1.
Tasmania
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Tasmania is an island state of the Commonwealth of Australia. It is located 240 km to the south of the Australian mainland, the state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 334 islands. The state has a population of around 519,100, just over forty percent of which resides in the Greater Hobart precinct, Tasmanias area is 68,401 km2, of which the main island covers 64,519 km2. Though an island state, due to an error the state shares a land border with Victoria at its northernmost terrestrial point, Boundary Islet. The Bishop and Clerk Islets, about 37 km south of Macquarie Island, are the southernmost terrestrial point of the state of Tasmania, the island is believed to have been occupied by Aboriginals for 40,000 years before British colonisation. It is thought Tasmanian Aboriginals were separated from the mainland Aboriginal groups about 10,000 years ago when the sea rose to form Bass Strait. The conflict, which peaked between 1825 and 1831 and led to more than three years of law, cost the lives of almost 1100 Aboriginals and settlers. The near-destruction of Tasmanias Aboriginal population has been described by historians as an act of genocide by the British. The island was part of the Colony of New South Wales. In 1854 the present Constitution of Tasmania was passed and the year the state received permission to change its name to Tasmania. In 1901 it became a state through the process of the Federation of Australia, the state 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 Diemens Land after his sponsor Anthony van Diemen, the name was later shortened to Van Diemens Land by the British. It was officially renamed Tasmania in honour of its first European discoverer on 1 January 1856, 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, especially when used in business names and website addresses. TAS is also the Australia Post abbreviation for the state, the reconstructed Palawa kani language name for Tasmania is Lutriwita. The island was adjoined to the mainland of Australia until the end of the last glacial period about 10,000 years ago, much of the island is composed of Jurassic dolerite intrusions through other rock types, sometimes forming large columnar joints. Tasmania has the worlds largest areas of dolerite, with many distinctive mountains, the central plateau and the southeast portions of the island are mostly dolerite. Mount Wellington above Hobart is an example, showing distinct columns known as the Organ Pipes
2.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
3.
Hobart
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Hobart is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. It is the least populated state capital in Australia, founded in 1803 as a penal colony, Hobart is Australias second oldest capital city after Sydney, New South Wales. The modern history of Hobart dates to its foundation as a British colony in 1803, prior to British settlement, the area had been occupied for possibly as long as 35,000 years, by the semi-nomadic Mouheneener tribe, a sub-group of the Nuennone, or South-East tribe. The descendants of the indigenous Tasmanians now refer to themselves as Palawa, Hobart has experienced both booms and busts over its history. In the later years of the 20th century, migrants arrived to settle in Hobart from Asia. In June 2015, the city had an area population of approximately 221,000. The city is located in the states south-east on the estuary of the Derwent River and its harbour forms the second-deepest natural port in the world. Its skyline is dominated by the 1, 271-metre kunanyi/Mount Wellington, the metropolitan area is often referred to as Greater Hobart, to differentiate it from the City of Hobart, one of the five local government areas that cover the city. The first European settlement began in 1803 as a colony at Risdon Cove on the eastern shores of the Derwent River. In 1804 it was moved to a location at the present site of Hobart at Sullivans Cove. The city, initially known as Hobart Town or Hobarton, was named after Lord Hobart, the British secretary of state for war, the areas indigenous inhabitants were members of the semi-nomadic Mouheneener tribe. Charles Darwin visited Hobart Town in February 1836 as part of the Beagle expedition, I was chiefly struck with the comparative fewness of the large houses, either built or building. Hobart Town, from the census of 1835, contained 13,826 inhabitants, the Derwent River was one of Australias finest deepwater ports and was the centre of the Southern Ocean whaling and sealing trades. The settlement rapidly grew into a port, with allied industries such as shipbuilding. Hobart Town became a city on 21 August 1842, and was renamed Hobart from the beginning of 1881, Hobart is located on the estuary of the Derwent River in the states south-east. Geologically Hobart is built predominantly on Jurassic dolerite around the foothills interspersed with areas of Triassic siltstone. Both of these areas rest on the younger Jurassic dolerite deposits, before stretching into the areas such as the beaches of Sandy Bay in the south. South of the Derwent estuary lies Storm Bay and the Tasman Peninsula, the Eastern Shore also extends from the Derwent valley area in a southerly direction hugging the Meehan Range in the east before sprawling into flatter land in suburbs such as Bellerive
4.
Cape Raoul
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Cape Raoul is situated at the southernmost part of the Tasman Peninsula, in south eastern Tasmania. It forms the coastline of Raoul Bay, and is part of the Dolerite landscape of the Tasman National Park, Flinders called it Basaltic Cape, but only prior to the publication of the maps of the French expedition. In 1814 Flinders very honestly replaces on his map the name of Raoull and this notwithstanding, Scott, Cross, and Arrowsmith chart it as Raoull or Basaltic
5.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
6.
Abel Tasman
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Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company. In 1633 he sailed from Texel to Batavia in the service of the Dutch East India Company, Tasman took part in a voyage to Seram Island, the locals had sold spices to others than the Dutch. He had a escape from death, when in an incautious landing several of his companions were killed by people of Seram. In August 1637 he was back in Amsterdam, and the year he signed on for another ten years. On 25 March 1638 he tried to sell his property in the Jordaan, in 1639 he was second-in-command of an exploration expedition in the north Pacific under Matthijs Quast. The fleet included the ships Engel and Gracht and reached Fort Zeelandia and this expedition used two small ships, the Heemskerck and the Zeehaen. According to Marco Polo, Locach was a kingdom where gold was “so plentiful that no one who did not see it could believe it”, Beach was in fact a mistranscription of Locach. Locach was Marco Polo’s name for the southern Thai kingdom of Lavo, or Lop Buri, in Chinese, Lavo was pronounced “Lo-huk”, from which Marco Polo took his rendition of the name. In the German cursive script, “Locach” and “Boeach” look similar and they seem to have drawn on the map of the world published in Florence in 1489 by Henricus Martellus, in which provincia boëach appears as the southern neighbour of provincia ciamba. Book III of Marco Polo’s Il Milione described his journey by sea from China to India by way of Champa, Java, Locach, after a chapter describing the kingdom of Champa there follows a chapter describing Java. Locach, located between Champa and Sumatra, was likewise misplaced far to the south of Java, by some geographers on or near an extension of the Terra Australis. Gerard Mercator did just that on his 1541 globe, placing Beach provincia aurifera in the northernmost part of the Terra Australis in accordance with the faulty text of Marco Polo’s Travels. Following Mercator, Abraham Ortelius also showed BEACH and LVCACH in these locations on his map of 1571. Confirmation that land existed where the maps showed Beach to be had come from Dirk Hartog’s landing in October 1616 on its west coast, which he called Eendrachtsland after the name of his ship. In accordance with Visschers directions, Tasman sailed from Batavia on 14 August 1642 and arrived at Mauritius on 5 September 1642, the reason for this was the crew could be fed well on the island, there was plenty of fresh water and timber to repair the ships. Tasman got the assistance of the governor Adriaan van der Stel, because of the prevailing winds Mauritius was chosen as a turning point. After a four-week stay on the island both ships left on 8 October using the Roaring Forties to sail east as fast as possible. On 7 November snow and hail influenced the ships council to alter course to a more north-eastern direction, on 24 November 1642 Abel Tasman reached and sighted the west coast of Tasmania, north of Macquarie Harbour
7.
Aboriginal Tasmanians
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The Aboriginal Tasmanians are the indigenous people of the Australian state of Tasmania, located south of the mainland. In the 20th century the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were thought of as being an extinct cultural. Before British colonisation in 1803, there were an estimated 3, the Palawa population was severely depleted in the 19th century. A number of point to introduced disease as the major cause of the depletion of the 19th century mainland Aboriginal population. Geoffrey Blainey wrote that by 1830 in Tasmania, Disease had killed most of them but warfare, other historians regard the Black War as one of the earliest recorded modern genocides. Benjamin Madley wrote, Despite over 170 years of debate over who or what was responsible for this near-extinction, no consensus exists on its origins, process, however, UN definition, sufficient evidence exists to designate the Tasmanian catastrophe genocide. The survivors were moved to Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island, in 1847, the last 47 living inhabitants of Wybalenna were transferred to Oyster Cove, south of Hobart. Two individuals, Truganini and Fanny Cochrane Smith, are considered to have been the last people solely of Tasmanian descent. People crossed into Tasmania approximately 40,000 years, ago via a bridge between the island and the rest of mainland Australia, during the last glacial period. Archaeologists excavating a 600 metre long section of river bank found a number of stone tools. Preliminary dating indicates that the site was occupied from 40,000 BP to 28,000 BP making the site 6,000 years older than the Warreen cave. Tasmania was colonised by successive waves of people from southern Australia during glacial maxima. People migrating from southern Australia into peninsular Tasmania would have crossed stretches of seawater and desert, the archeological, geographic and linguistic record suggests a pattern of successive occupation of Tasmania, and coalescence of three ethnic or language groups into one broad group. Colonial settlers found two main groups in Tasmania upon their arrival, which correlates with the broader nation or clan divisions. Pleistocene Palawa language group - first ethnic and language group in Tasmania - absorbed or displaced by successive invasions except for remnant group on Tasman peninsula, archeological evidence suggests remnant populations on the King and Furneaux highlands being stranded by rising waters - later to die out. After separation from mainland Australia, the Tasmanian people were not able to share any of the new technological advances being made by mainland groups and this made the Aboriginal Tasmanians a people that could flourish with some of the simplest technologies on record. The Tasmanian Aboriginal people extensively used fire for cooking, warmth and clearing vegetation to encourage and their capacity to create fire via the friction method had been questioned by authors in the 20th Century, though a document from 1887 clearly describes fire-lighting techniques used among Tasmanians. The historical evidence indicates their fire making ability, even though they preferred to bear coals when travelling between campsites - a consequence of Tasmanias wet maritime climate
8.
Macquarie Harbour
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Macquarie Harbour is a large, shallow, inlet, located in the West Coast region of Tasmania, Australia. The inlet is navigable by shallow draft vessels, the main channel is kept clear by the presence of a rock wall on the outside of the channels curve. This man made wall prevents erosion and keeps the channel deep and narrow, rather than allowing the channel to become wide, the harbour is named in honour of Scottish Major General Lachlan Macquarie, the fifth Colonial Governor of New South Wales. However, different accounts of the journey have indicated different methods, in the commentary to the Historical Records of Australia, the editor notes that T. W. Kelly gave evidence before the commission, and did not mention any discoveries. In a letter dated 11 April 1816, preserved in the office, London, T. W. Birch transmitted an account of this voyage. Charles Whitham notes variations on the date, surveyor-General Oxley of New South Wales in March 1820 battled with the seas around the heads and Hells Gates. Surveyor-General Evans travelled in the area in 1821-22, the harbour was established as a prison which was a place of extreme physical and mental torture. It was built for British convicts but many Irish patriots and Tasmanian Aborigines were also detained there, the King River which cuts through the West Coast Range and the Gordon River empty into Macquarie Harbour. The narrow entrance to Macquarie Harbour has hazardous tidal currents and is called Hells Gates, outside of the Harbour the entrance area is known as Macquarie Heads, and the most western point is Cape Sorell. The sheer volume of water that pours into the Harbour through the rivers. When there is rain in the surrounding the Harbour, the tide rises. The Queen River, King River and Macquarie Harbour were all polluted by waste from the Mount Lyell Mining. It is estimated that 100 million tonnes of tailings were disposed of into the Queen River, the result of the program a marked reduction in the waste material entering the rivers and harbour. Bird River - mouth of river in Kelly Basin Braddon River - mouth on mid-eastern shore Clark River - mouth at Pillinger and this island was used as a prison for recalcitrant prisoners from other settlements in Tasmania, due to its extreme isolation and extreme climate. Later the small port of Strahan was developed on the shores of Macquarie Harbour to support the mining settlements. Another port was developed on the south east section of the harbour in Kelly Basin along with townsite of Pillinger, the settlement and port were short lived as was the North Mount Lyell company that developed the facilities. The West Coast Wilderness Railway takes part of the eastern shore of the Harbour. Boats take tourists to Hells Gates and Macquarie Heads, Sarah Island, also charter flights utilise Strahan Airport for helicopter and fixed wing flights
9.
Endangered species
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An endangered species is a species which has been categorized as likely to become extinct. In 2012, the IUCN Red List featured 3079 animal and 2655 plant species as endangered worldwide, the figures for 1998 were, respectively,1102 and 1197. Many nations have laws that protect conservation-reliant species, for example, population numbers, trends and species conservation status can be found in the lists of organisms by population. The conservation status of a species indicates the likelihood that it will become extinct, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the best-known worldwide conservation status listing and ranking system. Over 40% of the species are estimated to be at risk of extinction. Internationally,199 countries have signed an accord to create Biodiversity Action Plans that will protect endangered, in the United States, such plans are usually called Species Recovery Plans. Those species of Near Threatened and Least Concern status have been assessed and found to have relatively robust and healthy populations, though these may be in decline. The IUCN categories, with examples of animals classified by them, include, Extinct Extinct in the wild Captive individuals survive, critically endangered Faces an extremely high risk of extinction in the immediate future. Endangered Faces a high risk of extinction in the near future, vulnerable Faces a high risk of endangerment in the medium term. Near-threatened May be considered threatened in the near future, Least concern No immediate threat to species survival. A population size reduction of ≥ 50%, projected or suspected to be met within the next 10 years or three generations, whichever is the longer, based on any of to under A1. E) Quantitative analysis showing the probability of extinction in the wild is at least 20% within 20 years or five generations, there is data from the United States that shows a correlation between human populations and threatened and endangered species. Under the Endangered Species Act in the United States, species may be listed as endangered or threatened, the Salt Creek tiger beetle is an example of an endangered subspecies protected under the ESA. Some endangered species laws are controversial, also lobbying from hunters and various industries like the petroleum industry, construction industry, and logging, has been an obstacle in establishing endangered species laws. The Bush administration lifted a policy that required federal officials to consult an expert before taking actions that could damage endangered species. Under the Obama administration, this policy has been reinstated, being listed as an endangered species can have negative effect since it could make a species more desirable for collectors and poachers. This effect is potentially reducible, such as in China where commercially farmed turtles may be reducing some of the pressure to poach endangered species. Another problem with the species is its effect of inciting the use of the shoot, shovel
10.
Tasmanian devil
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The size of a small dog, it became the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936. It is characterized by its stocky and muscular build, black fur, pungent odor, extremely loud and disturbing screech, keen sense of smell, although it usually is solitary, it sometimes eats with other devils and defecates in a communal location. Unlike most other dasyurids, the devil thermoregulates effectively and is active during the middle of the day without overheating, despite its rotund appearance, the devil is capable of surprising speed and endurance, and can climb trees and swim across rivers. Fossils of species similar to modern devils have been found, but it is not known whether they were ancestors of the contemporary species, or whether the current devils co-existed with these species. The date that the Tasmanian devil became locally extinct from the Australian mainland is unclear and this disappearance is usually blamed on dingoes, which are absent from Tasmania. Because they were seen as a threat to livestock and animals that humans hunted for fur in Tasmania, devils were hunted, in 1941, the devils, which were originally seen as implacably vicious, became officially protected. Since then, scientists have contended that earlier concerns that the devils were the most significant threat to livestock were overestimated and misplaced, Devils are not monogamous, and their reproductive process is very robust and competitive. Males fight one another for the females, and then guard their partners to prevent female infidelity, females can ovulate three times in as many weeks during the mating season, and 80% of two-year-old females are seen to be pregnant during the annual mating season. Females average four breeding seasons in their life and give birth to 20–30 live young after three weeks gestation, the newborn are pink, lack fur, have indistinct facial features and weigh around 0.20 g at birth. As there are four nipples in the pouch, competition is fierce. The young grow rapidly and are ejected from the pouch after around 100 days, the young become independent after around nine months, so the female spends most of her year in activities related to birth and rearing. Since the late 1990s, devil facial tumour disease has drastically reduced the population and now threatens the survival of the species. While the thylacine was extant it preyed on the devil, which targeted young, localised populations of devils have also been severely reduced by collisions with motor vehicles, particularly when they are eating roadkill. The devil is a symbol of Tasmania and many organisations, groups. It is seen as an important attractor of tourists to Tasmania and has come to attention through the Looney Tunes character of the same name. Starting in 2013, Tasmanian devils are again being sent to zoos around the world as part of the Australian governments Save the Tasmanian Devil Program and he had earlier made a presentation on the topic at the Zoological Society of London. However, that particular name had been given to the common wombat by George Shaw in 1800. In 1838 a specimen was named Dasyurus laniarius by Richard Owen, the modern Tasmanian devil was named Sarcophilus harrisii by French naturalist Pierre Boitard in 1841
