History of Tasmania
Tasmania was 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. At the time of the British occupation and colonisation in 1803 the indigenous population was estimated at between 3000 and 10,000. Historian Lyndall Ryan's analysis of population studies led her to conclude that there were about 7000 spread throughout the island's nine nations; Nicholas Clements, citing research by N.J.B. Plomley and Rhys Jones, settled on a figure of 3000 to 4000. The combination of the so-called Black War, internecine conflict and, from the late 1820s, the spread of infectious diseases to which they had no immunity, reduced the population to about 300 by 1833. Almost all of the indigenous population was relocated to Flinders Island by George Augustus Robinson. Until the 1970s, most people thought that the last surviving Tasmanian Aborigine was Trugernanner, who died in 1876. However this "extinction" was a myth, as documented by Lyndall Ryan in 1991.
Van Diemen's Land v Port Phillip, 1851
Cricket was less well-established in Tasmania, then known as Van Diemen's Land. Although cricket was probably played soon after the island was settled in 1803, and was reasonably popular by the mid-1810s, the first recorded matches took place only in 1825. There was little organisation or competition; there were few clubs, and none in Hobart, in the south of Tasmania, until 1832, or in Launceston, in the north, until 1841. Partly, this may have been due to an insistence among Tasmanian clubs that only the social elite could play cricket. The cricket historian Jack Pollard suggests that Tasmanian cricket failed to thrive in its early years because of "the strange reluctance of the strong, prestigious clubs in Hobart and Launceston to hire professional players to coach and strengthen their teams". With these main cities apart, it was difficult to establish competitive games; despite an abandoned attempt in 1841, the first match between North and South Tasmania did not take place until 1850. These difficulties prompted Launceston cricketers to seek opponents from the Australian mainland rather than from Hobart.