Maria Island - Culture and History

The first European to sight Maria Island was Abel Tasman in December 1642. It was Tasman who, having named the main island after Anthony Van Diemen, the Governor-in-Chief of the Dutch East India Company in Batavia, named this small east coast island, Maria, after the Governor-in-Chief's wife.

The first Englishman to land on the island was Captain John Cox who arrived in 1789, anchored at Shoal Bay, and made contact with the local Aborigines. Three years later the French explorer, Nicholas Baudin, spent five days investigating the island. The diversity of these early explorers is summed up by the variety of names given to the coastline - everything from Ile du Nord to Chinaman's Bay, Mistaken Cape and Cape Boulanger.

The island has experienced four distinct periods of European settlement. The first 'settlers' were whalers and sealers who lived a hard and temporary life on the island in the early nineteenth century. They viciously exploited the local Aborigines while plundered the local seal population.

In 1825 the sealers gave way to a penal colony (the second to be established in Van Diemen's Land) established by Governor George Arthur to ease the ever-increasing pressure on Hobart Town.

Arthur sent 50 convicts, accompanied by a superintendent and a small party of soldiers, to the island. Although their stay was relatively short (the colony closed in 1832 after the larger prison at Port Arthur was established) they built a number of buildings of which only the Commissariat Store and the prisoner's barracks, known as the Penitentiary, still stand. Located at Darlington they were built of local stones and bricks. Both buildings have a solidity which makes them look as though they will survive for another thousand years.

At this time the island was leased to Charles Seal but, when the number of convicts arriving in Van Diemen's Land dramatically increased in the early 1840s, Lieutenant-Governor Franklin repaired the original buildings and reopened the island as a penal colony.

The second period of convict settlement started in 1842 and it was during this period that the island's population expanded dramatically. A second convict station was established at Point Lesueur, over 800 convicts arrived on the island, and an extensive building program was commenced.

Again the settlement was short-lived. It was abandoned for the last time in 1851 and a few farmers arrived to take advantage of the good sheep pastures and the mild climate.

In 1884 Maria Island began a new phase in its history when an Italian silk merchant, Diego Bernacchi, leased the entire island. Bernacchi was a dreamer who, attracted by the mild climate and good soils, decided to turn Maria Island into a Mediterranean paradise. He planted 50 000 vines (one of his wines came third in the 1888 Melbourne Centennial Exhibition) and built a 30-room Grand Hotel and Coffee Palace.