A bare tree stands on a rocky shoreline in Tasmania, a heart-shaped island 150 miles (241 kilometers) south of the Australian mainland. The forbidding landscape of Tasmania, or “Tassie,” as locals call it, was the site of numerous British penal colonies, beginning in the early 1800s.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, “Australia’s Best Kept Secret,” Sept./Oct. 1996, National Geographic Traveler magazine)