history of Maria Island
Source: Maria Island National Park
Tasmania is one of the most beautiful places on Earth: compact, diverse, wild yet accessible. The island State’s famous national parks and reserves protect a wide range of its unspoiled landscapes, intact ecosystems and striking cultural heritage. In particular Maria Island has unique history that encompasses fossilized sea life, aboriginal heritage, and penal settlements. Thousands of years ago Aboriginal tribes crossed to the island in reed-canoes. In 1642, explorer Abel Tasman sighted it from the sea and named it in honour of Maria Van Diemen, the wife of the governor of Batavia. In 1802 a French expedition led by Captain Baudin explored and charted the island extensively. Many features of the island still bear French names. Whalers came some years later in the 1820s and 1830s.
By 1825 Maria had become a penal settlement for convicts who committed offences against the colony. The island was soon infamous for the number of escapes and was known among convicts as a place of ease. At its peak, the convict population reached 492 in 1846; however Darlington was closed in 1850, following the cessation of the probation system in Van Diemen’s Land and the island was opened up for public leasehold.
Maria Island's potential for wine and silk production, fruit-growing and tourist development captured the imagination of Italian entrepreneur, Diego Bernacchi. The 'Maria Island Company' was formed three years later and soon had over 250 residents from a variety of different nationalities. Cement works were set up in the late 1880s utilising the island's limestone deposits. Also constructed in Bernacchi's time were the Coffee Palace, a row of workers' cottages known as the 'Twelve Apostles' and six terraced cottages (built using bricks from the demolished convict separate apartment cells). Following the First World War Diego Bernacchi returned to Maria Island determined to exploit the limestone deposits for cement. The National Portland Cement Company Ltd was formed in 1920.
Several decades later, the first moves were made towards forming a Fauna Reserve on Maria Island. Since the late 1960s Maria has become a kind of Noah's Ark, as a number of threatened species have been introduced here in a bid to protect their kind. The very things that made the island a convict settlement, now make it an ideal refuge for plant and animal species that are elsewhere under threat. Maria Island was officially declared a National Park in 1971. Today the refuge includes native pademelons along with Forester kangaroos, Bennetts wallabies, and Cape Barren geese which have been introduced to the island.
The geology of Maria Island is of great interest as it contains features from many geological ages. The Triassic sandstones of the Painted Cliffs is one such feature. Although this sort of rock formation is not uncommon, it is rare in a natural situation for it to be so extensively and beautifully exposed. The wonderful patterns are caused by ground water percolating down through the already formed sandstone and leaving traces of iron oxides, which have stained the rock formation. This probably occurred millions of years ago in a monsoonal climate. More recently, sea spray hitting the rock face has dried, forming crystals of salt. These crystals cause the rock to weather in the honeycomb patterns that you see. Wave action has also created some interesting features.
Another significant geographic feature found on Maria Island includes the fossil cliffs. The cliff exposure in the Fossil Bay area is recognised as the best example of lower Permian strata in the world. On the lower rock shelf you can see a variety of fossils including sea fans, coral-like creatures, scallop shells and sea lilies. It is thought that such an extensive accumulation of fossils may be related to the cold conditions associated with the polar sea of the time. Amongst the fossils are some large rocks, called dropstones that have been transported by floating ice.
Each of these historical, ecological, and geologic features of Maria Island contributes to its unique beauty. Life’s An Adventure provides an experience of Maria Island that highlights each of these astonishing features and more.
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