Wilderness

Steeped in history, Maria Island is an intriguing and beautiful nature reserve off Tasmania’s east coast.
Maria Island lies off the east coast of Tasmania, watching over the popular beachside town of Orford, about an hours’ drive from Hobart.

Approximately 20 kilometres (12 miles) long and 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) wide, Maria is two island joined by a narrow isthmus flanked by Shoal and Riedle Bays. The island’s terrain is fairly low, apart from Mount Bishop & Clerk (630 metres/1,995 feet) and Mount Maria (709 metres/2,326 feet) on the eastern side of the north island.

Island Reserve
The entire island is protected under national park status, an area of 11,550 hectares, including some marine reserves off the north-west coast. Features include extensive fossil deposits at the ‘Fossil Cliffs’ and interesting ruins of the nineteenth-century penal settlement at Darlington.

Maria Island is an animal reserve and there are many healthy populations of native animals: forester kangaroos; Bennetts wallabies and pademelons; wombats; echidnas; pygmy, brush-tailed and ring-tail possums; and potoroos.

Colourful History
Maria Island has had a colourful and complex history since Europeans began exploring the region in the seventeenth century.

The Aboriginal name for the island was Toarra-marra-monah and the Oyster Bay tribe and Tyreddeme people were its original occupants. Aborigines arrived on the island in reed canoes and used ochre from Bloodstone Point near the isthmus to decorate their bodies and hair and to produce bark paintings.

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-General of the Dutch East India Company in Batavia, named this small east-coast island after Van Diemen’s wife, Maria.

Whalers and Sealers
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 and plundered the local seal population.

Penal Settlement
In 1825 the sealers gave way to a penal colony, 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. The colony closed in 1832 after the larger prison at Port Arthur was established; however, when the numbers of convicts arriving in Van Diemen’s Land dramatically increased in the early 1840s, the penal colony on Maria Island was reopened.

Over 800 convicts arrived on the island during this phase and an extensive building program was commenced. One of the inmates was Irish rebel William Smith O’Brien; isolated for fear that he would incite rebellion on the island. He escaped in 1850 but was soon captured and sent to Port Arthur.
The second penal settlement was again short-lived; abandoned in 1851 making way for a few farmers who took advantage of the good sheep pastures and the mild climate.

Mediterranean-style Paradise
In the late nineteenth century Maria Island became the home of Italian silk merchant, Diego Bernacchi, who leased the entire island for 10 years at just one shilling per year. Bernacchi wanted 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.
The project failed and Bernacchi abandoned the island in 1895. Undeterred he returned in 1920 to build a pier and railway line to exploit the island’s deposits of cement. Like every other activity on the island, the cement works were short-lived and, in 1930, farmers resumed their economic preeminence.  

National Park
In 1965 the Parks and Wildlife Service took over the island as a fauna reserve and in 1972 the whole island became a National Park. Maria Island’s colourful history survives in the old buildings and ruins centered around Darlington. The island also retains a deep connection with nature, free from commercialisation and industry.

Read more about the Maria Island National Park.