Qualla: Launceston

Launceston: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Plug at wts wikivoyage, Public domain. Stand in central Launceston and you are standing where three rivers decide to become one. The North Esk and the South Esk arrive from opposite corners of northern Tasmania and join here to form the Tamar, the wide estuary the palawa people knew as kanamaluka, running north to Bass Strait. The rivers chose the site; the Europeans only confirmed it, settling here in 1806 and making this one of Australia's oldest cities. The result is a place that feels older and more lived-in than its size suggests, full of Georgian and Victorian streets, art-deco corners, and a low skyline its residents have deliberately kept that way.

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Plug at wts wikivoyage | Public domain

Launceston: An Older Country Than the City

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Coghlan from Adelaide, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0. Long before any settlement, this was the country of the Northern Midlands nations, among them the Letteremairrener, who moved with the seasons. They wintered near the coast at George Town and spent summers on Ben Lomond, returning to the Tamar for the mutton-bird season, a rhythm...

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Image: Michael Coghlan from Adelaide, Australia | CC BY-SA 2.0

Launceston: A City of Firsts

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Coghlan from Adelaide, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0. For a regional city, Launceston has an unusual habit of going first. It saw the first use of anaesthetic in the Southern Hemisphere. It was the first Australian city to lay underground sewers. And in 1895, powered by the Duck Reach station on the South Esk, it became the first Au...

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Image: Michael Coghlan from Adelaide, Australia | CC BY-SA 2.0

Launceston: Macaques, Museums and a Town of the Year

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kspilling at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Some of Launceston's pleasures are quietly unexpected. In City Park, beside the centre, a troop of Japanese macaques chatters in a large enclosure, a gift from the sister city of Ikeda, Japan. The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, founded in 1891 and now the largest museum o...

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Image: Kspilling at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Launceston: The Cradle of Cricketers

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The uploader, Kspilling at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. For a place of around ninety thousand people, Launceston has produced a remarkable share of sporting fame, especially with bat and ball. It is the birthplace of former Australian captain Ricky Ponting and of David Boon, the moustachioed stalwart of the national side, as well as c...

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Image: The uploader, Kspilling at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0