Description

The voyage of George Bass and Matthew Flinders proved that Tasmania was an island. This voyage in 1798 in the sailing boat the “Norfolk”, Bass and Flinders circumnavigated the island of Van Diemen’s Land (which became Tasmania in 1856) establishing that it was in fact separated from the main part of Australia by a strait of water. Flinders recommended to the Governor of the colony of New South Wales in 1800 that the strait be named after George Bass as “Bass’s Strait” which it was duly named and later known more simply as Bass Strait.

Strong currents between south-east portions of the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean waters make powerful, wild storm waves. To illustrate its wild strength, Bass Strait is both twice as wide and twice as rough as the English Channel. The shipwrecks on the Tasmanian and Victorian coastlines number in the hundreds.