If you took a stroll through Salamanca at the turn of the 19th century, you would have been greeted with the putrid smell of chunks of whale blubber, rendered down in cast-iron pots called try-pots; a far cry from the modern cocktail scene today.

But it was those gruesome sights that shaped the city – because Hobart was built on a whale’s back. While Hobart’s whaling history may go back to the time of the first European settlement, it was around the 1840s to 1880s that the industry entered what historians say was a golden age. And a warning, gruesome tales ahead.

Mark Richards and George Radford took their mark for a race in Hobart, but they didn’t know they’d never make it to the finish line.

Tasmania, despite its small size and population in comparison to the mainland, has produced more than its proportionally predicted percentage of significant figures and heroes of Australian history. 

Tasmania, despite its small size and population in comparison to the mainland, has produced more than its proportionally predicted percentage of significant figures and heroes of Australian history. 

John Franklin was the Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania from 1837 to 1843. Many things around Tasmania are named after him, or his impressive wife, Lady Jane Franklin. In Franklin Square he is depicted in statue, towering over the park on a plinth inscribed with his epitaph, composed by Lord Alfred Tennyson;

We all know that Princess Mary is Hobart’s own princess, but many might not be aware that there was a Tasmanian princess long before Mary hit the headlines. The youngest of ten children, Pauline Curran was born in 1893 in Hobart and educated at St Michael’s Collegiate. The founder of the Tattersall’s lottery, George Adams, was a close family friend and when he died in 1905, he left the family a chunk of money.

Before Salamanca became Hobart’s hotspot for a good meal, diverse artwork and bustling markets, it was a hub of a much different kind. Known as New Wharf throughout the 1800’s, Salamanca was one of the largest whaling ports in the world and has been evolving ever since.

After all this talk of voting in local elections, as well as by elections on the big island, did you know that one of Hobart’s own created the system that we use to vote in Tasmanian elections, way back in 1896? And now, the electoral area known as ‘Denison’ is set to change to ‘Clark’ for the next Federal election to honour Andrew Inglis Clark (1848-1907), one of the architects of the voting system we use in Tasmania.

The Hobart Zoo was started by a passionate socialite described as a “human dynamo” and was famously home to the last living thylacine.

When visitors stop to gaze at picturesque Richmond Bridge they might not imagine a history of whippings and murder.

Murray Street was named after Captain John Murray, commandant of Hobart Town from 1810 until 1812.

Kunanyi / Mt Wellington or simply ‘the mountain’ to us locals, Hobart’s most significant landmark was formed during the Permian, Triassic and Jurassic ages.

Ever heard the expression ‘Buckley’s chance’? One theory is that it refers to escapee convict William Buckley who came to live with an indigenous community near Port Phillip in Victoria from 1803 to 1835.

Early Hobart’s Wapping district was known for grisly murders, prostitution and poverty. It was also the economic centre of town in the first years of settlement and home to Australia’s oldest working theatre, the Theatre Royal.

On a site where only the outside walls remain, how do you help visitors contextualise what happened inside those walls? At the Cascades Female Factory site in South Hobart, actor Karissa Lane, together with director Craig Lane-Irons and writer Finegan Kruckemeyer have created The Proud & The Punished, a 45-minute monologue to share the horrifying, heart-warming and sad stories of the women and babies, who went through the site from 1828 until 1856. At any given time there were between 700 and 1200 prisoners.

Devastating bushfires on mainland Australia strikes vivid memories to those of us who lived through the 1967 bushfires in Southern Tasmania when 62 lives and 1293 homes were lost.