Hobart

Hobart exists because Napoleon threatened war. In 1803, when news of renewed hostilities with France reached Sydney, Governor King feared the French might establish a naval base on Van Diemen's Land. He dispatched a 23-year-old lieutenant with 24 convicts to plant the British flag first. That hasty defensive outpost at Risdon Cove became Australia's second-oldest city—founded just fifteen years after Sydney, before Melbourne, Brisbane, or Perth existed. The French never came, but Hobart remained.

The palawa people had inhabited this river valley for over 35,000 years before the British arrived. When David Collins relocated the settlement to Sullivans Cove in 1804, he brought 178 convicts, 25 marines, and 21 children to a place of stunning natural beauty and brutal penal discipline. Van Diemen's Land became synonymous with the worst of transportation—Port Arthur's prison ruins still draw tourists to contemplate the horrors. When self-government arrived in 1856, the colony immediately renamed itself Tasmania to escape its convict past.

For most of the 20th century, Hobart was an afterthought—Australia's smallest and most isolated state capital, losing population to the mainland while its economy stagnated. Then came MONA. When gambling magnate David Walsh opened the Museum of Old and New Art in 2011, he transformed Hobart's trajectory. The private museum—the Southern Hemisphere's largest—put Hobart on the cultural map. Tourism boomed. Housing prices followed. The same isolation that had held Tasmania back now attracted remote workers fleeing Melbourne and Sydney's congestion.

Today Hobart is the financial and administrative hub of Tasmania, home to roughly 240,000 people in Greater Hobart—almost half the state's population. The city serves as Antarctica's gateway: the Australian Antarctic Division is headquartered here, and Hobart is home port for Australian and French polar expeditions. The Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies makes Tasmania a global center for Southern Ocean research. But success has brought crisis: Hobart builds only 700 dwellings per year while median house prices reached A$1.03 million in 2021—12.8 times median household income. Rental vacancies have been under 3% for a decade.

By 2026, Hobart faces the paradox of small-city success: everyone wants to move here, but there's nowhere to live. Tasmania's population grew just 0.41% in 2023—the slowest of any state—because people can't find housing. A new Population Policy released in 2024 aims to balance growth with liveability, but the fundamental constraint remains: Hobart is hemmed between Mount Wellington and the Derwent River, with limited room to expand. The city that was founded too quickly may now be growing too slowly to accommodate the people it attracts.