Tasmania hasn’t always been an island at the bottom of Australia. In fact, it used to be attached to the state of Victoria via a land bridge. However, this was submerged by the ocean around 10,000 years ago when the polar caps melted. But there are still remnants of the bridge today in the form of the Furneaux Group, an archipelago that lies just off the northeast of Tasmania. The most well-known and largest of these islands is Flinders Island, a wild and beautiful place that I would recommend you visit if the opportunity arises.

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If you were to compare Tasmania in size to other countries around the world, where do you think it would roughly equate to? (wait for response). Tasmania is 68,401 square kilometres in size, which is slightly bigger than Sri Lanka and a couple of thousand square kilometres smaller than Ireland. You could fit Belgium and Lesotho inside the state and still have room for Trinidad and Tobago.

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Tasmania was home to Aboriginal people for around 42,000 years before the arrival of Europeans, with these groups cut off from mainland Australia when sea levels rose around 10,000 years ago. By the time the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman landed near modern-day Hobart in 1642, there were somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 Indigenous people living on the island and they were organised into nine nations or groups.

Tasmania’s Aboriginal people survived by hunting kangaroo and wallabies, as well as seals and mutton birds. They harvested shellfish along the coastline and used fire-stick farming to increase biodiversity, control weeds and facilitate hunting inland.

After the establishment of British penal colonies on the island, tensions began to rise between the white inhabitants and the Aboriginal people as they competed for game and land. Indigenous hunting grounds were rapidly being transformed into grazing pasture for livestock, with the island’s sheep population reaching 200,000 by 1824.

By the mid-1820s, the so-called Black War was in full swing, with this largely violent conflict leading to the near-destruction of Tasmania’s Aboriginal peoples. The Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur was offering rewards for the capture and killing of Aboriginal people and by 1830, many of those who remained were moved to Flinders Island, from where it was thought they could not escape.

For many years, non-Aboriginal people believed that there no longer existed any Tasmanian Aboriginals but that is not the case. In the last census, 30,000 people identified as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, with many of these descended from Tasmanian Aboriginal women and white male sealers living on the Bass Strait Islands. Today, they identify as the palawa people and are actively broadening awareness around Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural identity. While driving around the state, you might see signboards with two place names - one in English and the other in palawa kani (the local Indigenous language). In palawa kani, the island of Tasmania is known as “lutruwita” while the capital, Hobart, is known as “nipaluna”. The area around Burnie was home to the Plairhekehillerplue people, who referred to their country as “milaythina”

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Around 20% of the island is protected within the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, which encompasses more than 1.5 million hectares. It’s one of the last remaining tracts of temperate wilderness in the world and was designated as a World Heritage Site in 1982.

In addition to one of the state’s most famous national parks, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair, the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is also home to Hartz Mountains National Park, Mt Field National Park and Walls of Jerusalem National Park. It includes the subterranean caves of Mole Creek Karst National Park and parts of the Central Plateau, as well as South East Mutton Bird Islet, which has been designated as an Important Bird Area.

The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is home to some of the oldest trees in the world, with native Huon pines known to reach more than 2,000 years of age. The state’s tallest known tree is a mountain ash and measures 100.5 metres in height. Located near the Tahune Airwalk in southern Tasmania, it is known as the “Centurian”.

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While Tasmania is renowned for its massive trees, it’s also starting to make a name for its tulips. Tulips are grown on the red volcanic soils of Table Cape where the high light intensity, low humidity and lack of dust create ideal growing conditions. In fact, growers in the northwest of the state are even exporting tulip bulbs to the Netherlands to help farmers there produce flowers from July to November. The alternative for Dutch growers is to use what is known as “ice tulips”, which are bulbs that are frozen to be used for flower production during autumn. However, the costs involved in cultivating tulips this way are high and the flowers that result tend to be inferior, which is why tulip bulbs are being grown in Tasmania and flown from the other side of the world.

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Some of the cleanest air in the world has been recorded at the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station at the northwestern tip of Tasmania. Since 1976, the station has been measuring air quality to determine a baseline for the pollution of our atmosphere. The air here is so clean largely due to its isolation (the closest village is an hour away) and because of the Roaring Forties, which bring wild winds, wet weather and cold temperatures to the region. When the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station first began testing the air in the 1970s, the carbon dioxide level was at 333 parts per million. Today, it is around 405 parts per million.

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Does anybody know which Australian capital city is the driest in the country? (wait for response) It’s Adelaide. And does anyone know which is the second-driest capital city in Australia? It might come as a surprise to hear that it’s Hobart. The Tasmanian capital is positioned on the leeward side of Mount Wellington (known in palawa kani as “kunanyi”), so by the time the air has risen up the windward side and reached the summit, most of its moisture has escaped. The weather on Tasmania’s west coast, however, is completely different, with a lot of rain feeding its lush rainforests. This is also due to mountains, with the westerly winds releasing rain on the windward side of the mountains before continuing to the much drier east coast.

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While driving around Tasmania, it’s not uncommon to see unusual place names, which reflects the good humour of our island residents. In the south of the state we have the communities of Eggs and Bacon Bay and Lovely Bottom while in the northwest is Stinkhole and Dismal Swamp. You can go kayaking around Granny’s Gut on the east coast of Tasmania or move to Promised Land in search of a better life. Tasmania also has its own Bagdad, with this small, rural community located a short drive north of Hobart. In the wake of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the town’s online access centre reported receiving messages of sympathy and support from people all over the world.

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You might have heard Tasmania referred to as the “Apple Isle” and this is for two reasons. One, the island is shaped like an apple and two, it once had a thriving apple industry. The first apple trees were planted here in 1788 by William Bligh and it was one of the first commercial industries on the island in the early 19th century. By the end of the 1800s, Tasmania was exporting apples to the mainland and overseas, with a peak in sales during the 1920s and the 1930s.

When Britain joined the European Common Market in the 1970s, Tasmanian apple exports felt a hit and the Tree Pull Scheme that followed reduced the extend of apple production by half. In some parts of the state, such as the Huon Valley in the south, you’ll still find magnificent groves of apple trees and can pick up the best-tasting apples from roadside stalls.

If there are any Australians on the bus, you will know the name IXL, which is synonymous with jams, conserves and sauces. The company grew from the byproducts of the apple processing industry in the early 20th century, with Henry Jones at the helm. A collection of waterfront warehouses once owned by IXL have now been transformed into one of Hobart’s most famous hotels, the art-filled Henry Jones Hotel.

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Have we got any golfers here today? Did you know that Tasmania has more golf courses per capita than any other state in Australia? There are 69 in total, including what is believed to be the oldest golf course in the Southern Hemisphere. This is the Bothwell Golf Club, which was established back in 1822 in the Central Highlands. Bothwell was founded by Scottish settlers and was named after a village in Lanarkshire. It sits on the River Clyde (which will be familiar to those who have visited Glasgow) and it was here that the first game of golf was played in Australia. However, Tasmania’s most famous golf course is Barnbougle Dunes, which was built into the beach dunes where the Great Forester River meets Bass Strait on the island’s north coast.

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Before Tasmania became a popular tourist destination for its cutting-edge art gallery and foodie culture, it was outdoor enthusiasts and trekkers who were its main visitors. The island has long lured hikers to its spectacular trails and today there are more than 2,000 kilometres of walking tracks traversing the island. In addition to classic multi-day treks such as the Overland Track and the South Coast Track, there are newer additions such as the Three Capes Track with its eco-friendly huts. But you don’t have to hike for hours with a loaded backpack to experience Tasmania’s incredible wilderness as there are plenty of short and easy trails that will get you right in the thick of it.

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Of the 11 UNESCO World Heritage-listed convict sites scattered across Australia, Tasmania is home to five, with the most famous being Port Arthur. Between 1804 and 1853, around 76,000 convicts were transported to the island by the British Government and worked as labourers building roads, bridges and buildings. In the towns of Ross, Richmond and Campbell Town, you’ll find some of Tasmania’s most impressive examples of convict-built landmarks.

Convicts were also put to work as miners, with Tasmania’s first operational coal mine also serving as a convict probation station. This is now preserved as the Coal Mines Historic Site and is located on the Tasman Peninsula in the state’s southeast. It is believed that some of the worst offenders from Port Arthur were sent here as punishment. In South Hobart, you’ll find one of Australia’s best-preserved female convict facilities, the Cascades Female Factory, where the horrendous conditions and individual stories of struggle are brought to life during live performances.