, systematically destroyed the indigenous population and undermined the foundations of their lives. The British "needed" all the lands of the natives with favorable climatic conditions. “Europeans can hope to prosper because… blacks will soon disappear…

If the natives are shot in the same way as crows are shot in some countries, then the [native] population must be greatly reduced over time,” wrote Robert Knox in his “philosophical study on the influence of race.” Alan Moorehead described the fatal changes that befell Australia in this way: “In Sydney, the wild tribes were washed out. In Tasmania they were exterminated to a man... by settlers... and convicts... they were all hungry for land, and none of them was going to let the blacks stop it.

However, those gentle and kind-hearted people whom Cook had visited half a century before were not as submissive as on the mainland. After the farmers took away the land from the indigenous people (primarily in Tasmania, where the climate was colder), the natives with spears in their hands tried to resist the newcomers armed with firearms. In response, the British organized a real hunt for them. In Tasmania, such a hunt for people took place with the sanction of the British authorities: “The final extermination on a large scale could only be carried out with the help of justice and the armed forces ... The soldiers of the fortieth regiment drove the natives between two boulders, shot

all the men, and then dragged the women and children out of the rock crevices to blow their brains out” (ISSO). If the natives were "unkind [unaccommodating]", the British concluded that the only way out of the situation was to destroy them. The natives were "hunted incessantly, hunted down like fallow deer." Those who could be caught were taken away. In 1835, the last surviving local resident was taken out. Moreover, these measures were not secret, no one was ashamed of them, and the government supported this policy.

“So, the hunt for people began, and over time it became more and more cruel. In 1830, Tasmania was placed under martial law; a chain of armed men was lined up all over the island, who tried to drive the natives into a trap. The natives managed to get through the cordon, but the will to live left the hearts of the savages, fear was stronger than despair ... ”Felix Maynard, a doctor on a French whaling ship, recalled the systematic raids on the natives. "The Tasmanians were useless and [now] all are dead," Hammond believed.
* Hammond John Lawrence Le Breton (1872-1949) - historian and journalist.

The Europeans found the island quite densely populated. R. Pöh believes that about 6,000 natives could exist in Tasmania by the products of hunting and gathering. Wars between the natives did not go beyond petty tribal feuds. Apparently there were no hunger strikes, at least the Europeans did not find the natives exhausted.

The first Europeans were received by the Tasmanians with the greatest friendliness. According to Cook, the Tasmanians of all the "savages" he saw were the most good-natured and trusting people. "They did not have a ferocious appearance, but seemed kind and cheerful without distrust of strangers."

When in 1803 the first English settlement was founded on the island, the Tasmanians also reacted to the colonists without any hostility. Only the violence and cruelty of the Europeans forced the Tasmanians to change their attitude towards whites. In the sources we find numerous colorful examples of these violence and atrocities. “Someone named Carrots,” says H. Parker, “killed a native from whom he wanted to steal his wife, cut off his head, hung it like a toy around the neck of the murdered man and forced the woman to follow him.” The same author reports the exploits of a seal trader who “captured 15 native women and settled them around the islets of Bass Strait to hunt seals for him. If by his arrival the women did not have time to prepare the prescribed number of skins, he would tie the perpetrators to trees for 24-36 hours in a row, and from time to time he whipped them with rods.

In the early 1820s, the Tasmanians made attempts at organized armed resistance to European rapists and murderers. The so-called “black war” begins, which soon turned into a simple British hunt for Tasmanians, completely defenseless against white firearms.

H. Hull says bluntly that “black hunting was the favorite sport of the colonists. They chose a day and invited neighbors with their families for a picnic ... after dinner, the gentlemen took guns and dogs and, accompanied by 2-3 servants from the exiles, went to the forest to look for the Tasmanians. The hunters returned in triumph if they managed to shoot a woman or 1-2 men.

“A European colonist,” says Ling Roth, “had a jar in which he kept the ears of people he managed to kill as hunting trophies.”

“Many blacks with women and children gathered in a ravine near the city ... the men sat around a large fire, while the women were busy preparing food for dinner. The natives were taken by surprise by a detachment of soldiers who, without warning, opened fire on them, and then rushed to finish off the wounded. One soldier pierced a child crawling near his murdered mother with a bayonet and threw him into the fire. This soldier himself told about his “feat” to the traveler Hull, and when the latter expressed indignation at his cruelty, he exclaimed with sincere surprise: “After all, it was only a child!”

In 1834 everything was finished. “December 28,” says E. Reclus, “the last natives, pursued like wild animals, were driven to the tip of one elevated cape, and this event was celebrated with triumph. The lucky hunter, Robinson, was rewarded by the government with an estate of 400 hectares and a significant amount of money.

The prisoners were first transferred from island to island, and then all the Tasmanians, including two hundred, were imprisoned in one swampy valley on. Flinders. Within 10 years, 3/4 of the exiles died.

In 1860 there were only eleven Tasmanians left. In 1876, the last Tasmanian, Truganini, dies, the island turns out, according to English official documents, to be completely “cleared” of natives, except for an insignificant number of Europeanized mestizos of Anglo-Tasmanian origin.

“During the Holocaust, Charles Darwin visited Tasmania. He wrote: "I'm afraid there is no doubt that the evil that is happening here, and its consequences, is the result of the shameless behavior of some of our countrymen." This is putting it mildly. It was a monstrous, unforgivable crime ... The natives had only two alternatives: either resist and die, or submit and become a parody of themselves, ”wrote Alan Moorehead. Polish traveler Count Strzelecki,

(* Strzelecki Edmund Pavel (1796-1873) - Polish naturalist, geographer and geologist, explorer of America, Oceania and Australia) who arrived in Australia in the late 1830s, could not help but express horror from what he saw: “Humiliated, depressed, confused ... exhausted and covered with dirty rags, they are [once] the natural owners of this land - [now] rather ghosts former than living people; they vegetate here in their melancholy existence, waiting for an even more melancholy end.” Strzelecki also mentioned "the examination by one race of the corpse of another - with the verdict: "She died overtaken by the punishment of God." The extermination of the natives could be regarded as hunting, as a sport, because they seemed to have no soul.
True, Christian missionaries opposed the notions of the “lack of soul” among the “natives” and saved the lives of a considerable number of the last indigenous inhabitants of Australia. However
however, the constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, already in force in the post-war years, prescribed (section 127) "not to take into account the natives" when calculating the population of individual states. Thus, the constitution denied their involvement in the human race. After all, back in 1865, Europeans, when confronted with natives, were not sure whether they were dealing with "intelligent monkeys or very lowly developed people."

Caring for "these beastmen" is "a crime against our own blood," Heinrich Himmler recalled in 1943, speaking of the Russians, who should have been subjugated to the Nordic master race.
The British, who were doing "unheard of things in colonization" in Australia (in the words of Adolf Hitler), did not need this kind of instruction. So, one message for 1885 reads:
«Чтобы успокоить ниггеров, им дали нечто потрясающее. The food [which was handed out to them] was half strychnine - and no one escaped his fate ... The owner of Long Lagoon, with the help of this trick, destroyed more than a hundred blacks. “In the old days in New South Wales, it was useless to get those who invited blacks over and gave them poisoned meat the punishment they deserved.” Некий Винсент Лесина еще в 1901 г. заявил в австралийском парламенте: «Ниггер должен исчезнуть с пути развития белого человека» - так «гласит закон эволюции». “We did not realize that by killing blacks we were breaking the law ... because it used to be practiced everywhere,” was the main argument of the British, who killed twenty-eight “friendly” (i.e. peaceful) natives in 1838. Prior to this massacre on Myell Creek, all actions to exterminate the indigenous inhabitants of Australia went unpunished. Only in the second year of the reign of Queen Victoria for such a crime, as an exception, seven Englishmen (from the lower strata) were hanged.

However, in Queensland northern australia) at the end of the 19th century. невинной забавой считалось загнать целую семью «ниггеров» -мужа, жену и детей - в воду к крокодилам… Во время своего пребывания в Северном Квинсленде в 1880-1884 гг., норвежец Карл Лумхольц(*Лумхольц Карл Софус (1851-1922) - норвежский путешественник, натуралист и этнограф, исследователь Австралии, Мексики, Индонезии) слышал такие высказывания: «Черных можно только стрелять - по-другому с ними обращаться нельзя». One of the colonists remarked that this was a "hard ... but ... necessary principle." He himself shot all the men he met on his pastures, “because they are cattle-killers, women - because they give birth to cattle-killers, and children - because they [still] will be cattle-killers. They do not want to work and therefore are not good for anything but to get a bullet, ”the colonists complained to Lumholtz.

This text was written by Stanislav Drobyshevsky especially for the ANTROPOGENESIS.RU portal.
Place of first publication: http://antropogenez.ru/zveno-single/637/

Sincerely,
A. Sokolov
Portal editor
ANTROPOGENESIS.RU

The racial status and history of the origin of the Tasmanian aborigines are the "gray spots" of anthropology. This is mainly due to the total destruction of the natives themselves in the middle of the 19th century by the British. To a somewhat lesser extent, by the destruction of paleoanthropological and craniological materials at the end of the 20th century.

Despite these difficulties, not much is known about the Tasmanians. V.R. Cabo has given a comprehensive and best available overview of all available material (Cabo, 1975). The craniology of the Tasmanians has been dealt with in detail in several monumental works (Macintosh et Barker, 1965; Morant, 1927, 1939; Wunderly, 1939).

The skulls of the Tasmanians are characterized by a small volume, in fact, a record on a global scale (perhaps only the Andamanese are smaller). The length of the skull is medium, the width and height are small; the skull is dolicho-, ortho- and metricocranial. The slight width of the skull is usually set high, although the lateral walls of the vault are almost or completely parallel when viewed from behind.

The forehead is medium wide, rather sloping, with a flattened cerebral part. The superciliary relief of the Tasmanians is strong, emphasized by a strong depression of the bridge of the nose. The sagittal ridge of the frontal bone is often pronounced, although weaker than in the Australians, it rarely reaches the parietal bones, although the transverse profile of the arch is still pterygoid. The forehead is moderately sloping: stronger than that of the Europeans, but less than that of the Australians. The temporal lines are high, although not as close to the sagittal line as in the Australians. The occipital part of the skull is somewhat extended backwards, but not as much as in the Australians; the occiput is medium wide, but slightly widened compared to the width of the entire skull. The occipital relief is rather weakly expressed, which is why the Tasmanians differ sharply from the Australians; the same can be said about other elements of the muscular relief on the skull. The surface of the bones is generally very smooth, and all possible edges are rounded. The temporal fossa is weakly expressed, flattened. The scales of the temporal bone are very elongated, low, with a straightened upper edge; the parietal notch is rather weakly expressed.

Typical skull of a Tasmanian woman.
Source: Morant G.M. Note on Dr. J. Wunderly's survey of Tasmanian crania // Biometrika, 1939, V.30, No. 3/4, p.341.

The face is very low, but medium-wide, euryenne, mesognathic, although alveolar prognathism may be pronounced. A characteristic feature of the Tasmanians is a sharp upper horizontal profiling. The zygomatic arches are thin, unlike the Australians. The orbits have smoothed edges, rectangular in shape, with parallel upper and lower edges, absolutely very low and medium wide, relatively chameconch. The nose is very low, but wide, hyperchameric, as a result of which

the relative width of the nose of the Tasmanians is one of the greatest in the world, surpassing Australian values.

The nasal bones are concave and extremely short; the ratio of their width to length is a world record. The width of the nasal bones is less than that of the Australians; while the bones are often sharply narrowed towards the end, and their transverse profile is very convex. The nasal spine is often extremely poorly developed, perhaps less than in all other groups of people, and the edges of the nasal opening (and the lateral ones too) are rounded and smoothed; as in all equatorials, nasal pits or gutters are often developed. The zygomatic bones are very small, which makes the Tasmanians sharply different from the Australians. Unlike Australians, the infraorbital space is small. The canine pits are often deep, although less developed than in Australians. The mandibular notches are not very strong. The alveolar process of the upper jaw is very low, usually sharply directed forward. The palate is long and medium wide, leptostaphylline, shallow or moderately deep, never deep, unlike the voluminous one of the Australians. The palate often has a sagittal ridge. The alveolar arch usually has parallel rows of postcanine teeth and is straightened anteriorly. On the lower jaw, the height of the symphysis is usually higher than the height of the body in the posterior part. The chin protrusion is moderately developed, the ascending branch of moderate proportions, without excessive expansion.

Tasmanian teeth are very large, close to the world record, although apparently smaller than that of Australians. Associated with this is the usually good development of the third molars, which are almost always in contact with the antagonists. Teeth have a complicated structure of enamel.

Of the specific features, one can note the absence of a groove above the supraorbital foramen, typical of other human races. The lambdoid suture and asterion almost always have intercalated ossicles.

Even more unique is the relatively frequent occurrence of the fourth molar.

In general, the structure of the skull of the Tasmanians, although it has a certain specificity, is very similar to that of the southeastern Australians: so much so that many of the largest racial scientists considered it possible to combine them within the same type as local variants (Hrdlicka, 1928, pp.81-90; Thorne, 1971, p.317). Yet, the differences between Tasmanians and Australians outweigh the difference between groups of the latter (Morant, 1927). One of the most significant differences between Tasmanians and Australians is the difference in the latitudinal dimensions of the skull: in the former, the maximum width of the skull is greater, and all other dimensions, including the facial ones, are smaller (Morant, 1927). It is clear that here we have not just a change in size, but a change in shape, and a very significant one at that. The same feature is perceived by the eye as a good prominence of the frontal and parietal tubercles and, accordingly, a pentagonoid skull when viewed from above in Tasmanians and the absence of tubercles in Australians with an ovoid arch (Wunderly, 1939). At the same time, the width of the forehead relative to the width of the skull of the Tasmanians is noticeably less than that of the Australians. In the facial skeleton, a sharp difference in the upper horizontal profiling is noteworthy: it is very large in the Tasmanians and somewhat weakened in the Australians; Tasmanians are mesognathic, while Australians are prognathic.

Tasmania was probably already inhabited by about 34 thousand years ago. (eg: Jones, 1995), some evidence of which has been found in the southwestern part of the island at the sites of Fraser Cave (Kiernan et al., 1983), Bluff Cave and ORS7 (Cosgrove, 1989). The existence of a population on the islands of Bass Strait can definitely be judged by the tools on Hunter Island - 23 thousand years ago. (Bowdler, 1984) and Flinders Island - 14 ka BP. (Sim, 1990), but apparently people have lived here before.

Most likely, people came to Tasmania by land, located on the site of the current Bass Strait during times of low sea level during the next ice age, which fell on the interval of 37-29 thousand years ago. (Cosgrove et al., 1990). After the formation of the strait 12-13.5 thousand years ago. (Chappell et Thom, 1977; Jennings, 1971) people are unlikely to have crossed it many times, and perhaps not at all until the arrival of Europeans.

At least, judging by the archaeological record, no new or different elements of culture appeared in Tasmania (Jones, 1977); rather, some old ones have disappeared.

Many hypotheses have been put forward regarding the ancestors of the Tasmanians. The main ones can be considered "Australian" and "Melanesian".

"Australian" appears to be more justified geographically, archaeologically, ethnographically and linguistically (Cabo, 1975; Macintosh et Barker, 1965; Pardoe, 1991; Pietrusewsky, 1984). According to her, the Tasmanians descended from the aborigines of the southeast of Australia, from which they differ very slightly, mainly in curly hair.

The "Melanesian" hypothesis is based mainly on the curly hair of the Tasmanians, which is atypical for the Australian Aborigines. Of all the diverse Melanezoic groups, New Caledonians are more often suggested as ancestors to the Tasmanians (Howells, 1976 ; Huxley, 1870; Pulleine, 1929; Jones, 1935; Macintosh, 1949). However, the path from New Caledonia to Tasmania is not a short one, and it remains completely unclear why it was necessary to undertake a sea voyage of more than two thousand kilometers, if it was possible to safely cross over to Tasmania by land or, in the worst case, swim across the not so wide Bass Strait? In addition, fragmentary descriptions of living Tasmanians seem to indicate that there were wavy-haired individuals among them, and statistics inexorably fixes curly hair in all groups of Australians, and not in such a small percentage.

According to an intermediate version, the Tasmanians are close to the Barrines tribes living in the rain forests of Queensland (Birdsell, 1949, 1967; Tindale et Birdsell, 1941-3). It is assumed that both are descendants of the first wave of migration to the Australian mainland, preserved in the most inaccessible areas. On the one hand, these ancestors clearly had a relationship with the Melanesians, on the other hand, the difference between the Tasmanians and the southeastern Australians is recognized as exaggerated. The version is beautiful, but so far does not have any special evidence, because there are no craniological data on the Barrines, and somatometric data on the Tasmanians; both groups are not genetic. The similarity comes down again to curly hair and subjective external similarity. An argument against was put forward by a capital difference in growth - pygmy among the Barrines and quite average among the Tasmanians; this sign, however, obviously could change over thousands of years in the course of adaptation to local environmental conditions.

It seems that reducing the problem of the Tasmanians to the "Australian", "Melanesian" or "barrinoid" versions is an unjustified simplification.

The difficulty, in fact, is that at the time of the settlement of Tasmania, there were simply no Australoids or Meanezoids in their modern form. We can only talk about common ancestors.

The solution to the problem could be the study of paleoDNA or the characteristics of the genotype of the European-Tasmanian mestizos, living in some numbers in Australia and Tasmania, but there are no such works yet.

Paleoanthropology has little to offer to resolve the issue. Really ancient finds were made only in three places.

Male skull, presumably a Tasmanian-Australian mestizo.
Morant G.M. Note on Dr. J. Wunderly's survey of Tasmanian crania // Biometrika, 1939, V.30, No. 3/4, p.346.

On King Island in Bass Strait, in a coastal cave (which, however, in ancient times was located 20–25 km from the coast), a human skeleton was excavated in 1989 (Sim et Thorne, 1990; Thorne et Sim, 1994). The date of the burial is 14.27 thousand years ago. However, the bones were buried back almost immediately, so they were not actually examined. The subsequent debate about whether the King Island man was male or female (Brown, 1994a, 1995; Sim et Thorne, 1995) makes little sense in the absence of any additional information. King Island Man has been noted to be distinct from the Coswumps but similar to Keillor and also within the variation of the South East Australian Aborigines, which is why he has been assigned to the "Gracile" group. The vault is long, low, rounded, the relief of the skull, including muscular, is strong. In the literature one can come across the statement that the brow is not protruding, but from the measurements it follows that the bridge of the nose is depressed by almost a centimeter, so that the development of the brow was obviously significant. The extreme length of the frontal bone, combined with the very short length of the parietal, suggests that the skull was deformed; in the absence of published photographs, it is problematic to verify this fact. The shape of the face is similar to that of the natives. Noteworthy is the combination of a very large upper width of the face with a moderate average; face height is high. The face is noticeably flattened, but the cheekbones do not protrude forward. The absence of prognathism was noted. The interorbital width is extraordinary, the width of the nose is very large. The palate is of great length and very deep. The lower jaw appears to have been large, at least that is true of the ascending branch. The skeleton is described as gracile, with a relatively short femur with a large head.

The above description is more in line with the appearance of Australians than modern Tasmanians, but the problem is that we do not know such ancient Tasmanian skulls. Considering that during the life of a man, King Island Bass Strait was dry land, it can be assumed that he is a representative of the ancestors of the Tasmanians. Thus, character traits The Tasmanians must have formed after fourteen thousand years ago.

Only a few paleoanthropological finds have been made in Tasmania itself. The oldest is the scales of the occipital bone from the Nanvun cave in the Florentine river valley, which has an age of more than 16 thousand years ago. (Jones et al., 1988). The bone has a rounded shape, small thickness and weak relief, that is, it is typical of the Tasmanians. It is similar in form to those of Mango and Keillor (Webb, 1988), but it would be too risky to speak of a close relationship on this basis.

The fragmentary skull was found on the small island of New Yir, located off the northwestern shore much more major island King in Bass Strait (Murray et al., 1982). The find has an indefinite age - from the Late Pleistocene to the middle of the 19th century, but stratigraphically it is most reliably dated from 12 to 6 thousand years ago. The skull is small in volume, very long, but very narrow and very low, with a very wide forehead and a wide occiput. The greatest width of the skull is located high. The frontal bone is short, extremely sloping, with a weak superciliary relief. The sagging of its longitudinal contour is most likely due to post-mortem or intravital artificial deformation, which, it seems, is responsible for the exaggerated length of the entire skull and the excessive slope of the forehead. The parietal and occipital bones are smoothly rounded, the parietal tubercles are moderate, the occipital relief is weak. The nose was wide; there is a trough. The alveolar process of the upper jaw is small, which indirectly indicates a small height of the face. The palate is wide and shallow. The chin protrusion is moderate; the height of the symphysis of the lower jaw is higher than its body in the back. The teeth are big.

The morphological complex most closely matches the features of the Tasmanians, differing in the shape of the frontal bone. If the skull is indeed ancient, it may represent the transition from the "proto-Australoid type" to the Tasmanian proper.

A skull from Mount Cameron West or Premingan at the extreme northwestern tip of Tasmania was found surrounded by the charred remains of a "wigwam" structure known from ethnography as typical of Tasmanian funerary practices. The skull has been dated to 4.26 ka BP. The skull is referred to as being of the "Tasmanian type" and at the same time being part of the Australian Aborigine variability (Flood, 2004).

According to the good tradition of Australian science, the find was destroyed, so it is impossible to find out its real features.

Cremated remains were found at West Point Midden, 60 km west of Rocky Cape (Jones, 1964a,b). Cremations have been dated from 1800 to 800 years ago. Due to fragmentation, these fragments do not give anything to resolve the issue of the origin of the Tasmanians.

Summing up, we have to state once again that the history of the formation of the Tasmanian race is covered with a thick fog of antiquity. Nevertheless, the efforts of archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists, ethnographers, geologists and other specialists have not been in vain. It can be confidently stated that Tasmania was inhabited about 34 thousand years ago or even a little earlier. Most likely, people came here from the southeastern tip of Australia by land, during a period when vast land stretched on the site of the current Bass Strait. At this time, there was apparently no anthropological difference between the populations of Australia and Tasmania; this population can be called "proto-Australoid". After twelve thousand years ago, when the strait formed, contact between Australians and islanders ceased. Under conditions of isolation, the biological traits of the Tasmanians were transformed in their own way.

It is significant that compared with the original "proto-Australoids" the Tasmanians have changed much more than the Australians.

Most likely, this is explained, firstly, by adaptation to a new specific climate, and secondly, by the small number and isolation of the islanders in comparison with the mainland "superpopulation": under such conditions, genetically automatic processes lead to rapid changes.

The colonization of Australia and Tasmania became a vivid example of how the Anglo-Saxon race, exterminating the natives, conquered the living space.

In 1803, a small party of settlers was sent to Tasmania from Sydney under the command of John Bowen to prevent French claims to the island. They were tasked with the development of agriculture and industry.

The natives met the colonists without hostility, but soon changed their attitude towards the whites. For their own prosperity, the British settlers took land from the natives, who were killed, raped and enslaved. Aboriginal attempts in the early 1820s to resist, called the "black war", were brutally suppressed by the colonial army:

The final extermination on a large scale could only be carried out with the help of justice and the armed forces ... The soldiers of the fortieth regiment drove the natives between two stone blocks, shot all the men, and then pulled the women and children out of the rocky clefts to knock out their brains.

Tasmanians with spears in their hands were completely defenseless against Europeans armed with firearms, so very soon the “black war” turned into a real hunt for the natives by the British, which took place with the sanction of the British authorities.

In the testimonies of those events, there are descriptions of this cruel and bloody entertainment of the British: after inviting neighbors with their families for a picnic and having dinner, the gentlemen took guns, dogs, 2-3 servants from the exiles and went to the forest to look for blacks. The hunt was considered successful if it was possible to shoot a woman or 1-2 men.

The American biogeographer Jared Diamond cites other facts of the bloody fun of the gallant and noble Englishmen:

One shepherd shot nineteen Tasmanians with a falconet loaded with nails. Four others ambushed the natives, killed thirty people and threw their bodies off the mountain now called Victory Hill.

The colonizers regarded the extermination of the natives as a sport and were proud of their "achievements". One of the soldiers spoke about the "feat" to the traveler Hull:

Many blacks with women and children gathered in a ravine near the city... the men sat around a large fire while the women were busy preparing food for dinner. The natives were taken by surprise by a detachment of soldiers who, without warning, opened fire on them, and then rushed to finish off the wounded. One soldier ran a bayonet through a child who was crawling beside his murdered mother and threw him into the fire.

In 1828, the governor of Tasmania forbade the natives to appear in that part of the island where Europeans lived. Any native who violated this prohibition was allowed to be killed on the spot.

In addition, the Europeans were engaged in "catching blacks" and selling them into slavery. Felix Maynard, a doctor on a French whaling ship, described the raids on the natives as follows:

So, the hunt for people began, and over time it became more and more cruel. In 1830, Tasmania was placed under martial law, and a chain of armed men was lined up all over the island, who tried to drive the natives into a trap. The natives managed to get through the cordon, but the will to live left the hearts of the savages, fear was stronger than despair...

The French geographer and historian Elise Reclus wrote:

On the 28th of December the last natives, pursued like wild beasts, were herded to the extremity of a lofty promontory, and the event was celebrated with triumph. Happy hunter Robinson received a 400-hectare estate and a significant amount of money as a reward from the government.

As a result, by 1833, about three hundred natives remained on the entire island out of five or six thousand who had lived there before the conquest of Tasmania by the British. Almost all of them were relocated to Flinders Island, where three-quarters of them died within 10 years.

In 1876, the last representative of the indigenous people of Tasmania, Truganini, died, and the island, in the words of English official documents, became completely "cleared" of the natives, except for a negligible number of Europeanized mestizos of Anglo-Tasmanian origin.

The result of the Tasmanian genocide was cynically summed up by the British historian and journalist Hammond John Lawrence Le Breton: "The Tasmanians were useless and everyone died."

In Australia, the amusements of English gentlemen differed little from those of their neighbors on the island of Tasmania. The Australian government, modeled on the punitive squads of the Tasmanian government, created a mounted police unit - the so-called "cops for the savages."

This unit carried out the order to "search and destroy": the natives were either killed or driven from the inhabited territories. Most often, the police surrounded the Aboriginal camp at night, and at dawn they attacked and shot everyone.

The last mass murder of a peaceful tribe, which is confirmed by documents, was committed by a detachment of policemen in 1928 in the North-West: the inhabitants were captured, chained, built back of the head in the back of the head, and then all but three women were killed. After that, the police burned the corpses, and the women were taken with them to the camp. Leaving the camp, they also killed the women and burned them.

White settlers also widely used poisoned food to kill the natives. One of the colonialists in 1885 boasted:

To appease the niggas, they were given something amazing. The food that was handed out to them was half strychnine, and no one escaped his fate ... The owner of Long Lagun, with the help of this trick, destroyed more than a hundred blacks.

There was a flourishing trade in native women among the Anglo-Australian farmers, and the English settlers hunted them in droves. One government report from 1900 notes that "these women were passed from farmer to farmer until they were eventually thrown out like rubbish, left to rot from venereal diseases."

At the end of the 19th century, Anglo-Saxon racists also had fun by driving entire families of aborigines into the water to the crocodiles.

The colonists did not receive direct instructions from London to exterminate the natives, but it cannot be said that none of the British thinkers "blessed" them. For example, Benjamin Kidd categorically stated that "slavery is the most natural and one of the most reasonable institutions."

The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, which was in force in the post-war years, prescribed (Article 127) "not to take into account the natives" when calculating the population of individual states. Thus, their involvement in the human race was constitutionally rejected.

As early as 1865, when Europeans encountered natives, they were unsure whether they were dealing with "intelligent monkeys or very lowly developed people."

В 1901 году политик-лейборист из Квинсленда Винсент Лесина заявил в австралийском парламенте: «Ниггер должен исчезнуть с пути развития белого человека» - так «гласит закон эволюции».

The English colonists openly committed atrocities against the natives of Australia and Tasmania, not only because of land or even racial hatred, but simply for pleasure, showing their cruelty, moral abomination, greed and inner meanness.

Tasmania is impossible to miss even on a small-scale map. It looks like a medallion - a heart suspended on an invisible chain under the Australian mainland. Europeans learned about the existence of this island in 1642. Then it was not yet called Tasmania, but bore the name of Van Diemen's Land, given to him in honor of the Dutch Governor-General of the East Indies, who sent Abel Tasman to discover new lands in the southern Indian and Pacific Oceans. At that time, sea travel in these waters was extremely dangerous. Legend has it that Van Diemen sent Tasman to certain death in order to prevent the marriage of a sailor and his daughter Maria. However, the brave sailor managed not only not to die, but also to perpetuate his own name by opening New Earth. And the name of the governor's daughter was preserved in the name of one of the northern capes of Tasmania.

Interestingly, during the voyage, the navigator bypassed, that is, he actually did not notice, Australia and landed on the west coast of Tasmania. Abel Tasman, on behalf of Holland, took possession of the new land, but it was even less useful than (as they thought at that time) from Australia: a cold climate, wild nature. gloomy rocks and no treasures. Local residents did not react in any way to silver or gold, which the sailors generously showed to the natives. These strange, in the opinion of savages, objects had no value. From which it followed that there is nothing of the kind here, and indeed cannot be, and the local tribes were in a blissful primitive state, not having the slightest idea about property, and even more so about money.

After a short time, Abel Tasman went on. Surprisingly, Tasman got lucky again. He has the honor of discovering another land, which he, apparently, stumbled upon quite by accident, once again not noticing Australia! From the ship he saw the western shores of the South Island of New Zealand. This land was still unknown to anyone. But the Dutchman did not begin to study it in detail: the indigenous Polynesian population of the island, the Maori, reacted openly hostile to the newcomers. Four crew members were killed. Tasman did not start a military campaign with a numerically superior enemy and went to Batavia, as Jakarta was then called, the Dutch starting point for exploring the southern lands. Having made stops along the way on the islands of Fiji and Tonga, Abel Tasman safely reached the base in East India. Two years later, he made a second voyage along north coast New Holland, but this time he failed to find anything significant. It is interesting that it was thanks to the expedition of Abel Tasman in 1642, when the European navigator first visited the New Zealand South Island, that land is still called New Zealand to this day. Tasman named her Staten Landt. It was this name that was transformed by the Dutch cartographers into the Latin Nova Zee / andia in honor of one of the provinces of the Netherlands - Zeeland (Zee / and). Later, the British navigator James Cook used the English version of this name, New Zea/and, in his records, and it became the official name of the country.

The island of Tasmania is located in the zone of action of the incessant westerly winds of the Southern Hemisphere, the strength of which often reaches the storm. Once upon a time in the “good old time of wooden ships and iron people”, the British dubbed these winds “brave news”, and their distribution area - between 39 degrees and 43 degrees south latitude - “roaring forties”. Tasmania is just located in these latitudes, so that one third of the year is dominated by winds of force 7-9, bringing heavy rains from the ocean. Their streams, mixing with myriads of spray of the ocean surf, for many days, and sometimes weeks, cover the rocky shores of the island with impenetrable darkness from the eyes of seafarers. From time to time the "brave news" is brought by fog: a thick gray-greenish veil envelops both the sea and the coast for many miles around. Days like this when it's foggy locals they call it "pea soup" - there are at least sixty a year. The shores of Tasmania, constantly rolled over by violent waves with fragments of icebergs and fog brought by the "brave news" from the ocean, have long been the scourge of sailors.

Tasmania is separated from Australia by Bass Strait. So it was named after the English captain George Bass who discovered it. But for some reason this name did not take root among the sailors, who still call it the Strait of Danger. Although its width is 130 miles, and the depth is 500-600 meters, it is ranked among the ship cemeteries by sailors. The danger lies in numerous islands and rocks, underwater reefs and strong variable currents, not to mention fogs and stormy winds. The King, Hunter, Tri-Hammock and Robbins Islands stand in the way of ships going through the Strait From West to East. The shores of these islands and the passages between them are dotted with underwater reefs and hulls of sunken ships. A study of shipwrecks on King Island showed. that on the coastal rocks of the island, which is about 50 miles long and about 15 miles wide, more than fifty ships perished. In the course of this study, a number of valuable information was obtained about currents, straits, underwater reefs and shallows. This data was later used by hydrographers to compile detailed nautical charts of Tasmania.

But not underwater rocks and strong currents, it turns out, killed most of these ships. The Tasmanian maritime records show that pirates were the most common cause of their deaths. They appeared in the Bass Strait at the very end of the 18th century and began to rob whalers and hunters of sea beaver and elephant seals who hunted here (they say that once these animals were found here in great numbers). Having “smoked out” hunters and whalers, they turned to robbing merchant ships. And since the pirates did not have well-armed ships and boarding battles were not to their liking, they began to set up false beacons on the islands of Bass Strait. The deceived captains changed course, leading their ships to sharp reefs. The only thing left for the islanders-robbers was to transport the cargo of the lost ship to the shore.
The pirates Steilis Monroe and David Hope were particularly cruel to the shipwrecked. in the middle of the 19th century they were called "the uncrowned kings of Bass Strait". The first was the owner of the eastern part of the strait and controlled the islands of Flinders, Cape Barren, Swan, Goose, Preservation and others. Monroe reigned in these waters for exactly thirty years. David Hope established his residence on Robbins Island, where he lived in robbery and violence until 1854. Both leaders wore a gold earring in their ear, kangaroo skin coats and fur seal hats. Each of the leaders had a huge wine cellar, where they kept their stocks of rum and gin.

Because of the fake beacons of Monroe and Hope, a huge number of ships died in the Bass Strait region. So, for example, in August 1845, the English corvette "Katarak" came to the false Hope lighthouse. The ship crashed on the reefs and sank, killing more than three hundred settlers from England. In the same way, the corvette Seagi of Melbourne, in 1853, the barque Waterung, and the schooner Breten, perished on King's reefs in 1853. How many ships were lost off the coast of Tasmania? The Australian historian Harry O'May tried to answer this question. For ten years, he most carefully studied archival cases related to the accident rate of maritime transport in Australia and Tasmania. He managed to establish the names of b03 ships that died in the island area from 1797 to 1950. About two hundred ships in O'May's list remained nameless, although he knows their crash sites. An Australian historian believes that since the discovery to the present day, more than a thousand ships have died around Tasmania, not counting fishing boats. Several dozen ships from the ill-fated thousand were taken with them to sea ​​bottom valuable cargo, in particular gold. Of particular interest to underwater gold diggers is the American clipper ship Water Witch, which sank on the reefs of King Island on August 13, 1855. It is authentically known that at the time of its death there was gold bullion on board, which is currently valued at more than $ 5 million.

The information about the lost ships published by O "May caused a real stir among the adventurers of Tasmania and Australia. But it was not so easy to get to these underwater treasures! (e.g. the Tasmanian devil). Even those arriving from mainland Australia are subject to additional environmental controls in Tasmania, similar to those arriving in Australia. In Tasmania, 44% of the territory is covered by rain forests, and 21% of this area is occupied by national parks. Such ratios are not common. The Tasmanian rainforest is recognized natural heritage humanity. This is one of the last areas of virgin nature of the temperate zone in the Southern Hemisphere. And, perhaps, Tasmania is one of the standards of wildlife on our planet.

Lakes, rivers and waterfalls teeming with trout, replenished with rain and melt water, feed forests where euphoria tirucalli, regal and Hanna eucalyptus, myrtle, Cunningham's notophagus, black wood acacia, sassafras, brilliant eucriphia, asplenia leaf phyllocladus, antarctic dixonia and Franklinia dacridium grow. Environmentalists are constantly at war with the miners, papermakers and builders of hydroelectric power plants. The bare desert of Queenstown, a mining town, is a grim reminder of the consequences of the thoughtless waste of natural resources. Once Tasmania, like Australia with New Zealand, along with Antarctica, South America, Africa and India was part of the colossal southern continent of Gondwana, it was about 250 million years ago. The huge mainland occupied more than half of the globe, and a significant part of it was covered by the rainforest of the temperate zone. A significant area of ​​this forest has been preserved in the western part of Tasmania, in 1982 it, as unique phenomenon nature has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The nature of Tasmania is exceptional, it has no analogues in the world. The heart of the wild Tasmanian nature - national park wild rivers of Franklin-Gordon. Here you can see amazing mountain peaks, tropical forests, deep river valleys, picturesque gorges. And among all this splendor, protected rivers meander. Almost a quarter of the territory of this island has not yet experienced human influence. Impenetrable forests and jungles, strange forest animals, a huge number of rare bird species, a wide variety of fish in mountain lakes and rivers. One of the legendary inhabitants of the forests of Tasmania is the Tasmanian devil. Recently, the number of this exotic wild animal has decreased significantly. although he is not in danger of disappearing. With its powerful jaws, this muscular carrion collector, weighing between 6 and 8 kilograms, can eat a dead kangaroo whole - including the head. Of great interest is cultural heritage this region, which was the southernmost human habitat on our planet. There are more than 40 Aboriginal sacred sites that are still of exceptional importance for the modern population of the indigenous peoples of Australia. Archaeological finds from this region have made priceless exhibits stored in many museums not only in Australia, but throughout the world.