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50 free Tasmania trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Tasmania trivia for Tassie locals, mainlanders planning a Spirit of Tasmania crossing, and anyone whose picture of the island is a cartoon devil. The quiz starts with the basics: Bass Strait, Hobart and the Derwent, Mount Ossa, the Roaring Forties, the dolerite Organ Pipes above the capital and the 1,000-odd islands that make up the state. Then it works through the history: Abel Tasman's sighting in 1642, the naming of Van Diemen's Land, the 1803 penal settlement, the 75,000 convicts sent to Port Arthur and Macquarie Harbour, the Black War and the removal to Flinders Island, the renaming of 1856, and Australia's first electric street lights. Later rounds cover the thylacine and the devil, the world's only migratory parrots, Lake Pedder and the world's first green party, the Franklin blockade, the Tasman Bridge collapse, Port Arthur in 1996, David Walsh's MONA, David Boon and Ricky Ponting, the JackJumpers, King Island cheese and Keen's curry. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Australia, Australian animals and Melbourne quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital city of Tasmania?
Hobart
Around 40 percent of Tasmanians live in the Greater Hobart area, the lowest share of any Australian state capital.
Q 02Which body of water separates Tasmania from mainland Australia?
Bass Strait
The island sits about 240 kilometres south of the mainland.
Q 03Tasmania is named after an explorer of which nationality?
Dutch
Abel Tasman sighted the island on 24 November 1642 and named it for his sponsor, Anthony van Diemen.
Q 04What was Tasmania called before it was officially renamed on 1 January 1856?
Van Diemen's Land
The change was partly to distance the free-settler society from its convict past.
Q 05What was Anthony van Diemen's job when Tasman named the island after him?
Governor of the Dutch East Indies
The British later shortened 'Anthony van Diemen's Land' by dropping the first name.
Q 06Which bushranger referred to Tasmania as 'Dervon' in his 1879 Jerilderie Letter?
Ned Kelly
The everyday nickname is simply 'Tassie'.
Q 07Roughly how many years ago did rising seas cut Tasmania off from the mainland?
11,700
Aboriginal people had already lived there for some 30,000 years by then.
Q 08Which pair sailed right through the strait north of Tasmania in 1798-99, proving it was an island?
Matthew Flinders and George Bass
Cook had turned back after two hours in the strait in 1770, unsure whether it was 'one land or no'.
Q 09Tasmania's capital is named after whom?
The British Colonial Secretary
David Collins founded the settlement at Sullivans Cove in 1804 with 308 convicts.
Q 10Which river does Tasmania's capital sit on?
Derwent
The 1975 Tasman Bridge collapse cut the city's only road crossing of it.
Q 11What proportion of all convicts transported to Australia were sent to Tasmania?
Four in ten
About 75,000 arrived before transportation ended in 1853.
Q 12Which of these was a notoriously harsh Tasmanian penal colony?
Port Arthur
Macquarie Harbour on the west coast was the other infamous one.
Q 13The violent conflict between settlers and Aboriginal Tasmanians that peaked in 1825-31 is known as what?
The Black War
Governor Arthur's martial law lasted more than three years, the longest in Australian history.
Q 21What struck the Tasman Bridge in 1975, causing its collapse?
A bulk ore carrier
The nearest alternative crossing of the Derwent was about 20 kilometres north at Bridgewater.
Q 22Australia's first legal casino opened in Tasmania in which year?
1968
It came during a post-war tourism boom that sold the island as the 'Sanitorium of the South'.
Q 23The 1996 massacre at a former penal settlement prompted which national response?
New gun ownership laws
Thirty-five people were killed and 23 injured; the National Firearms Agreement followed.
Q 14What was the 'Black Line' of November 1830?
A drive to sweep Aboriginal people onto the Tasman Peninsula
Every able-bodied male colonist was ordered to join; it failed and was abandoned after seven weeks.
Q 15Where were most surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians moved after 1832?
Flinders Island
Government agent George Augustus Robinson persuaded them to go; many died of introduced diseases.
Q 16Who, dying in 1876, was the last of the Aboriginal Tasmanians removed from the island?
Truganini
Today's Aboriginal Tasmanians generally identify as Palawa or Pakana.
Q 17Tasmania became a colony separate from New South Wales in which year?
1825
It got its own judicial establishment and Legislative Council on 3 December that year.
Q 18Where were Australia's first electric street lights switched on in 1886?
Waratah, Tasmania
Launceston became the island's first fully electrified city the year before.
Q 19The flooding of which body of water for hydro power led to the founding of the world's first green party?
Lake Pedder
The United Tasmania Group formed in response; the Franklin Dam fight followed in the early 1980s.
Q 20Which Tasmanian became the first woman elected to Australia's House of Representatives in 1943?
Enid Lyons
She was also the first woman to serve in federal cabinet.
Q 24Which philanthropist opened MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, in 2011?
David Walsh
Within a year it was Tasmania's top tourist attraction; he also runs the Dark Mofo festival.
Q 25What is Tasmania's tallest mountain?
Mount Ossa
It stands 1,617 metres, in the Central Highlands.
Q 26Which globe-circling wind system lies directly in Tasmania's path?
The Roaring Forties
The same winds blew Abel Tasman off course when he tried to follow the coast north in 1642.
Q 27Tasmania has the world's largest areas of which rock, seen in Mount Wellington's 'Organ Pipes'?
Dolerite
The Jurassic intrusions form the distinctive columns on many of the island's mountains and cliffs.
Q 28The Tarkine in the north-west is the largest area of what in Australia?
Temperate rainforest
It covers about 3,800 square kilometres and includes Savage River National Park.
Q 29Which famous bay in Freycinet National Park is a landmark of Tasmania's east coast?
Wineglass Bay
The park's coastal granites resemble those on the mainland.
Q 30Which is the most visited waterfall in Tasmania, in Mount Field National Park?
Russell Falls
Its stepped drops total 58 metres, and it is an easy trip from Hobart.