Maritime Museum of Tasmania
The island state of Tasmania has a long and rich history of association with the sea, going back well before the time of British invasion and settlement on the island. The indigenous Tasmanians were known to have strong affiliations with the sea, and surrounding islands.
The British of course arrived by sea, and since the time of their first arrival in 1803, Tasmania has had a continuous history or sailing, maritime trade, fishing and other maritime activities. The museum sets out to chart, document and display materials and artefacts related to that history.
Maritime enthusiasts first began to argue that the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery should include a room dedicated to Tasmania's maritime history in the 1930s. However it wasn't until 1972, when six volunteers decided to create a dedicated museum, that the Maritime Museum of Tasmania was born. It was originally housed in St. George's Church, Battery Point, and opened in 1973, with an official opening in 1974.
Chudleigh, Tasmania
Aboriginal Tasmanians have lived on the island of Tasmania for thousands of years. The earliest archaeological evidence for Aboriginal habitation of Tasmania is from the valley of the Forth River, 35,000 years before the present. Prior to European settlement, Chudleigh was part of the lands of the Pallittorre Aboriginal tribe. Their range included Deloraine, east of Chudleigh, and the Gog mountain range to the north-west where they mined ochre in the Toolumbunner ochre pits. The Pallittorre people lived in the area and used to have a camping ground, where the Church of England cemetery was established later. Land clearing, road construction, disease and conflicts with settlers drove them from their lands and decimated the population. Their population in the area has been estimated to drop from 200 to 60 during 1827-30. At the time of settlement the Chudleigh area was covered with bogs and wild bush.
During the early 1820s the Van Diemen's Land Company created a track or stock route from Deloraine to Emu Bay (now Burnie) that ran via Chudleigh and Mole Creek. The route enabled them to move grazing livestock from the higher rainfall areas in the west of Tasmania, to the population centres further east. The company built facilities, including a store, in Chudleigh. Europeans settled the area west of Deloraine from the early 1800s, and cattle were being grazed—illegally—in the Chudleigh area from as early as 1823. John Badcock Gardiner, who probably named Chudleigh after the village with the same name in Devon, England, was granted in the area after arriving in Tasmania in 1829 with his family. The town's area was first granted to Lieutenant Travers Hartley Vaughan in 1830. Vaughan sold the land in 1837 to Henry Reed, merchant, who was later briefly a member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council.