Wherever you travel on our Island - at the edge of the world - you will discover stories of the founding of modern Tasmania, when sailing ships took months to carry settlers, soldiers and convicts from Britain; when convicts laboured in shipyards to build vessels in which they would never sail; and oarsmen in tiny whaleboats battled the wild oceans.
The coasts are rocky - on stormy nights before lighthouses were built many a sailing ship came to grief on treacherous uncharted rocks. Present-day divers, especially around King and Flinders islands, find hulls, cargo and fittings lying sadly on the seabed.
Tasmania’s maritime heritage is also celebrated every two years with the Australian Wooden Boat Festival, when Hobart’s waterfront is awash with traditional craft, nautical buskers, choirs singing songs of the sea, bands playing folk music, theatre, and experts demonstrating age-old skills from splicing and adzing to shaping half models.
As you wander Hobart’s historic docks area look out for the elegant lines of two fine sailing ships – The Lady Nelson and the May Queen.
The Furneaux Museum on Flinders Island showcases the history of the Furneaux Group of Islands.
Once a feared penal settlement where convicts laboured under harsh conditions in the rainforest now accessed on cruises from Strahan
Kangaroo Bluff Historic Site at Bellerive is a gun emplacement and fort built in 1880.
The Bass and Flinders Centre is centrally located in George Town on Tasmania’s Tamar River.
The Wooden Boat Centre is a boat building school at Franklin, in Tasmania’s south.
Admission is free to this unique piece of our maritime history that sounds at midday every Sunday.
Memorial dedicated to all Tasmanian seafarers, who lost their lives in Tasmanian waters.
Tasmania's longest running play based on a real event in 1834.
Floating in Constitution Dock in Hobart is Australia’s oldest sail trading vessel SV May Queen.
The Maritime Museum of Tasmania, in Hobart, is dedicated to Tasmania’s rich maritime heritage.
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