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.
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.