Hobart Drive

If you think that Hobart Drive is named after the capital city of Tasmania, you are probably right. Formerly called Van Diemen's Land, Tasmania is the southernmost of the Australian states, and its name recalls the famous Dutch explorer of Australia and New Zealand.

Because of its latitude and resulting climate, Tasmania is the state where New Zealand-born people are most likely to feel at home.

Still, the street is not Tasman Street but Hobart Drive. The first settlement was established in 1803 as a penal colony on the shores of the Derwent River, partly as a result of British concern over the presence of French explorers.

In 1804 the settlement was moved to the present site of Hobart at Sullivans Cove. The city, first known as Hobart Town or Hobarton, was named after Lord Hobart, a British politician.

Robert Hobart was a Member of Parliament in both the Irish House of Commons and the British House of Commons. He was also a Privy Counsellor. He served as Governor of Madras, and then as the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, which was a position in the British cabinet responsible for the army and the British colonies other than India.

The area of Hobart was occupied by the Mouheneener tribe. Remember that Tasmania is unique among Australian states in very nearly succeeding in its ethnic cleansing of the aboriginal inhabitants.

In a ground-breaking and innovative decision, a committee of the Tasmanian Parliament recommended that at the commencement of each sitting, the aboriginal people be remembered with these words: "We acknowledge the traditional people of the land upon which we meet today, the Mouheneener people."

Hobart Town was declared a city on August 21, 1842. In 1881 it was renamed Hobart.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.