Australia Highseas

The sea off Tasmania's west coast lies open to the Southern Ocean, with few safe harbours between exposed headlands and long beaches. Macquarie Harbour, a narrow inlet on this coast, held the penal station on Sarah Island from 1822, where convicts cut timber and built boats. Rivers from the highlands carried tea-coloured water to the sea. Aboriginal people had lived along these shores for thousands of years before the colonists arrived.