Cradle Mountain Tasmania

The jagged contours of Cradle Mountain Tasmania epitomise the feel of a wild landscape, while ancient rainforest and alpine heathlands, buttongrass and stands of colourful deciduous beech provide a wide range of environments.

Cradle Mountain is a rich feature of the Tasmania wild life with many mursupial species living in a pristine enviroment.

Camping at the Cradle mountain Tasmania national park are very popular and can get quite busy during the major holiday breaks, also treking is a very popular activity along Lake St Claire with nightly stop over and camping facilities available.

Suitable dress and clothing should always be taken when setting off on any treking or long distance walk as the weather can rapidly change in this mountain range.

It is believed that the island was joined to the mainland until the end of the most recent ice age approximately 10 000 years ago.

Tasmania was once inhabited by an indigenous population, the Tasmanian Aborigines, and evidence indicates their presence in the territory, later to become an island, at least 35 000 years ago.

The indigenous population at the time of British settlement in 1803 has been estimated at 5 000, but through persecution (see Black War and Black Line) and disease the population was decimated (some mixed-blood descendants still survive).

The impact of introduced diseases, prior to the first European estimates of the size of Tasmania's population, means that the original indigenous population could have been somewhat larger than 5000. The last full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine was Truganini - she died in Hobart in 1876.

The first reported sighting of Tasmania by a European was on November 24th 1642 by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman who named the island Anthoonij van Diemenslandt, after his sponsor, the Govenor of the Dutch East Indies.

The name was later shortened to Van Diemens Land by the British. Captain James Cook also sighted the island in 1777, and numerous other European seafarers made landfalls, adding a colourful array to the names of topographical features.

The first settlement was by the British at Risdon Cove on the eastern bank of the Derwent estuary in 1803, by a small party sent from Sydney, under Lt.

John Bowen. An alternative settlement was established by Capt. David Collins 5 km to the south in 1804 in Sullivan's 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.

The early settlers were mostly convicts and their military guards, with the task of developing agriculture and other industries.

Numerous other convict-based settlements were made in Van Diemens Land, including secondary prisons, such as the particularily harsh penal colonies at Port Arthur in the south-east and Macquarie Harbour on the West Coast.

Van Diemens Land was proclaimed a separate colony from New South Wales, with its own judicial establishment and Legislative Council, on December 3, 1825.

Recently it has also received attention with the 2004 wedding of former Hobart woman Mary Donaldson to Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, on May 14, 2004.