Australia Highseas

North of Tasmania the sea opens into Bass Strait, and the Tamar estuary meets the coast at Port Dalrymple. Settlement on the north coast began there in 1804, and the Launceston area gradually became the northern centre. Aboriginal communities of the north-west had used the sheltered bays and rock platforms for thousands of years, until the Black War of the 1820s and early 1830s broke their settlements.