title: WikiLeaks

text: In April 2017, the WikiLeaks Twitter account suggested that the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, which international human rights organisations and governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France, and Israel attributed to the Syrian government, was a false flag attack. WikiLeaks stated that "while western establishment media beat the drum for more war in Syria the matter is far from clear", and shared a video by a Syrian activist who claimed that Islamist extremists were probably behind the chemical attack, not the Syrian government.


title: WikiLeaks

text: WikiLeaks won "The Economist"s New Media Award in 2008 at the Index on Censorship Awards and Amnesty International's UK Media Award in 2009. In 2010, the New York "Daily News" listed WikiLeaks first among websites "that could totally change the news". Julian Assange received the 2010 Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence for releasing secret U.S. military reports on the Iraq and Afghan wars and was named the Readers' Choice for "TIME's Person of the Year" in 2010. The UK Information Commissioner has stated that "WikiLeaks is part of the phenomenon of the online, empowered citizen". In 2010, an Internet petition in support of WikiLeaks attracted more than six hundred thousand signatures.


title: WikiLeaks

text: On 16 April 2019, Mairead Maguire accepted the 2019 GUE/NGL Award for Journalists, Whistleblowers & Defenders of the Right to Information on Julian Assange's behalf.


title: WikiLeaks

text: During the early years of WikiLeaks, various members of the media and academia commended it for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency, assisting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while challenging powerful institutions. In 2010, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern over the "cyber war" being led at the time against WikiLeaks, and in a joint statement with the Organization of American States the UN Special Rapporteur called on states and other people to keep international legal principles in mind.


title: WikiLeaks

text: Assange wrote on WikiLeaks in February 2016: "I have had years of experience in dealing with Hillary Clinton and have read thousands of her cables. Hillary lacks judgement and will push the United States into endless, stupid wars which spread terrorism. ...  she certainly should not become president of the United States." In a 2017 interview by Amy Goodman, Julian Assange said that choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is like choosing between cholera or gonorrhea. "Personally, I would prefer neither." WikiLeaks editor Sarah Harrison stated that the site was not choosing which damaging publications to release, rather releasing information available to them. In conversations that were leaked in February 2018, Assange expressed a preference for a Republican victory in the 2016 election, saying that "Dems+Media+liberals would [sic] then form a block to reign [sic] in their worst qualities. With Hillary in charge, GOP will be pushing for her worst qualities, dems+media+neoliberals will be mute." In further leaked correspondence with the Trump campaign on election day (8 November 2016), WikiLeaks encouraged the Trump campaign to contest the election results as being "rigged" should they lose.


title: WikiLeaks

text: Having released information that exposed the inner workings of a broad range of organisations and politicians, WikiLeaks started by 2016 to focus almost exclusively on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, WikiLeaks only exposed material damaging to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton. WikiLeaks even rejected the opportunity to publish unrelated leaks, because it dedicated all its resources to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. According to "The New York Times", WikiLeaks timed one of its large leaks so that it would happen on the eve of the Democratic Convention. The "Washington Post" noted that the leaks came at an important sensitive moment in the Clinton campaign, as she was preparing to announce her vice-presidential pick and unite the party behind her. The Sunlight Foundation, an organisation that advocates for open government, said that such actions meant that WikiLeaks was no longer striving to be transparent but rather sought to achieve political goals.


title: WikiLeaks

text: WikiLeaks explained its actions in a 2017 statement to "Foreign Policy": "WikiLeaks schedules publications to maximize readership and reader engagement. During distracting media events such as the Olympics or a high profile election, unrelated publications are sometimes delayed until the distraction passes but never are rejected for this reason." On 7 October 2016, an hour after the media had begun to dedicate wall-to-wall coverage of the revelation that Trump had bragged on video about sexually harassing women, WikiLeaks began to release emails hacked from the personal account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Podesta suggested that the emails were timed to deflect attention from the Trump tapes.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In November 2017, it was revealed that the WikiLeaks Twitter account corresponded with Donald Trump Jr. during the 2016 presidential election. The correspondence shows how WikiLeaks actively solicited the co-operation of Trump Jr., a campaign surrogate and advisor in the campaign of his father. WikiLeaks urged the Trump campaign to reject the results of the 2016 presidential election at a time when it looked as if the Trump campaign would lose. WikiLeaks asked Trump Jr. to share a WikiLeaks tweet with the quote "Can’t we just drone this guy?" which "True Pundit" alleged Hillary Clinton made about Assange. WikiLeaks also shared a link to a site that would help people to search through WikiLeaks documents. Trump Jr. shared both. After the election, WikiLeaks also requested that the president-elect push Australia to appoint Assange as ambassador to the US. Trump Jr. provided this correspondence to congressional investigators looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The exchanges led to criticism of WikiLeaks by some former supporters and raised questions about WikiLeaks' staff point blank denial that they had collaborated with the Trump campaign.


title: WikiLeaks

text: According to the Associated Press, leaked documents from WikiLeaks include an unsigned letter from Julian Assange authorising Israel Shamir to seek a Russian visa on his behalf in 2010. WikiLeaks said Assange never applied for the visa or wrote the letter.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In 2012, as WikiLeaks was under a financial blockade, Assange began to host World Tomorrow, a television show that was distributed by Journeyman Pictures and aired on RT.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In 2013, the Russian national newspaper "Izvestia" reported that Russian intelligence officers had coordinated with WikiLeaks to get Edward Snowden to Russia.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In April 2016, WikiLeaks tweeted criticism of the Panama Papers, which had among other things revealed Russian businesses and individuals linked with offshore ties. Assange said that journalists had "cherry-picked" documents to maximise "Putin bashing, North Korea bashing, sanctions bashing, etc." while avoiding mention of Western figures. The WikiLeaks Twitter account tweeted, "#PanamaPapers Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID and [George] Soros". Putin later dismissed the Panama Papers by citing WikiLeaks: "WikiLeaks has showed us that official people and official organs of the U.S. are behind this." According to "The New York Times" "there is no evidence suggesting that the United States government had a role in releasing the Panama Papers".


title: WikiLeaks

text: In August 2016, after WikiLeaks published thousands of DNC emails, DNC officials and a number of cybersecurity experts and cybersecurity firms claimed that Russian intelligence had hacked the e-mails and leaked them to WikiLeaks. Assange said that Russia was not the source of the documents and that the Clinton campaign was stoking "a neo-McCarthy hysteria". In October 2016, the US intelligence community said that it was "confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations". The US intelligence agencies said that the hacks were consistent with the methods of Russian-directed efforts, and that people high up within the Kremlin were likely involved. On 14 October 2016, CNN stated that "there is mounting evidence that the Russian government is supplying WikiLeaks with hacked emails pertaining to the U.S. presidential election."


title: WikiLeaks

text: WikiLeaks said it had no connection with Russia. When asked about Guccifer 2.0's leaks, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said "These look very much like they’re from the Russians. But in some ways, they look very amateur, and almost look too much like the Russians." President Putin stated that there was no Russian involvement in the election. In August 2016, a "New York Times" story asked whether WikiLeaks had "become a laundering machine for compromising material gathered by Russian spies". It wrote that US officials believed it was unlikely there were direct ties between Wikileaks and Russian intelligence agencies. A report by the Central Intelligence Agency shared with senators in 2016 concluded that Russia intelligence operatives provided materials to WikiLeaks in an effort to help Donald Trump's election bid.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In September 2016, the Daily Dot wrote that according to leaked court documents and a chatlog, a WikiLeaks release excluded evidence of a €2 billion transaction between the Syrian government and a government-owned Russian bank. Responding to the Daily Dot, WikiLeaks said that all the Syria files they had obtained had been published. Their spokesperson also stated, in reference to the Daily Dot's reporting of the story: "Go right ahead, but you can be sure we will return the favour one day."


title: WikiLeaks

text: In March 2017, "The Moscow Times" wrote that a former WikiLeaks collaborator said that "in recent years, WikiLeaks and the Russian state have effectively joined forces." The article reported that, since submissions to the Wikileaks portal are anonymous and encrypted, it was very difficult for Wikileaks to trace their source. Mark Galeotti, a researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague and an expert on the Russian security services, said he had suspicions "that things are sometimes fed in, and [WikiLeaks does] know where they came from." Galeotti said Assange would have to be "extraordinarily stupid and naive" not to conclude the DNC leaks came from Russia. According to the Mueller indictment, WikiLeaks knew the source was the Russian Guccifer 2.0 persona.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In April 2017, CIA Director Mike Pompeo stated: "It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia." Pompeo said that the US Intelligence Community had concluded that Russia's "primary propaganda outlet," RT had "actively collaborated" with WikiLeaks.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In August 2017, "Foreign Policy" wrote that WikiLeaks had in the summer of 2016 turned down a large cache of documents containing information damaging to the Russian government. WikiLeaks stated that, "As far as we recall these are already public ... WikiLeaks rejects all information that it cannot verify. WikiLeaks rejects submissions that have already been published elsewhere". News outlets had reported on contents of the leaks in 2014, amounting to less than half of the data that was allegedly made available to WikiLeaks in the summer of 2016.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In September 2018, The Guardian reported that Russian diplomats had secret talks with people close to Julian Assange in 2017 with plans to help him flee the UK Several possible destinations were suggested, including Russia. The Russian embassy denied the report. It was also reported that Ecuador attempted to give Assange a diplomatic posting in Russia, but Britain refused to give him diplomatic immunity to leave the embassy.


title: WikiLeaks

text: WikiLeaks has been accused of anti-semitism both in its Twitter activity and hiring decisions. According to Ian Hislop, Assange claimed that a "Jewish conspiracy" was attempting to discredit the organisation. Assange denied making this remark, stating "'Jewish conspiracy' is completely false, in spirit and in word. It is serious and upsetting."


title: WikiLeaks

text: In the wake of the "Charlie Hebdo" shooting in January 2015, the WikiLeaks Twitter account wrote that "the Jewish pro-censorship lobby legitimized attacks", referring to the trial of Maurice Sinet. In July 2016, the same account suggested that triple parentheses, or (((echoes))) – a tool used by neo-Nazis to identify Jews on Twitter, appropriated by several Jews online out of solidarity – had been used as a way for "establishment climbers" to identify one another. In leaked internal conversations, the WikiLeaks Twitter account, thought to be controlled by Assange at the time, commented on Associated Press reporter Raphael Satter who had written an article critical of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks tweeted that "[Satter]'s always ben(sic) a rat. But he's jewish and engaged with the ((()))) issue".


title: WikiLeaks

text: WikiLeaks has been criticised for making misleading claims about the contents of its leaks. Media outlets have also been criticised for uncritically repeating WikiLeaks' misleading claims about its leaks. According to University of North Carolina Professor Zeynep Tufekci, this is part of a pattern of behaviour. According to Tufekci, there are three steps to WikiLeaks' "disinformation campaigns": "The first step is to dump many documents at once — rather than allowing journalists to scrutinise them and absorb their significance before publication. The second step is to sensationalise the material with misleading news releases and tweets. The third step is to sit back and watch as the news media unwittingly promotes the WikiLeaks agenda under the auspices of independent reporting."


title: WikiLeaks

text: Most experts and commentators agree that Phineas Fisher was behind the AKP email leak. Fisher said WikiLeaks had told her that the emails were "all spam and crap" but published them anyway despite being asked not to.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In 2008, WikiLeaks attempted to auction off the emails of an aide to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, drawing criticism. University of Minnesota media ethics professor Jane Kirtley asked, "Ethically speaking, why don't they just publish it?" WikiLeaks later posted the emails on their website. In 2010, Assange considered a subscription service which he said would continue the auction idea. High paying subscribers would get early access to leaks, with the size and ratio of subsciption fees deciding how far in advance bidders would get access. In 2012, WikiLeaks put the Global Intelligence files behind a paywall, drawing intense criticism from supporters including Anonymous.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In 2010, Assange said that WikiLeaks didn't but "would have no problem giving sources cash" and that there were systems in Belgium to let them. In 2015, WikiLeaks began issuing "bounties" of up to $100,000 for leaks. WikiLeaks has issued crowd-sourced rewards for the TTIP chapters, the TPP and information on the Kunduz Massacre. WikiLeaks has issued other bounties for leaks on Troika Crisis Planning, LabourLeaks, Trump-Comey tapes, evidence of Obama administration officials destroying information, 2016 U.S. Presidential election-related information, information to get a reporter at The Intercept fired over the Reality Winner case, the U.S. Senate torture report, and documents and Sweden's vote on placing Saudi Arabia on the UN Women's Rights Commission. WikiLeaks had defended the practice with their vetting record, saying "police rewards produce results. So do journalistic rewards."


title: WikiLeaks

text: In April 2018, WikiLeaks offered a $100,000 reward for confidential information about "the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria." In October, November and December 2019, WikiLeaks published the OPCW Douma Docs "regarding the investigating into the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria." In a November 2020 interview with BBC, WikiLeaks' alleged source declined to say if he took money from the organisation.


title: WikiLeaks

text: WikiLeaks has drawn criticism for violating the personal privacy of individuals and inadequately curating its content. These critics include transparency advocates, such as Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Sunlight Foundation and the Federation of American Scientists.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In response to a question in 2010 about whether WikiLeaks would release information that he knew might get someone killed, Assange said that he had instituted a "harm-minimization policy." This policy meant that people named in some documents might be contacted before publication to warn them, but that there were also times were members of WikiLeaks might have "blood on our hands." One member of WikiLeaks told The New Yorker they were initially uncomfortable with Assange's editorial policy, but changed her mind because she thought no one had been unjustly harmed.


title: WikiLeaks

text: When asked to join their initial advisory board, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists declined and told TIME that "they have a very idealistic view of the nature of leaking and its impact. They seem to think that most leakers are crusading do-gooders who are single-handedly battling one evil empire or another." Aftergood has opined that WikiLeaks "does not respect the rule of law nor does it honor the rights of individuals." Aftergood went on to state that WikiLeaks engages in unrestrained disclosure of non-governmental secrets without compelling public policy reasons and that many anti-corruption activists were opposed to the site's activities.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In 2010, Amnesty International joined several other human rights groups in strongly requesting that WikiLeaks redact the names of Afghan civilians working as U.S. military informants from files they had released, in order to protect them from repercussions. Julian Assange responded by offering Amnesty International the opportunity to assist in the tedious document vetting process. When Amnesty International appeared to express reservations in accepting the offer, Assange stated that he had "no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses."


title: WikiLeaks

text: In an August 2010 open letter, the non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders praised WikiLeaks' past usefulness in exposing "serious violations of human rights and civil liberties" but criticised the group over a perceived absence of editorial control, stating "Journalistic work involves the selection of information. The argument with which you defend yourself, namely that WikiLeaks is not made up of journalists, is not convincing."


title: WikiLeaks

text: WikiLeaks has published individuals' Social Security numbers, medical information, and credit card numbers. An analysis by the Associated Press found that WikiLeaks had in one of its mass-disclosures published "the personal information of hundreds of people – including sick children, rape victims and mental health patients". WikiLeaks has named teenage rape victims, and outed an individual arrested for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia. Some of WikiLeaks' cables "described patients with psychiatric conditions, seriously ill children or refugees". An analysis of WikiLeaks' Saudi cables "turned up more than 500 passport, identity, academic or employment files ... three dozen records pertaining to family issues in the cables – including messages about marriages, divorces, missing children, elopements and custody battles. Many are very personal, like the marital certificates that proclaims whether the bride was a virgin. Others deal with Saudis who are deeply in debt, including one man who says his wife stole his money. One divorce document details a male partner's infertility. Others identify the partners of women suffering from sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and Hepatitis C." Two individuals named in the DNC leaks were targeted by identity thieves following WikiLeaks' release of their Social Security and credit card information. In its leak of DNC e-mails, WikiLeaks revealed the details of an ordinary staffer's suicide attempt and brought attention to it through a tweet.


title: WikiLeaks

text: WikiLeaks' publishing of Sony's hacked e-mails drew criticism for violating the privacy of Sony's employees and for failing to be in the public interest. Michael A. Cohen, a fellow at the Century Foundation, argues that "data dumps like these represent a threat to our already shrinking zone of privacy." He noted that the willingness of WikiLeaks to publish information of this type encourages hacking and cyber theft: "With ready and willing amplifiers, what's to deter the next cyberthief from stealing a company's database of information and threatening to send it to Wikileaks if a list of demands aren't met?"


title: WikiLeaks

text: The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for open government, has criticised WikiLeaks for inadequate curation of its content and for "weaponised transparency," writing that with the DNC leaks, "Wikileaks again failed the due diligence review we expect of putatively journalistic entities when it published the personal information of ordinary citizens, including passport and Social Security numbers contained in the hacked emails of Democratic National Committee staff. We are not alone in raising ethical questions about Wikileaks' shift from whistleblower to platform for weaponised transparency. Any organisation that 'doxxes' a public is harming privacy." The manner in which WikiLeaks publishes content can have the effect of censoring political enemies: "Wikileaks' indiscriminate disclosure in this case is perhaps the closest we've seen in reality to the bogeyman projected by enemies to reform — that transparency is just a Trojan Horse for chilling speech and silencing political enemies."


title: WikiLeaks

text: In July 2016, Edward Snowden criticised WikiLeaks for insufficiently curating its content. When Snowden made data public, he did so by working with "The Washington Post", the "Guardian" and other news organisations, choosing only to make documents public which exposed National Security Agency surveillance programs. Content that compromised national security or exposed sensitive personal information was withheld. WikiLeaks, on the other hand, made little effort to do either, Snowden said. WikiLeaks responded by accusing Snowden of pandering to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. At the same time, Glenn Greenwald criticised WikiLeaks for refusing to redact, telling Slate "I definitely do not agree with that approach and think that they can be harmful to innocent people or other individuals in ways that I don’t think is acceptable."


title: WikiLeaks

text: In January 2017, the WikiLeaks Task Force, a Twitter account associated with WikiLeaks, proposed the creation of a database to track verified Twitter users, including sensitive personal information on individuals' homes, families and finances. According to the "Chicago Tribune", "the proposal faced a sharp and swift backlash as technologists, journalists and security researchers slammed the idea as a 'sinister' and dangerous abuse of power and privacy."


title: WikiLeaks

text: In January 2007, John Young quit the advisory board and accused the group of being a CIA conduit. He published 150 pages of WikiLeaks emails. In a 2010 interview with CNET.com Young accused the group of a lack of transparency regarding their fundraising and financial management. He went on to state his belief that WikiLeaks could not guarantee whistleblowers the anonymity or confidentiality they claimed and that he "would not trust them with information if it had any value, or if it put me at risk or anyone that I cared about at risk." He later became supportive of the group again.


title: WikiLeaks

text: Within WikiLeaks, there has been public disagreement between founder and spokesperson Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the website's former German representative who was suspended by Assange. Domscheit-Berg announced on 28 September 2010 that he was leaving the organisation due to internal conflicts over management of the website.


title: WikiLeaks

text: On 25 September 2010, after being suspended by Assange for "disloyalty, insubordination and destabilisation", Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the German spokesman for WikiLeaks, told "Der Spiegel" that he was resigning, saying "WikiLeaks has a structural problem. I no longer want to take responsibility for it, and that's why I am leaving the project." Assange accused Domscheit-Berg of leaking information to "Newsweek", with Domscheit-Berg claiming that the WikiLeaks team was unhappy with Assange's management and handling of the Afghan war document releases. Daniel Domscheit-Berg wanted greater transparency in the articles released to the public. Another vision of his was to focus on providing technology that allowed whistle-blowers to protect their identity as well as a more transparent way of communicating with the media, forming new partnerships and involving new people. Domscheit-Berg left with a small group to start OpenLeaks, a new leak organisation and website with a different management and distribution philosophy.


title: WikiLeaks

text: While leaving, Daniel Domscheit-Berg copied and then deleted roughly 3,500 unpublished documents from the WikiLeaks servers, including information on the US government's 'no-fly list' and inside information from 20 right-wing organisations, and according to a WikiLeaks statement, 5 gigabytes of data relating to Bank of America, the internal communications of 20 neo-Nazi organisations and US intercept information for "over a hundred Internet companies". Assange stated that Domscheit-Berg had deleted video files of the Granai massacre by a US Bomber. WikiLeaks had scheduled the video for publication before its deletion. In Domscheit-Berg's book he wrote: "To this day, we are waiting for Julian to restore security, so that we can return the material to him, which was on the submission platform." In August 2011, Domscheit-Berg claimed he permanently deleted the files "in order to ensure that the sources are not compromised."


title: WikiLeaks

text: Herbert Snorrason, a 25-year-old Icelandic university student, resigned after he challenged Assange on his decision to suspend Domscheit-Berg and was bluntly rebuked. Iceland MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir also left WikiLeaks, citing lack of transparency, lack of structure, and poor communication flow in the organisation. According to the British newspaper, "The Independent", at least a dozen key supporters of WikiLeaks left the website during 2010.


title: WikiLeaks

text: Those working for WikiLeaks are reportedly required to sign sweeping non-disclosure agreements covering all conversations, conduct, and material, with Assange having sole power over disclosure. The penalty for non-compliance in one such agreement was reportedly £12 million. WikiLeaks has been challenged for this practice, as it is seen to be hypocritical for an organisation dedicated to transparency to limit the transparency of its inner workings and limit the accountability of powerful individuals in the organisation.


title: WikiLeaks

text: In 2010, after WikiLeaks' release of classified U.S. government documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, then U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden was asked whether he saw Assange as closer to a high-tech terrorist than to Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Biden responded that he "would argue it is closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers". Biden said Assange "has done things that have damaged and put in jeopardy the lives and occupations of people in other parts of the world."


title: WikiLeaks

text: Several Republicans who had once been highly critical of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange began to speak fondly of him after WikiLeaks published the DNC leaks and started to regularly criticise Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Having called WikiLeaks "disgraceful" in 2010, President-elect Donald Trump praised WikiLeaks in October 2016, saying, "I love WikiLeaks." In 2019, Trump said "I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing." Newt Gingrich, who called for Assange to be "treated as an enemy combatant" in 2010, praised him as a "down to Earth, straight forward interviewee" in 2017. Sarah Palin, who had in 2010 described Assange as an "anti-American operative with blood on his hands", praised Assange in 2017.


title: WikiLeaks

text: Tulsi Gabbard spoke of the "chilling effect on investigative journalism", first of the US government's reclassification of WikiLeaks (from "news organization" during the Obama administration to "hostile intelligence service" after the 2016 election), then of his arrest.


title: WikiLeaks

text: Release of United States diplomatic cables was followed by the creation of a number of other organisations based on the WikiLeaks model.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania (; Palawa kani: lutruwita) is an island state of Australia. It is located 240 kilometres (150 miles) to the south of the Australian mainland, separated from it by the Bass Strait, with the archipelago containing the southernmost point of the country. The state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 1000 islands. It is Australia's least populous state, with 569,825 residents . The state capital and largest city is Hobart, with around 40 percent of the population living in the Greater Hobart area.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania's main island was inhabited by Aboriginal peoples for up to 40,000 years before British colonization. It is thought that Aboriginal Tasmanians became separated from the mainland Aboriginal groups about 11,700 years ago, after rising sea levels formed Bass Strait. The island was permanently settled by Europeans in 1803 as a penal settlement of the British Empire to prevent claims to the land by the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. The Aboriginal population is estimated to have been between 3,000 and 7,000 at the time of British settlement, but was almost wiped out within 30 years during a period of conflicts with settlers known as the "Black War" and the spread of infectious diseases. The conflict, which peaked between 1825 and 1831 and led to more than three years of martial law, cost the lives of almost 1,100 Aboriginal people and settlers.


title: Tasmania

text: Under British rule the island was initially part of the Colony of New South Wales but became a separate colony under the name Van Diemen's Land (named after Anthony van Diemen) in 1825. Approximately 80,000 convicts were sent to Van Diemen's Land before this practice, known as transportation, ceased in 1853. In 1855 the present Constitution of Tasmania was enacted, and the following year the colony formally changed its name to Tasmania. In 1901 it became a state of Australia through the process of the federation of Australia.


title: Tasmania

text: Today, Tasmania has the second smallest economy of the Australian states and territories, which is significantly formed of tourism, agriculture and aquaculture, education and healthcare. Tasmania is a significant agricultural exporter, as well as a significant destination for eco-tourism. About 42 percent of its land area, including national parks and World Heritage Sites (21%) is protected in some form of reserve. The first environmental political party in the world was founded in Tasmania.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania is named after Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who made the first reported European sighting of the island on 24 November 1642. Tasman named the island Anthony van Diemen's Land after his sponsor Anthony van Diemen, the Governor of the Dutch East Indies. The name was later shortened to Van Diemen's Land by the British. It was officially renamed Tasmania in honour of its first European discoverer on 1 January 1856.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania was sometimes referred to as "Dervon", as mentioned in the Jerilderie Letter written by the notorious Australian bushranger Ned Kelly in 1879. The colloquial expression for the state is "Tassie". Tasmania is also colloquially shortened to "Tas", mainly when used in business names and website addresses. TAS is also the Australia Post abbreviation for the state.


title: Tasmania

text: In the reconstructed Palawa kani language, the main island of Tasmania is called lutruwita, a name originally derived from the Bruny Island Tasmanian language. George Augustus Robinson recorded it as "Loe.trou.witter" and also as "Trow.wer.nar", probably from one or more of the eastern or Northeastern Tasmanian languages. However, he also recorded it as a name for Cape Barren Island. In the 20th century, some writers used it as an Aboriginal name for Tasmania, spelled "Trowenna" or "Trowunna". It is now believed that the name is more properly applied to Cape Barren Island, which has had an official dual name of "Truwana" since 2014.


title: Tasmania

text: A number of Palawa kani names, based on historical records of aboriginal names, have been accepted by the Tasmanian government. A dozen of these (below) are 'dual-use' (bilingual) names, and another two are unbounded areas with only Palawa names.


title: Tasmania

text: There are also a number of archaeological sites with Palawa names. Some of these names have been contentious, with names being proposed without consultation with the aboriginal community, or without having a connection to the place in question.


title: Tasmania

text: As well as a diverse First Nations geography, where remnants are preserved in rough form by European documentation, Tasmania is known as a place for unorthodox place-names. These names often come about from lost definitions, where descriptive names have lost their old meanings and have taken on new modern interpretations (e.g. 'Bobs Knobs'). Other names have retained their original meaning, and are often quaint or endearing descriptions (e.g. 'Paradise').


title: Tasmania

text: The island was adjoined to the mainland of Australia until the end of the last glacial period about 11,700 years ago. Much of the island is composed of Jurassic dolerite intrusions (the upwelling of magma) through other rock types, sometimes forming large columnar joints. Tasmania has the world's largest areas of dolerite, with many distinctive mountains and cliffs formed from this rock type. The central plateau and the southeast portions of the island are mostly dolerites. Mount Wellington above Hobart is a good example, showing distinct columns known as the Organ Pipes.


title: Tasmania

text: In the southern midlands as far south as Hobart, the dolerite is underlaid by sandstone and similar sedimentary stones. In the southwest, Precambrian quartzites were formed from very ancient sea sediments and form strikingly sharp ridges and ranges, such as Federation Peak or Frenchmans Cap.


title: Tasmania

text: In the northeast and east, continental granites can be seen, such as at Freycinet, similar to coastal granites on mainland Australia. In the northwest and west, mineral-rich volcanic rock can be seen at Mount Read near Rosebery, or at Mount Lyell near Queenstown. Also present in the south and northwest is limestone with caves.


title: Tasmania

text: The quartzite and dolerite areas in the higher mountains show evidence of glaciation, and much of Australia's glaciated landscape is found on the Central Plateau and the Southwest. Cradle Mountain, another dolerite peak, for example, was a nunatak. The combination of these different rock types contributes to scenery which is distinct from any other region of the world. In the far southwest corner of the state, the geology is almost wholly quartzite, which gives the mountains the false impression of having snow-capped peaks year round.


title: Tasmania

text: Evidence indicates the presence of Aboriginal people in Tasmania about 42,000 years ago. Rising sea levels cut Tasmania off from mainland Australia about 10,000 years ago and by the time of European contact, the Aboriginal people in Tasmania had nine major nations or ethnic groups. At the time of the British occupation and colonisation in 1803, the indigenous population was estimated at between 3,000 and 10,000.


title: Tasmania

text: Historian Lyndall Ryan's analysis of population studies led her to conclude that there were about 7,000 spread throughout the island's nine nations; Nicholas Clements, citing research by N.J.B. Plomley and Rhys Jones, settled on a figure of 3,000 to 4,000. They engaged in fire-stick farming, hunted game including kangaroo and wallabies, caught seals, mutton-birds, shellfish and fish and lived as nine separate "nations" on the island, which they knew as "Trouwunna".


title: Tasmania

text: The first reported sighting of Tasmania by a European was on 24 November 1642 by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who landed at today's Blackman Bay. More than a century later, in 1772, a French expedition led by Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne landed at (nearby but different) Blackmans Bay, and the following year Tobias Furneaux became the first Englishman to land in Tasmania when he arrived at Adventure Bay, which he named after his ship HMS "Adventure". Captain James Cook also landed at Adventure Bay in 1777. Matthew Flinders and George Bass sailed through Bass Strait in 17981799, determining for the first time that Tasmania was an island.


title: Tasmania

text: Sealers and whalers based themselves on Tasmania's islands from 1798, and in August 1803 New South Wales Governor Philip King sent Lieutenant John Bowen to establish a small military outpost on the eastern shore of the Derwent River in order to forestall any claims to the island by French explorers who had been exploring the southern Australian coastline. Bowen, who led a party of 49, including 21 male and three female convicts, named the camp Risdon.


title: Tasmania

text: Several months later a second settlement was established by Captain David Collins, with 308 convicts, to the south in Sullivans Cove on the western side of the Derwent, where fresh water was more plentiful. The latter settlement became known as Hobart Town or Hobarton, later shortened to Hobart, after the British Colonial Secretary of the time, Lord Hobart. The settlement at Risdon was later abandoned. Left on their own without further supplies, the Sullivans Cove settlement suffered severe food shortages and by 1806 its inhabitants were starving, with many resorting to scraping seaweed off rocks and scavenging washed-up whale blubber from the shore to survive.


title: Tasmania

text: A smaller colony was established at Port Dalrymple on the Tamar River in the island's north in October 1804 and several other convict-based settlements were established, including the particularly harsh penal colonies at Port Arthur in the southeast and Macquarie Harbour on the West Coast. Tasmania was eventually sent 75,000 convicts—four out of every ten people transported to Australia. By 1819 the Aboriginal and British population reached parity with about 5000 of each, although among the colonists men outnumbered women four-to-one. Free settlers began arriving in large numbers from 1820, lured by the promise of land grants and free convict labour. Settlement in the island's northwest corner was monopolised by the Van Diemen's Land Company, which sent its first surveyors to the district in 1826. By 1830 one-third of Australia's non-Indigenous population lived in Van Diemen's Land and the island accounted for about half of all land under cultivation and exports.


title: Tasmania

text: Tensions between Tasmania's Aboriginal and white inhabitants rose, partly driven by increasing competition for kangaroo and other game. Explorer and naval officer John Oxley in 1810 noted the "many atrocious cruelties" inflicted on Aboriginal people by convict bushrangers in the north, which in turn led to black attacks on solitary white hunters. Hostilities increased further with the arrival of 600 colonists from Norfolk Island between 1807 and 1813. They established farms along the River Derwent and east and west of Launceston, occupying ten percent of Van Diemen's Land. By 1824 the colonial population had swelled to 12,600, while the island's sheep population had reached 200,000. The rapid colonisation transformed traditional kangaroo hunting grounds into farms with grazing livestock as well as fences, hedges and stone walls, while police and military patrols were increased to control the convict farm labourers.


title: Tasmania

text: Violence began to spiral rapidly from the mid-1820s in what became described as the "Black War". Aboriginal inhabitants were driven to desperation by hunger - that included a desire for agricultural produce, as well as feeling anger at the prevalence of abductions of women and girls. New settlers motivated by fear carried out self-defence operations as well as attacks as a means of suppressing the native threat - or even in some cases, exacting revenge. Van Diemen's Land had an enormous gender imbalance, with male colonists outnumbering females six to one in 1822and 16 to one among the convict population. Historian Nicholas Clements has suggested the "voracious appetite" for native women was the most important trigger for the explosion of violence from the late 1820s.


title: Tasmania

text: From 1825 to 1828 the number of native attacks more than doubled each year, raising panic among settlers. Over the summer of 18261827 clans from the Big River, Oyster Bay and North Midlands nations speared stock-keepers on farms and made it clear that they wanted the settlers and their sheep and cattle to move from their kangaroo hunting grounds. Settlers responded vigorously, resulting in many mass-killings. In November 1826 Governor Sir George Arthur issued a government notice declaring that colonists were free to kill Aboriginal people when they attacked settlers or their property and in the following eight months more than 200 Aboriginal people were killed in the Settled Districts in reprisal for the deaths of 15 colonists. After another eight months the death toll had risen to 43 colonists and probably 350 Aboriginal people. In April 1828, Arthur issued a Proclamation of Demarcation forbidding Aboriginal people to enter the settled districts without a passport issued by the government. Arthur declared martial law in the colony in November that year, and this remained in force for over three years, the longest period of martial law in Australian history.


title: Tasmania

text: In November 1830 Arthur organised the so-called "Black Line", ordering every able-bodied male colonist to assemble at one of seven designated places in the Settled Districts to join a massive drive to sweep Aboriginal people out of the region and on to the Tasman Peninsula. The campaign failed and was abandoned seven weeks later, but by then Tasmania's Aboriginal population had fallen to about 300.


title: Tasmania

text: After hostilities between settlers and Aboriginal peoples ceased in 1832, almost all of the remnants of the Indigenous population were persuaded or forced by government agent George Augustus Robinson to move to Flinders Island. Many quickly succumbed to infectious diseases to which they had no immunity, reducing the population further. Of those removed from Tasmania, the last to die was Truganini, in 1876.


title: Tasmania

text: The near-destruction of Tasmania's Aboriginal population has been described as an act of genocide by historians including Robert Hughes, James Boyce, Lyndall Ryan and Tom Lawson. However, other historians including Henry Reynolds, Richard Broome and Nicholas Clements do not agree with the genocide thesis, arguing that the colonial authorities did not intend to destroy the Aboriginal population in whole or in part. Boyce has claimed that the April 1828 "Proclamation Separating the Aborigines from the White Inhabitants" sanctioned force against Aboriginal people "for no other reason than that they were Aboriginal". However, as Reynolds, Broome and Clements point out, there was open warfare at the time. Boyce described the decision to remove all Tasmanian Aboriginal people after 1832by which time they had given up their fight against white colonistsas an extreme policy position. He concluded: "The colonial government from 1832 to 1838 ethnically cleansed the western half of Van Diemen's Land." Nevertheless, Clements and Flood note that there was another wave of violence in north-west Tasmania in 1841, involving attacks on settlers' huts by a band of Aboriginal Tasmanians who had not been removed from the island.


title: Tasmania

text: Van Diemen's Landwhich thus far had existed as a territory within the colony of New South Waleswas proclaimed a separate colony, with its own judicial establishment and Legislative Council, on 3 December 1825. Transportation to the island ceased in 1853 and the colony was renamed Tasmania in 1856, partly to differentiate the burgeoning society of free settlers from the island's convict past.


title: Tasmania

text: The Legislative Council of Van Diemen's Land drafted a new constitution which gained Royal Assent in 1855. The Privy Council also approved the colony changing its name from "Van Diemen's Land" to "Tasmania", and in 1856 the newly elected bicameral parliament sat for the first time, establishing Tasmania as a self-governing colony of the British Empire.


title: Tasmania

text: The colony suffered from economic fluctuations, but for the most part was prosperous, experiencing steady growth. With few external threats and strong trade links with the Empire, Tasmania enjoyed many fruitful periods in the late 19th century, becoming a world-centre of shipbuilding. It raised a local defence force that eventually played a significant role in the Second Boer War in South Africa, and Tasmanian soldiers in that conflict won the first two Victoria Crosses awarded to Australians.


title: Tasmania

text: In 1901 the Colony of Tasmania united with the five other Australian colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia. Tasmanians voted in favour of federation with the largest majority of all the Australian colonies.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania was the first place in the southern hemisphere to have electric lights, starting with Launceston in 1885 and Zeehan in 1900. The state economy was riding mining prosperity until World War I. In 1901, the state population was 172,475. The 1910 foundation of what would become Hydro Tasmania began to shape urban patterns, as well as future major damming programs. Hydro's influence culminated in the 1970s when the state government announced plans to flood environmentally significant Lake Pedder. As a result of the eventual flooding of Lake Pedder, the world's first green party was established; the United Tasmania Group. National and international attention surrounded the campaign against the Franklin Dam in the early 1980s.


title: Tasmania

text: In 1943, Enid Lyons was elected the first female member of the Australian House of Representatives, winning the seat of Darwin.


title: Tasmania

text: After the end of World War II, the state saw major urbanisation, and the growth of towns like Ulverstone. It gained a reputation as "Sanitorium of the South" and a health-focused tourist boom began to grow. The MS Princess of Tasmania began her maiden voyage in 1959, the first car ferry to Tasmania. As part of the boom, Tasmania allowed the opening of the first casino in Australia in 1968 Queen Elizabeth II visited the state in 1954, and the 50s and 60s were charactered by the opening of major public services, including the Tasmanian Housing Department and Metro Tasmania public bus services. A jail was opened at Risdon in 1960, and the State Library of Tasmania the same year. The University of Tasmania also moved to its present location in 1963.


title: Tasmania

text: The state was badly affected by the 1967 Tasmanian fires, killing 62 people and destroying over 652,000 acres in five hours. In 1975 the Tasman Bridge collapsed when the bridge was struck by the bulk ore carrier "Lake Illawarra". It was the only bridge in Hobart, and made crossing the Derwent River by road at the city impossible. The nearest bridge was approximately to the north, at Bridgewater.


title: Tasmania

text: Throughout the 1980s, strong environmental concerns saw the building of the Australian Antarctic Division headquarters, and the proclamation of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. The Franklin Dam was blocked by the federal government in 1983, and CSIRO opened its marine studies center in Hobart. Pope John Paul II would hold mass at Elwick Racecourse in 1986.


title: Tasmania

text: The 1990s were characterised by the fight for LGBT rights in Tasmania, culminating in the intervention of the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1997 and the decriminalization of homosexuality that year. Christine Milne became the first female leader of a Tasmanian political party in 1993, and major council amalgamations reduce the number of councils from 46 to 29.


title: Tasmania

text: On 28 April 1996, in the Port Arthur massacre, lone gunman Martin Bryant shot and killed 35 people (including tourists and residents) and injured 21 others. The use of firearms was immediately reviewed, and new gun ownership laws were adopted nationwide, with Tasmania's law one of the strictest in Australia.


title: Tasmania

text: In 2000, Queen Elizabeth II once again visited the state. Gunns rose to prominence as a major forestry company during this decade, only to collapse in 2013. In 2004, Premier Jim Bacon died in office from lung cancer. In January 2011 philanthropist David Walsh opened the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart to international acclaim. Within 12 months, MONA became Tasmania's top tourism attraction.


title: Tasmania

text: The COVID-19 pandemic in Tasmania resulted in at least 230 cases and 13 deaths . In 2020, after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic (SARS-CoV-2) and its spread to Australia, the Tasmanian government issued a public health emergency on 17 March, the following month receiving the state's most significant outbreak from the North-West which required assistance from the Federal government. In late 2021, Tasmania was leading the nationwide vaccination response.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania, the largest island of Australia, has a landmass of and is located directly in the pathway of the notorious "Roaring Forties" wind that encircles the globe. To its north, it is separated from mainland Australia by Bass Strait. Tasmania is the only Australian state that is not located on the Australian mainland. About south of Tasmania island lies the George V Coast of Antarctica. Depending on which borders of the oceans are used, the island can be said to be either surrounded by the Southern Ocean, or to have the Pacific on its east and the Indian to its west. Still other definitions of the ocean boundaries would have Tasmania with the Great Australian Bight to the west, and the Tasman Sea to the east. The southernmost point on mainland Tasmania is approximately at South East Cape, and the northernmost point on mainland Tasmania is approximately in Woolnorth / Temdudheker near Cape Grim / Kennaook. Tasmania lies at similar latitudes to Te Waipounamu / South Island of New Zealand, and parts of Patagonia in South America, and relative to the Northern Hemisphere, it lies at similar latitudes to Hokkaido in Japan, Northeast China (Manchuria), the north Mediterranean in Europe, and the Canada-United States border.


title: Tasmania

text: The most mountainous region is the Central Highlands area, which covers most of the central western parts of the state. The Midlands located in the central east, is fairly flat, and is predominantly used for agriculture, although farming activity is scattered throughout the state. Tasmania's tallest mountain is Mount Ossa at . Much of Tasmania is still densely forested, with the Southwest National Park and neighbouring areas holding some of the last temperate rain forests in the Southern Hemisphere. The Tarkine, containing Savage River National Park located in the island's far north west, is the largest temperate rainforest area in Australia covering about . With its rugged topography, Tasmania has a great number of rivers. Several of Tasmania's largest rivers have been dammed at some point to provide hydroelectricity. Many rivers begin in the Central Highlands and flow out to the coast. Tasmania's major population centres are mainly situated around estuaries (some of which are named rivers).


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania is in the shape of a downward-facing triangle, likened to a shield, heart, or face. It consists of the main island as well as at least a thousand neighbouring islands within the state's jurisdiction. The largest of these are Flinders Island in the Furneaux Group of Bass Strait, King Island in the west of Bass Strait, Cape Barren Island south of Flinders Island, Bruny Island separated from Tasmania by the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, Macquarie Island 1,500 km from Tasmania, and Maria Island off the east coast.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania features a number of separated and continuous mountain ranges. The majority of the state is defined by a significant dolerite exposure, though the western half of the state is older and more rugged, featuring buttongrass plains, temperate rainforests, and quartzite ranges, notably Federation Peak and Frenchmans Cap. The presence of these mountain ranges is a primary factor in the rain shadow effect, where the western half receives the majority of rainfall, which also influences the types of vegetation that can grow. The Central Highlands feature a large plateau which forms a number of ranges and escarpments on its north side, tapering off along the south, and radiating into the highest mountain ranges in the west. At the north-west of this, another plateau radiates into a system of hills where takayna / Tarkine is located.


title: Tasmania

text: Ben Lomond, Furneaux, King, Central Highlands, Northern Midlands, Northern Slopes, Southern Ranges, South East, and West.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania's environment consistes of many different biomes or communities across its different regions. It is the most forested state in Australia, and preserves the country's largest areas of temperate rainforest. A distinctive type of moorland found across the west, and particularly south-west of Tasmania, are buttongrass plains, which are speculated to have been expanded by Tasmanian Aboriginal burning practices. Tasmania also features a diverse alpine garden environment, such as cushion plant. Highland areas receive consistent snowfall above ~1,000 metres every year, and due to cold air from Antarctica, this level often reaches 800 m, and more occasionally 600 or 400 metres. Every five or so years, snow can form at sea level. This environment gives rise to the cypress forests of the Central Plateau and mountainous highlands. In particular, the Walls of Jerusalem with large areas of rare pencil pine, and its closest relative King Billy pine. On the West Coast Range and partially on Mount Field, Australia's only winter-deciduous plant, deciduous beech is found, which forms a carpet or krummholz, or very rarely a 4-metre tree.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania features a high concentration of waterfalls. These can be found in small creeks, alpine streams, rapid rivers, or off precipitous plunges. Some of the tallest waterfalls are found on mountain massifs, sometimes at a 200-metre cascade. The most famous and most visited waterfall in Tasmania is Russell Falls in Mount Field due to its proximity to Hobart and stepped falls at a total height of 58 metres.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania also has a large number of beaches, the longest of which is Ocean Beach on the West Coast at about 40 kilometres. Wineglass Bay in Freycinet on the east coast is a well-known landmark of the state.


title: Tasmania

text: The Tasmanian temperate rainforests cover a few different types. These are also considered distinct from the more common wet sclerophyll forests, though these eucalypt forests often form with rainforest understorey and ferns (such as tree-ferns) are usually never absent. Rainforest found in deep gullies are usually difficult to traverse due to dense understorey growth, such as from horizontal ("Anodopetalum biglandulosum"). Higher-elevation forests (~500 to 800 m) have smaller ground vegetation and are thus easier to walk in. The most common rainforests usually have a 50-metre canopy and are varied by environmental factors. Emergent growth usually comes from eucalyptus, which can tower another 50 metres higher (usually less), providing the most common choice of nesting for giant wedge-tailed eagles.


title: Tasmania

text: The human environment ranges from urban or industrial development, to farming or grazing land. The most cultivated area is the Midlands, where it has suitable soil but is also the driest part of the state.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania's was possibly detected by Captain Abel Tasman when he charted Tasmania's coast in 1642. On 5 December, Tasman was following the east coast northward to see how far it went. When the land veered to the north-west at Eddystone Point, he tried to keep in with it but his ships were suddenly hit by the Roaring Forties howling through Bass Strait. Tasman was on a mission to find the Southern Continent, not more islands, so he abruptly turned away to the east and continued his continent-hunting.


title: Tasmania

text: The next European to enter the strait was Captain James Cook on HMS "Endeavour" in April 1770. However, after sailing for two hours westward into the strait against the wind, he turned back east and noted in his journal that he was "doubtful whether they [i.e. Van Diemen's Land and New Holland] are one land or no".


title: Tasmania

text: The strait was named after George Bass, after he and Matthew Flinders passed through it while circumnavigating Van Diemen's Land in the "Norfolk" in 1798–99. At Flinders' recommendation, the Governor of New South Wales, John Hunter, in 1800 named the stretch of water between the mainland and Van Diemen's Land "Bass's Straits". Later it became known as Bass Strait.


title: Tasmania

text: The existence of the strait had been suggested in 1797 by the master of Sydney Cove when he reached Sydney after deliberately grounding his foundering ship and being stranded on Preservation Island (at the eastern end of the strait). He reported that the strong south westerly swell and the tides and currents suggested that the island was in a channel linking the Pacific and southern Indian Ocean. Governor Hunter thus wrote to Joseph Banks in August 1797 that it seemed certain a strait existed.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania has a relatively cool temperate climate compared to the rest of Australia, spared from the hot summers of the mainland and experiencing four distinct seasons. Summer is from December to February when the average maximum sea temperature is and inland areas around Launceston reach . Other inland areas are much cooler, with Liawenee, located on the Central Plateau, one of the coldest places in Australia, ranging between and in February. Autumn is from March to May, with mostly settled weather, as summer patterns gradually take on the shape of winter patterns. The winter months are from June to August, and are generally the wettest and coldest months in the state, with most high lying areas receiving considerable snowfall. Winter maximums are on average along coastal areas and on the central plateau, as a result of a series of cold fronts from the Southern Ocean. Inland areas receive regular freezes throughout the winter months. Spring is from September to November, and is an unsettled season of transition, where winter weather patterns begin to take the shape of summer patterns, although snowfall is still common up until October. Spring is generally the windiest time of the year with afternoon sea breezes starting to take effect on the coast.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania has extremely diverse vegetation, from the heavily grazed grassland of the dry Midlands to the tall evergreen eucalypt forest, alpine heathlands and large areas of cool temperate rainforests and moorlands in the rest of the state. Many species are unique to Tasmania and some are related to species in South America and New Zealand through ancestors which grew on the supercontinent of Gondwana, 50 million years ago. "Nothofagus gunnii", commonly known as Australian beech, is Australia's only temperate native deciduous tree and is found exclusively in Tasmania.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania also has a number of native edibles, known as bush tucker in Australia. These plants were foraged by the Tasmanian Aboriginals and also used for other purposes, such as construction. Unusual trees such as cider gum ("Eucalyptus gunnii") had their manna used to make a syrup or an alcohol (cider). Other trees such as wattles (acacias) like blackwood ("Acacia melanoxylon") and mimosa ("Acacia dealbata") could have their seeds eaten or crushed into a powder. There are also many berries such as snowberry ("Gaultheria hispida"), fruits such as heartberry ("Aristotelia peduncularis"), and vegetables such as river mint ("Mentha australis"), though no crops like maize that are used for large production.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania has a large percentage of endemism whilst featuring many types of animals found on mainland Australia. Many of these species, such as the platypus are larger than their mainland relatives.


title: Tasmania

text: The island of Tasmania was home to the thylacine, a marsupial which resembled a fossa or some say a wild dog. Known colloquially as the Tasmanian tiger for the distinctive striping across its back, it became extinct in mainland Australia much earlier because of competition by the dingo, introduced in prehistoric times. Owing to persecution by farmers, government-funded bounty hunters and, in the final years, collectors for overseas museums, it appears to have been exterminated in Tasmania. The Tasmanian devil became the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936, and is now found in the wild only in Tasmania. Tasmania was one of the last regions of Australia to be introduced to domesticated dogs. Dogs were brought from Britain in 1803 for hunting kangaroos and emus. This introduction completely transformed Aboriginal society, as it helped them to successfully compete with European hunters, and was more important than the introduction of guns for the Aboriginal people.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania is a hotspot for giant habitat trees and the large animal species that occupy them, notably the endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle ("Aquila audax fleayi"), the Tasmanian masked owl ("Tyto novaehollandiae castanops"), the Tasmanian giant freshwater crayfish ("Astacopsis gouldi"), the yellow wattlebird ("Anthochaera paradoxa"), the green rosella ("Platycercus caledonicus") and others. Tasmania is also home to the world's only three migratory parrots, the critically endangered Orange-bellied parrot ("Neophema chrysogaster"), the Blue-winged parrot ("Neophema chrysostoma"), and the fastest parrot in the world, the swift parrot ("Lathamus discolor").


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania is a hotspot for fungal diversity. The importance of fungi in Tasmania's ecology is often overlooked, but nonetheless they play a vital role in the natural vegetation cycle.


title: Tasmania

text: Like the rest of Australia, Tasmania suffers from an endangered species problem. In particular, many important Tasmanian subspecies and world-significant species of animal are classified as at risk in some way. A famous example is the Tasmanian devil, which is endangered due to devil facial tumour disease. Some species have already gone extinct, primarily due to human interference, such as in the case of the thylacine or the Tasmanian emu. In Tasmania, there are about 90 endangered, vulnerable, or threatened vertebrate species classified by the state or Commonwealth governments. Because of a reliance on roads and private vehicle transport, and a high concentration of animal populations divided by this development, Tasmania has the worst (per kilometre) roadkill rate in the world, with 32 animals killed per hour and at least 300,000 per year.


title: Tasmania

text: Protected areas of Tasmania cover 21% of the island's land area in the form of national parks. The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA) was inscribed by UNESCO in 1982, where it is globally significant because "most UNESCO World Heritage sites meet only one or two of the ten criteria for that status. The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA) meets 7 out of 10 criteria. Only one other place on earth—China’s Mount Taishan—meets that many criteria".


title: Tasmania

text: Controversy surrounds the decision in 2014 by the Abbott federal Liberal government to request the area's delisting and opening for resource exploration (before it was rejected by the UN Committee at Doha), and the current mining and deforestation in the state's Tarkine region, the largest single temperate rainforest in Australia.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania's population is more homogeneous than that of other states of Australia, with many of Irish and British descent. Approximately 65% of its residents are descendants of an estimated 10,000 "founding families" from the mid-19th century.


title: Tasmania

text: Until 2012, Tasmania was the only state in Australia with an above-replacement total fertility rate; Tasmanian women had an average of 2.24 children each. By 2012 the birth rate had slipped to 2.1 children per woman, bringing the state to the replacement threshold, but it continues to have the second-highest birth rate of any state or territory (behind the Northern Territory).


title: Tasmania

text: Major population centres include Hobart, Launceston, Devonport, Burnie, and Ulverstone. Kingston is often defined as a separate city but is generally regarded as part of the Greater Hobart Area.


title: Tasmania

text: 19.3% of the population was born overseas at the 2016 census. The five largest groups of overseas-born were from England (3.7%), New Zealand (1%), Mainland China (0.6%), Scotland (0.4%) and the Netherlands (0.4%).


title: Tasmania

text: 4.6% of the population, or 23,572 people, identified as Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders) in 2016.


title: Tasmania

text: At the , 86.1% of inhabitants spoke only English at home, with the next most common languages being Mandarin (1.5%), Nepali (1.3%), Punjabi (0.5%) and Spanish (0.3%).


title: Tasmania

text: According to the 2021 Census, 50.0% of the Tasmanian population identified as having no religious affiliation. Christianity is followed by 38.4% of the population.


title: Tasmania

text: About 4.5% of people in Tasmania follows non-Christian religion mainly Hinduism (1.7%), Buddhism (1.0%) and Islam (0.9%).


title: Tasmania

text: At the 2016 census, the most commonly nominated religions were Anglicanism (20.4%) and Catholicism (15.6%), while 37.8% of the population cited no religion.


title: Tasmania

text: The form of the government of Tasmania is prescribed in its constitution, which dates from 1856, although it has been amended many times since then. Since 1901, Tasmania has been a state of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Australian Constitution regulates its relationship with the Commonwealth and prescribes which powers each level of government is allowed.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania is represented in the Senate by 12 senators, on an equal basis with all other states. In the House of Representatives, Tasmania is entitled to five seats, which is the minimum allocation for a state guaranteed by the Constitution—the number of House of Representatives seats for each state is otherwise decided on the basis of their relative populations, and Tasmania has never qualified for five seats on that basis alone. Tasmania's House of Assembly use a system of multi-seat proportional representation known as Hare-Clark.


title: Tasmania

text: At the 2002 state election, the Labor Party won 14 of the 25 House seats. The people decreased their vote for the Liberal Party; representation in the Parliament fell to seven seats. The Greens won four seats, with over 18% of the popular vote, the highest proportion of any Green party in any parliament in the world at that time.


title: Tasmania

text: On 23 February 2004 the Premier Jim Bacon announced his retirement, after being diagnosed with lung cancer. In his last months he opened a vigorous anti-smoking campaign which included many restrictions on where individuals could smoke, such as pubs. He died four months later. Bacon was succeeded by Paul Lennon, who, after leading the state for two years, went on to win the 2006 state election in his own right. Lennon resigned in 2008 and was succeeded by David Bartlett, who formed a coalition government with the Greens after the 2010 state election resulted in a hung parliament. Bartlett resigned as Premier in January 2011 and was replaced by Lara Giddings, who became Tasmania's first female Premier. In March 2014 Will Hodgman's Liberal Party won government, ending sixteen years of Labor governance, and ending an eight-year period for Hodgman himself as Leader of the Opposition. Hodgman then won a second term of government in the 2018 state election, but resigned mid-term in January 2020 and was replaced by Peter Gutwein.


title: Tasmania

text: In May 2021, the Tasmanian state election was held after being called early by the incumbent Liberal Party, resulting in their return to government and establishment of a one-seat majority. It was also the first time that the Liberal Party had been elected three-times in a row.


title: Tasmania

text: In April 2022, former deputy premier Jeremy Rockliff became Premier after Gutwein announced his retirement from politics.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania has a number of undeveloped regions. Proposals for local economic development have been faced with requirements for environmental sensitivity, or opposition. In particular, proposals for hydroelectric power generation were debated in the late 20th century. In the 1970s, opposition to the construction of the Lake Pedder reservoir impoundment led to the formation of the world's first Green party, the United Tasmania Group.


title: Tasmania

text: In the early 1980s the state debated the proposed Franklin River Dam. The anti-dam sentiment was shared by many Australians outside Tasmania and proved a factor in the election of the Hawke Labor government in 1983, which halted construction of the dam. Since the 1980s the environmental focus has shifted to old growth logging and mining in the Tarkine region, which have both proved divisive. The Tasmania Together process recommended an end to clear felling in high conservation old growth forests by January 2003, but was unsuccessful.


title: Tasmania

text: In 1996, the House of Assembly consisted of 35 seats with 7 seats per each of the five electorates. By the 1998 election, the number of seats had been reduced down to 25, or 5 per each electorate. This resulted in the reduction of the Greens' number of seats from 4 to 1, and increased the proportion of seats held by both the Labor and Liberal parties. This was despite growth in population (five-fold since responsible government) and an increase in the voting percentage required for a majority government. There was also no public consultation, and inquiries at the time had recommended the opposite. The House of Assembly Select Committee in 2020 recommended in its report that the number should be increased again from 25 to 35, arguing that such a small representation would undermine democracy and limit the capabilities of the government. In 2010, the major party leadership had even endorsed reinstating the 35 seat number, but Liberal and Labor support was withdrawn the following year, with only the Greens keeping their commitment.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania has 29 local government areas. Local councils are responsible for functions delegated by the Tasmanian parliament, such as urban planning, road infrastructure and waste management. Council revenue comes mostly from property taxes and government grants.


title: Tasmania

text: As with the House of Assembly, Tasmania's local government elections use a system of multi-seat proportional representation known as Hare–Clark. Local government elections take place every four years and are conducted by the Tasmanian Electoral Commission by full postal ballot. The next local government elections will be held during September and October 2022.


title: Tasmania

text: Traditionally, Tasmania's main industries have been mining (including copper, zinc, tin, and iron), agriculture, forestry, and tourism. Tasmania is on Australia's electrical grid and in the 1940s and 1950s, a hydro-industrialisation initiative was embodied in the state by Hydro Tasmania. These all have had varying fortunes over the last century and more, involved in ebbs and flows of population moving in and away dependent upon the specific requirements of the dominant industries of the time. The state also has a large number of food exporting sectors, including but not limited to seafood (such as salmon, abalone and crayfish).


title: Tasmania

text: In the 1960s and 1970s there was a decline in traditional crops such as apples and pears, with other crops and industries eventually rising in their place. During the 15 years until 2010, new agricultural products such as wine, saffron, pyrethrum and cherries have been fostered by the Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research.


title: Tasmania

text: Favourable economic conditions throughout Australia, cheaper air fares, and two new "Spirit of Tasmania" ferries have all contributed to what is now a rising tourism industry.


title: Tasmania

text: About 1.7% of the Tasmanian population are employed by local government. Other major employers include Nyrstar, Norske Skog, Grange Resources, Rio Tinto, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hobart, and Federal Group. Small business is a large part of the community life, including Incat, Moorilla Estate and Tassal. In the late 1990s, a number of national companies based their call centres in the state after obtaining cheap access to broad-band fibre optic connections.


title: Tasmania

text: 34% of Tasmanians are reliant on welfare payments as their primary source of income. This number is in part due to the large number of older residents and retirees in Tasmania receiving Age Pensions. Due to its natural environment and clean air, Tasmania is a common retirement selection for Australians.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania has a long history of scientific and technological innovation. The first scientific-style observations were conducted by the First Nation Tasmanians, primarily through the watching and mythologising of the night sky. In a story explaining the phases of the moon and sun, it shows that it "is one of the rare accounts that explicitly acknowledges that the light of the Moon is a reflection of the Sun's light".


title: Tasmania

text: The French D'Entrecasteaux Expedition of 1792–93 had anchored twice during its search of the missing La Pérouse in the Baie de la Recherche (Recherche Bay) in far-south Tasmania. During their stay, the crew took botanical, astronomical, and geomagnetic observations which were the first of their kind performed on Australian soil. As well as this, they engaged in amicable relations with the locals and environment, gifting the area a "French garden", in which "the relatively extensive, well-documented (both pictorially and written) encounters [...] between [them] provided a very early opportunity for meetings and mutual observation".


title: Tasmania

text: The longest-running branch of the Royal Society outside of the United Kingdom is the Royal Society of Tasmania which was summoned in 1843. The Tasmanian Society of Natural History had been formed previously in 1838 before its merger with the Royal Society in 1849. It had been served by early botanists working in Tasmania such as Ronald Gunn and his correspondences.


title: Tasmania

text: Although Tamworth in New South Wales is often credited as being the first place in Australia with electric street lighting in 1888, Waratah in North West Tasmania was actually the first place to do so in Australia in 1886, although at a smaller scale.


title: Tasmania

text: Notable titles by Tasmanian authors include "The Museum of Modern Love" by Heather Rose, "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" by Richard Flanagan, "The Alphabet of Light and Dark" by Danielle Wood, "The Roving Party" by Rohan Wilson and "The Year of Living Dangerously" by Christopher Koch, "The Rain Queen" by Katherine Scholes, "Bridget Crack" by Rachel Leary, and "The Blue Day Book" by Bradley Trevor Greive. A small part of Helen Garner's "Monkey Grip" is set in Hobart as the main characters take a sojourn there. Children's books include "They Found a Cave" by Nan Chauncy, "The Museum of Thieves" by Lian Tanner, "Finding Serendipity", "A Week Without Tuesday" and "Blueberry Pancakes Forever" by Angelica Banks, "Tiger Tale" by Marion and Steve Isham. Tasmania is home to the eminent literary magazine that was formed in 1979, Island magazine, and the biennial Tasmanian Writers and Readers Festival, now renamed the Hobart Writers Festival.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmanian Gothic is a literary genre which expresses the island state's "peculiar 'otherness' in relation to the mainland, as a remote, mysterious and self-enclosed place." Marcus Clarke's novel "For the Term of his Natural Life", written in the 1870s and set in convict era Tasmania, is a seminal example. This distinctive Gothic is not just restricted to literature, but can be represented through all the arts, such as in painting, music, or architecture.


title: Tasmania

text: The biennial "Tasmanian Living Artists' Week" is a ten-day statewide festival for Tasmania's visual artists. The fourth festival in 2007 involved more than 1000 artists. Tasmania is home to two winners of the prestigious Archibald Prize—Jack Carington Smith in 1963 for a portrait of Professor James McAuley, and Geoffrey Dyer in 2003 for his portrait of Richard Flanagan. Photographers Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis are known for works that became iconic in the Lake Pedder and Franklin Dam conservation movements. English-born painter John Glover (1767–1849) is known for his paintings of Tasmanian landscapes, and is the namesake for the annual Glover Prize, which is awarded to the best landscape painting of Tasmania. The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) opened in January 2011 at the Moorilla Estate in Berriedale, and is the largest privately owned museum complex in Australia.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania has a varied musical scene, ranging from the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra whose home is the Federation Concert Hall, to a substantial number of small bands, orchestras, string quintets, saxophone ensembles and individual artists who perform at a variety of venues around the state. Tasmania is also home to a vibrant community of composers including Constantine Koukias, Maria Grenfell and Don Kay. Tasmania is also home to one of Australia's leading new music institutions, IHOS Music Theatre and Opera and gospel choirs, the Southern Gospel Choir. Prominent Australian metal bands Psycroptic and Striborg hail from Tasmania. Noir-rock band The Paradise Motel and 1980s power-pop band The Innocents are also citizens. The first season of the television series "The Mole" was filmed and based mainly in Tasmania, with the final elimination taking place in Port Arthur jail.


title: Tasmania

text: The Tasmanian Aboriginals were known to have sung oral traditions, as Fanny Cochrane Smith (the last fluent speaker of any Tasmanian language) had done so in recordings from 1899 to 1903. Tasmania has been home to some early and prominent Australian composers. In piano, Kitty Parker from Longford was described by world-famous Australian composer Percy Grainger as his most gifted student. Peter Sculthorpe was originally from Launceston and became well known in Australia for his works which were influenced by his Tasmanian origins, and he is, by coincidence, distantly related to Fanny Cochrane Smith. In 1996, Sculthorpe composed the piece "Port Arthur: In Memoriam" for chamber orchestra, which was first performed by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Charles Sandys Packer was an early Tasmanian example of the tradition of Australian classical music, transported for the crime of embezzlement in 1839, and at a similar time Francis Hartwell Henslowe had spent time as a public servant in Tasmania. Amy Sherwin, known as the "Tasmanian Nightingale" was a successful soprano, and Eileen Joyce, who came from remote Zeehan, became a world-renowned pianist at the time of her peak.


title: Tasmania

text: Films set in Tasmania include "Young Einstein", "The Tale of Ruby Rose", "The Hunter", "The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce", "Arctic Blast", "Manganinnie" (with music composed by Peter Sculthorpe), "Van Diemen's Land", "Lion", and "The Nightingale". Common within Australian cinema, the Tasmanian landscape is a focal point in most of their feature film productions. "The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce" and "Van Diemen's Land" are both set during an episode of Tasmania's convict history. Tasmanian film production goes as far back as the silent era, with the epic "For The Term of His Natural Life" in 1927 being the most expensive feature film made on Australian shores. The Kettering Incident, filmed in and around Kettering, Tasmania, won the 2016 AACTA Award for Best Telefeature or Mini Series. The documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs was partly filmed in Tasmania due to its terrain.


title: Tasmania

text: The Tasmanian Film Corporation, which financed "Manganinnie", was the successor to the Tasmanian Government Department of Film Production, but disappeared after privatisation. Its role is now filled by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Screen Tasmania, and private ventures such as Blue Rocket Productions.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania has five broadcast television stations which produce local content including ABC Tasmania, Seven Tasmania – an affiliate of the Seven Network, WIN Television Tasmania – an affiliate of the Nine Network, 10 Tasmania – an affiliate of Network 10 (joint owned by WIN and Southern Cross), and SBS.


title: Tasmania

text: Sport is an important pastime in Tasmania, and the state has produced several famous sportsmen and women and also hosted several major sporting events. The Tasmanian Tigers cricket team represents the state successfully (for example the Sheffield Shield in 2007, 2011 and 2013) and plays its home games at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart; which is also the home ground for the Hobart Hurricanes in the Big Bash League. In addition, Bellerive Oval regularly hosts international cricket matches. Famous Tasmanian cricketers include David Boon, former Australian captains Ricky Ponting and Tim Paine.


title: Tasmania

text: Australian rules football is also popularly followed, with frequent discussion of a proposed Tasmanian team in the Australian Football League (AFL). Several AFL games have been played at Aurora Stadium, Launceston, including the Hawthorn Football Club and , at the Bellerive Oval with the North Melbourne Football Club playing 3 home games there. The stadium was the site of an infamous match between St Kilda and Fremantle which was controversially drawn after the umpires failed to hear the final siren. Local leagues include the North West Football League and Tasmanian State League.


title: Tasmania

text: Rugby League Football is also played in the area, with the highest level of football played is in the Tasmanian Rugby League competition. The most successful team is the Hobart Tigers, who have won the title three times.


title: Tasmania

text: Rugby Union is also played in Tasmania and is governed by the Tasmanian Rugby Union. Ten clubs take part in the statewide Tasmanian Rugby Competition.


title: Tasmania

text: Association Football (soccer) is played throughout the state, including a proposed Tasmanian A-League Club and an existing statewide league called the NPL Tasmania.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania hosts the professional Moorilla International tennis tournament as part of the lead up to the Australian Open and is played at the Hobart International Tennis Centre, Hobart.


title: Tasmania

text: The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race is an annual event starting in Sydney, NSW, on Boxing Day and finishing in Hobart, Tasmania. It is widely considered to be one of the most difficult yacht races in the world.


title: Tasmania

text: In basketball, Tasmania was first represented in the National Basketball League (NBL) by the Hobart Devils, although the team folded in 1996. However, a new National Basketball League team based in both Launceston and Hobart, the Tasmania JackJumpers entered the league in the 2021–22 season, reaching the finals in their debut season and finishing runners up.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmanian Aboriginals had a diverse diet, including native currants, pigface, and native plums, and a wide range of birds and kangaroos. Seafood has always been a significant part of the Tasmanian diet, including its wide range of shellfish, which are still commercially farmed such as crayfish, orange roughy, salmon and oysters. Seal meat also formed a significant part of the Aboriginal diet.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania's non-Aboriginal cuisine has a unique history to mainland Australia. It has developed through many subsequent waves of immigration. Tasmanian traditional foods include scallop pies – a pie filled with scallops in curry – and curry powder, which was popularised by Keen's Curry in the 19th century Tasmania also produces and consumes wasabi, saffron, truffles and leatherwood honey


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania now has a wide range of restaurants, in part due to the arrival of immigrants and changing cultural patterns. Scattered across Tasmania are many vineyards, and Tasmanian beer brands such as Boags and Cascade are known and sold in Mainland Australia. King Island off the northwestern coast of Tasmania has a reputation for boutique cheeses and dairy products.


title: Tasmania

text: The "Central Cookery Book" was written in 1930 by A. C. Irvine and is still popular in Australia and even internationally. Tasmanian cuisine is often unique, and has won many awards. One example is the Hartshorn Distillery, which has won prizes in the World Vodka Awards for three years in a row since 2017.


title: Tasmania

text: To foster tourism, the state government encourages or supports several annual events in and around the island. The best known of these is the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, starting on Boxing Day in Sydney and usually arriving at Constitution Dock in Hobart around three to four days later, during the Taste of Tasmania, an annual food and wine festival. Other events include the road rally Targa Tasmania which attracts rally drivers from around the world and is staged all over the state, over five days. Rural or regional events include Agfest, a three-day agricultural show held at Carrick (just west of Launceston) in early May and NASA supported TastroFest – Tasmania's Astronomy Festival, held early August in Ulverstone (North West Tasmania). The Royal Hobart Show and Royal Launceston Show are both held in October annually.


title: Tasmania

text: Music events held in Tasmania include the Falls Festival at Marion Bay (a Victorian event now held in both Victoria and Tasmania on New Year's Eve), the Festival of Voices, a national celebration of song held each year in Hobart attracting international and national teachers and choirs in the heart of Winter, MS Fest is a charity music event held in Launceston, to raise money for those with multiple sclerosis. The Cygnet Folk Festival is one Australia's most iconic folk music festivals and is held in Cygnet in the Huon Valley every year in January, the Tasmanian Lute Festival is an early music event held in different locations in Tasmania every two years. Recent additions to the state arts events calendar include the 10 Days on the Island arts festival, MONA FOMA, run by David Walsh and curated by Brian Ritchie and Dark Mofo also run by David Walsh and curated by Leigh Carmichael.


title: Tasmania

text: The Unconformity is a three-day festival held every two years in Queenstown on the West Coast. Each February in Evandale a penny-farthing championships are held.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania is perceived within Australia and internationally as an island with pristine wildlife, water and air. It is known for its ecotourism for these reasons, and is considered an idyllic location for Australians considering a "tree-" or "sea-change", or are seeking retirement because of Tasmania's temperate environment and friendly locals. In other parts of the world, Tasmania is considered as the opposite side of the planet to most places, and supposedly home to mythically exotic animals, such as the Tasmanian Devil as popularised by Warner Brothers.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania has a reputation within Australia that is often at odds with the reality of the state, or may have only been true during colonial times and has only persevered on the Australian mainland as a myth. Because of these stereotypes, Tasmania is often referred to as the primary target (i.e., "butt") of mainland Australian jokes. In more recent times, references to insults against Tasmania are more sarcastic and jovial, but angst against the island still exists. The most commonly cited sarcastic comment is on the supposedly 'two-headed' Tasmanians, which originated due to some colonists developing goitres from the low amount of iodine in the island's soil. But as Tasmania receives higher volumes of inter-state tourists, the perceptions are in the process of changing, due to a higher awareness of the state's unique beauty, and an acknowledgement of the similarities and 'mateship' that hold Australia together.


title: Tasmania

text: The most prominent example of negative stereotype is of inbreeding due to the relatively small size of Tasmania compared to the rest of Australia (though Tasmania is nearly as large as Ireland in area, and more populous than Iceland). This is untrue of course, and if it had once been the case, it would have existed in the rest of colonial Australia as well, though Tasmania's penal establishments were some of the harshest in the entire colony and home to infamous bushrangers. This is a part of the also-receding global stereotype that all Australians are or were derived from criminals, even as most convicts were transported for petty crimes. During this period of European settlement, Tasmania was the second centre of power (and a significant port of the British Empire) on the continent after New South Wales, before being surpassed in the latter half of the 19th-century by Victoria and regions sustained by mining booms following the cessation of transportation in 1853.


title: Tasmania

text: A mentality developed in certain corners of Australia, and led to a general dislike of Tasmania amongst these people, even if the opinion-holder had never properly visited. It can rise to such an extent as to argue for the secession of Tasmania from the rest of Australia, in an effort to 'recover' Australia's reputation from Tasmania.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania's main air carriers are Jetstar and Virgin Australia; Qantas, QantasLink and Rex Airlines. These airlines fly direct routes to Brisbane, Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney. Major airports include Hobart Airport and Launceston Airport; the smaller airports, Burnie (Wynyard) and King Island, serviced by Rex Airlines; and Devonport, serviced by QantasLink; have services to Melbourne. Intra-Tasmanian air services are offered by Airlines of Tasmania. Until 2001 Ansett Australia operated majorly out of Tasmania to 12 destinations nationwide. Tourism-related air travel is also represented in Tasmania, such as in the Par Avion route between Cambridge Aerodrome near Hobart to Melaleuca in Southwest National Park.


title: Tasmania

text: Tasmania – Hobart in particular – serves as Australia's chief sea link to Antarctica, with the Australian Antarctic Division located in Kingston. Hobart is also the home port of the French ship "l'Astrolabe", which makes regular supply runs to the French Southern Territories near and in Antarctica.


title: Tasmania

text: Within the state, the primary form of transport is by road. Since the 1980s, many of the state's highways have undergone regular upgrades. These include the Hobart Southern Outlet, Launceston Southern Outlet, Bass Highway reconstruction, and the Huon Highway. Public transport is provided by Metro Tasmania bus services, regular taxis and Hobart only UBER ride-share services within urban areas, with Redline Coaches, Tassielink Transit and Callows Coaches providing bus service between population centres.


title: Tasmania

text: Rail transport in Tasmania consists of narrow-gauge lines to all four major population centres and to mining and forestry operations on the west coast and in the northwest. Services are operated by TasRail. Regular passenger train services in the state ceased in 1977; the only scheduled trains are for freight, but there are tourist trains in specific areas, for example the West Coast Wilderness Railway. There is an ongoing proposal to reinstate commuter trains to Hobart. This idea however lacks political motivation.


title: Tasmania

text: The port of Hobart is the second deepest natural port in the world, second to only Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. There is a substantial amount of commercial and recreational shipping within the harbour, and the port hosts approximately 120 cruise ships during the warmer half of the year, and there are occasional visits from military vessels.


title: Tasmania

text: Burnie and Devonport on the northwest coast host ports and several other coastal towns host either small fishing ports or substantial marinas. The domestic sea route between Tasmania and the mainland is serviced by Bass Strait passenger/vehicle ferries operated by the Tasmanian government-owned TT-Line. The state is also home to Incat, a manufacturer of very high-speed aluminium catamarans that regularly broke records when they were first launched. The state government tried using them on the Bass Strait run but eventually decided to discontinue the run because of concerns over viability and the suitability of the vessels for the extreme weather conditions sometimes experienced in the strait.


title: Ed O'Neill

text: Edward Leonard O'Neill (born April 12, 1946) is an American actor and comedian. His roles include Al Bundy on the Fox Network sitcom "Married... with Children", for which he was nominated for two Golden Globes, and Jay Pritchett on the award-winning ABC sitcom "Modern Family", for which he was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards and won four Screen Actors Guild Awards (all four for being part of the best Ensemble in a Comedy Series). He has also appeared in the "Wayne's World" film series, "Little Giants", "Prefontaine", "The Bone Collector", and "Sun Dogs", and has done voice-work for the "Wreck-It Ralph" franchise and "Finding Dory".


title: Ed O'Neill

text: O'Neill was born into an Irish-American Catholic family in Youngstown, Ohio on April 12, 1946. His mother, Ruth Ann (née Quinlan), was a homemaker and social worker, and his father, Edward Phillip O'Neill, was a steel mill worker and truck driver. O'Neill attended Ursuline High School where he played football. At 14 he worked in construction, then at a steel mill.


title: Ed O'Neill

text: He was awarded a football scholarship to Ohio University, where he majored in history, and was a member of the Mu chapter of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. He left the university after his sophomore year. He admits he spent more time playing sports and partying than studying. He also feuded with his coach.


title: Ed O'Neill

text: He transferred to Youngstown State University, where he was a defensive lineman. As an undergraduate, he pledged Delta Sigma Phi and was initiated into the Delta Sigma chapter there.


title: Ed O'Neill

text: O'Neill was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969 under rookie head coach Chuck Noll but was cut in training camp, having to compete with fellow rookie defensive lineman "Mean Joe" Greene and L. C. Greenwood for a roster spot. Both became key members of the Steel Curtain defense during the Steelers success in the 1970s. Later, while on "Married... with Children", O'Neill played a former high school football star who had failed to make it big and constantly reminisced about his "glory days" at Polk High ("I once scored four touchdowns in a single game"). As part of this theme, former Pittsburgh Steelers great and Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw also made two guest appearances on the show. O'Neill worked as a substitute social studies teacher at his alma mater Ursuline High School before becoming an actor.


title: Ed O'Neill

text: O'Neill re-enrolled at Youngstown State after being cut by the Steelers and was one of the first students at the school's new theater program. In 1979, he played a boxer opposite Danny Aiello in the Broadway play "Knockout". It was there that he was seen by director William Friedkin and landed his first movie role, as a police detective in "Cruising", starring Al Pacino.


title: Ed O'Neill

text: In 1985, O'Neill appeared alongside Jeff Kinsland in a Red Lobster commercial. He made a brief guest appearance in "The Equalizer". In 1986, he was cast as NYPD detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle for the planned television series "Popeye Doyle". The character had originally appeared in the motion picture "The French Connection" (played by Gene Hackman). The two-hour made-for-television movie/pilot was filmed and shown on network television. O'Neill received good reviews for his performance, and the pilot received positive ratings, but the series was not picked up for production.