Tasmania Island Fire, Commonwealth Of Australia, South Pacific Ocean

Tasmania (/tæzˈmeɪniə/; abbreviated as Tas and known colloquially as "Tassie") is an island state of the Commonwealth of Australia. It is located 240 km (150 mi) to the south of the Australian mainland, separated by Bass Strait. The state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 334 islands. The state has a population of over 515,000 (as of September 2015), almost half of which resides in the Greater Hobart precinct, which forms the metropolitan area of the state capital and largest city, Hobart.
Tasmania's area is 68,401 km2 (26,410 sq mi), of which the main island covers 64,519 km2 (24,911 sq mi). Tasmania is promoted as a natural state; almost 45% of Tasmania lies in reserves, national parks, and World Heritage Sites and the state was the founding place of the first environmental party in the world. Though an island, due to a mapping error the state shares a land border with Victoria at its northernmost terrestrial point, Boundary Islet, a nature reserve in Bass Strait. The Bishop and Clerk Islets, about 37 km south of Macquarie Island, are the southernmost terrestrial point of the state of Tasmania, and the southernmost internationally recognised land in Australia.
The island is believed to have been occupied by Aboriginals for 40,000 years before English colonisation. It is thought Tasmanian Aboriginals were separated from mainland Aboriginal groups about 10,000 years ago when the sea rose to form Bass Strait. The Aboriginal population was estimated to have been between 3000 and 7000 at the time of colonisation, but was almost wiped out within 30 years by a combination of violent guerrilla conflict with settlers known as the "Black War", intertribal conflict, and from the late 1820s, the spread of infectious diseases to which they had no immunity. The conflict, which peaked between 1825 and 1831 and led to more than three years of martial law, cost the lives of almost 1100 Aboriginals and settlers. The near-destruction of Tasmania's Aboriginal population has been described by some historians as an act of genocide by the British.