Rising sea levels have separated Tasmania from …

Abel Janszoon Tasman A Dutch East India Company navigator commanding a two-vessel expedition meant to map “the remaining unknown part of the terrestrial globe in 1642, sails a course too far south and misses Australia completely.

He sails on to discover an island in the southwest which he names Van Diemen’s land, after his boss, empire builder Anton van Diemen, Governor General of the Dutch East India Company.

He stops briefly on the island, thinking it a part of the mainland, and finds it poor and wild with signs of habitation but no visible populace.

At the time of Cook’s claim of British sovereignty over Australia, the continent’s five hundred to one thousand tribes of approximately three hundred thousand aborigines live along the eastern and southern coasts and in Tasmania.

The Tasmanian languages belong (according to most linguists) to the Indo-Pacific family to which the Papuan New Guinean languages belong; the three hundred or so Australian languages are in a family of their own (to which no clear links to the Indo-Pacific family have yet been established).

The Cook expedition, driven by strong westerly winds, reaches Van Diemen's Land on January 26, 1777, where they take on water and wood and become cursorily acquainted with the aborigines living there.

Bass and Flinders, in the sloop Norfolk, circumnavigate Van Diemen's Land.

In the course of this voyage, Bass finds and explores the estuary of the Derwent River, where, on the strength of his report, the city of Hobart will be founded in 1803.

Matthew Flinders, on his return, with George Bass, to Sydney in early 1799, recommends to Governor John Hunter that the passage between Van Diemen's Land and the mainland be called Bass Strait.

Colonel David Collins moves the Risdon settlement to Sullivan's Cove (now Hobart).

Collins arrives at the Derwent River on February 16, 1804, aboard HMS Calcutta, with Ocean as a supply vessel, immediately taking command from the young Lieutenant Bowen by virtue of rank (Collins is a colonel).

The settlement that Bowen had established at Risdon Cove is vulnerable to changing tides and poor water supply and does not impress Collins.

After three trips across the Derwent River to view possible alternatives, he decides to relocate the settlement five miles (eight kilometers) down river, on the opposite shore.

They land at Sullivans Cove on February 21, 1804, and create the settlement that is to become Hobart, making it the second oldest established colony in Australia.

...Hobart Town overland in January 1807, taking eight days to traverse the island, and he becomes the first person to make that journey through the interior.

His southward journey follows a more westerly route, and he finds the mountainous terrain hard going; however, his return journey ran through the flatter midlands, and the modern main Midland Highway still follows a similar route to this first Hobart-to-Launceston ride.

Bligh had failed to gain support from the authorities in Hobart to retake control of New South Wales, and has remained effectively imprisoned on the Porpoise from 1808 until January 1810.