Maria Island: that's an O for Awesome
November 28th 2007 My last place to visit in Tasmania was Maria Island, about an hour north of Hobart. It was named by good old Abel Tasman in 1642 after Maria van Diemen, wife of the Governor of Batavia (that's Java to us modern folk). Van Diemen himself had already had the whole rest of Tasmania named after him, as Van Diemen's Land. A few hundred years of Australian accents have changed the pronunciation
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