Launceston is Tasmania's Georgian city: one of the best-preserved colonial cities in Australia, with tree-lined streets, 19th-century brick buildings and a big-country-town feel that many people find charming. It sits where the North Esk and South Esk rivers meet to form the Tamar (kanamaluka), and its natural gem, Cataract Gorge, begins just a short walk from the centre.
It's a perfect base for northern Tasmania: from here you can explore the Tamar wine valley, with around 30 cool-climate wineries famous for their sparkling wines and pinots, and easily reach the Bridestowe lavender fields, the east coast and the centre of the island. The city combines nature right around the corner, good food and a cultural scene that's surprising for its size.
With Australia's largest regional museum, a walkable historic centre and Cataract Gorge —home to a chairlift with the longest span in the world, free-roaming peacocks and a riverside swimming pool—, Launceston offers much more than its size suggests. It's a relaxed, easy gateway to northern Tasmania.
The Tamar area is the Country of the Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples, with the Leterremairrener among the groups of the valley. Launceston was founded in 1806, after a first camp at what is now George Town; it was originally called Patersonia and later took the name Launceston, after the Cornish hometown of Governor Philip Gidley King. More on the Launceston history page.
Read the full history ↓The island south of the mainland, once Van Diemen's Land: home to one of the most feared penal colonies of the empire and the scene of the tragic Black War against the Palawa people. Today it is a haven of wild nature, with more than a third of its area protected as a World Heritage Site.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before a single Georgian house was built, the valley where Launceston now stands was the Country of Aboriginal Tasmanians. The northern groups, among them the Leterremairrener along with the Panninher and the Tyerrernotepanner, had lived in the Tamar region (kanamaluka) and the surrounding lands for thousands of years. Their seasonal hunter-gatherer way of life was finely tuned to the island. Tasmanians were one of the most isolated human populations on the planet, cut off from mainland Australia for around 10,000 years after the Bass Strait formed.
Life followed the seasons and the resources they brought. According to the records, the Leterremairrener spent the winter months near the mouth of the Tamar, around today's George Town. In summer they moved up to the heights of Ben Lomond, then returned to the riverbanks for the mutton-bird (shearwater) season. The land was not an empty space waiting to be 'settled'. It was a cultural landscape known in every detail, with names, stories and uses handed down over generations.
The meeting of the North Esk and South Esk rivers to form the Tamar, along with the surrounding gorges and forests, was part of that world. Cataract Gorge, now the city's star attraction, was also part of Aboriginal Country, with its own meaning. Acknowledging that earlier presence is the starting point for understanding Launceston's history without the myth of 'untouched land'.
European Launceston was born of imperial geopolitics. In the early 19th century, the British feared the French might claim Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and decided to secure the north of the island. In 1804 Colonel William Paterson set up a first camp where George Town stands today, at the mouth of the Tamar. A few weeks later the settlement moved to York Town and finally, in 1806, to Launceston's current site, inland where the rivers meet.
The new settlement was first called Patersonia, after its founder. Soon afterwards it was renamed Launceston, this time in honour of Governor Philip Gidley King, who was born in the town of Launceston in Cornwall, England. The name sounds and feels very British, much like the city that would grow up around it.
Relations with the original inhabitants were marked by conflict from the start. As early as 1806, Leterremairrener bands clashed with the settlers, most likely in retaliation for the intrusion and for hunting on their lands without permission. Paterson responded with punitive expeditions, and violence between settlers and Aboriginal people would continue, at varying levels of intensity, over the following decades.
As in the rest of Tasmania, colonial expansion around Launceston came at a devastating human cost for Aboriginal people. Pastoralists occupied the best land, settlers brought disease, and violence ran both ways. In the 1820s and 1830s this led to what became known as the 'Black War'. The colonial government ran campaigns to remove the survivors. Many of the northern Aboriginal people were moved to settlements on Bass Strait islands such as Wybalenna, where large numbers died from disease and from being torn from their land.
Meanwhile, Launceston prospered. As a navigable river port, it became the great trading hub of the island's north and one of the main gateways for settlers, goods and livestock. Wealth from wool, farming and, later, mining in western Tasmania fuelled a remarkable building boom. In the middle and late 19th century the city gained the churches, banks, theatres and Georgian and Victorian houses that make Launceston one of the best-preserved colonial cities in Australia today.
The city led the way in several areas. In 1895 it became one of the first in the southern hemisphere to have electric street lighting, powered by a hydroelectric station in Cataract Gorge itself that harnessed the force of the river. That early link with water power foreshadowed the role hydroelectricity would play in the development of the whole of Tasmania.
The railway also helped make Launceston the capital of the north. In 1871 the line linking it to Deloraine opened, the first in Tasmania, and over time the city became a rail hub whose workshops in the Inveresk district employed a large share of the population. When that industry declined in the 20th century, the same sheds were left standing. Decades later they were reinvented as the city's cultural and university heart, a sign of how Launceston chose to recycle its industrial past rather than tear it down.
Today Launceston, with around 90,000 people in its metropolitan area, is Tasmania's second city and the cultural and economic capital of the north. Its exceptionally well-preserved historic centre is one of its biggest draws. Walking past Georgian and Victorian façades, with Cataract Gorge just minutes from the centre, gives it a character unlike any other Australian city.
The city has reinvented itself without losing its identity. Old riverside silos have become a design hotel. The Inveresk railway workshops now house the main site of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, the largest regional museum in the country, along with a lively university and events precinct. With almost thirty cool-climate wineries, the Tamar Valley has made the region one of the meccas of Australian sparkling wine, and the local food scene lives up to that reputation.
Like the rest of Tasmania, Launceston is also coming to terms with its Aboriginal history. The return of palawa kani names, such as kanamaluka for the Tamar, the presence of First Peoples' culture at the QVMAG and the work of the palawa community are all part of a more honest look at the past. For travellers, knowing that an ancient Aboriginal Country lies beneath the Georgian city, and that this Country is still alive, adds enormously to a visit to this elegant gateway to northern Tasmania.
