King Island (Tasmania) - History

History

King Island was discovered by Captain Reed, hunting seals in the schooner Martha in 1799. Matthew Flinders’ first map of Van Diemen's Land and Basses Strait, which was sent to England (before Flinders had left) and was published in June 1800, did not show King Island. However, before Flinders left Sydney for England in 1800, Reed had informed Flinders of the existence of the island. Flinders’ second map of Van Diemen’s Land and Bass’s Strait (properly finished on route to England) and published with his Observations in 1801 shows:

“Land of considerable extent has been seen about this situation”.

Captain John Black also visited the island just after Reed and named it King's Island after Governor Philip Gidley King. Captain John Black was sailing in the brig Harbinger, after which the dangerous Harbinger Rocks off the island's north-west coast are named. It was found to abound in both fur seals and elephant seals which were soon exploited to local extinction.

Governor King, knowing that the French navigator Nicolas Baudin was going to head for the island, when he left Port Jackson in 1800, sent the Cumberland from Sydney to formally claim the islands for Britain. The Cumberland arrived just before the French and the British had hastily erected the British Flag in a tree.

As a result of this incident, British settlements were established at the River Derwent and Port Dalrymple in Tasmania and later Port Phillip.

Sealers continued to harvest the island intermittently until the mid 1820s, after which the only inhabitants were some old sealers and their Australian aboriginal wives who mostly hunted wallaby for skins. The last of these left the island in 1854 and for many years it was only occasionally visited by hunters and more often castaways from shipwrecks.

The first submarine communications cable across Bass Strait in 1859 went via King Island, starting at Cape Otway, Victoria, it made contact with the Tasmanian mainland at Stanley Head, and then continued on to George Town. However it started failing within a few weeks of completion, and by 1861 it failed completely. A later telephone and telegraph cable across Bass Strait operated via King Island from 1936 until 1963.

In the 1880s the land was opened for grazing. A township developed at Currie and the Post Office opened on 1 June 1892 (known as King's Island until 1903, King Island until 1917, thereafter Currie).

Currie, on the west coast, now has the only Post Office on the island, but in the past Grassy, in the southeast (1918–1935, 1943–1991), Naracoopa on the east coast (1920–1962), Pearshape to the south (1946–1959) and Egg Lagoon in the north (1925–1967) (replacing Yambacoona (1922–1925)) all had official Post Offices. The other localities of King Island are Bungaree, Loorana, Lymwood, Nugara, Pegarah, Reekara, Sea Elephant, Surprise Bay, Wickham and Yarra Creek. All share the postcode 7256.