The Van Diemen’s Land Company, one of the oldest companies in Australia, was created by Royal Charter in 1825. It is the last Australian company created by charter that is still operating. The Colonial Times and Tasmanian Advertiser announced in November of that year:
We have great pleasure, through the kindness of a friend, in announcing to the Public the establishment of the “Van Diemen’s Land Company,” which is now in full operation by virtue of an Act of Parliament, introduced by His Majesty’s Ministers themselves, and passed without any single opposition in any one of its stages. The object of this Company as recited in the Act, is the rearing of sheep, cultivation of lands, working of mines, distilling and brewing.
The company was founded with a capital of £300,000 in £30 shares and was granted 250,000 acres of land on the north-western tip of Tasmania. The area was surveyed by Henry Hellyer and Joseph Fossey who, ignorant of local geology, incorrectly identified the open button-grass plains as suitable for pastoral use. In fact, the best soils were to be found in the heavily timbered land that required hard labour to clear.
A ship carrying indentured servants, livestock and supplies arrived at Circular Head in 1926. Conditions were difficult. The land proved much more challenging than expected and unsuitable for sheep so potatoes, wheat and other crops were sown, the first cargo of potatoes being shipped to Sydney two years later. Many of the indentured labourers left the company as soon as they were able.
The next step for the Van Diemen’s Land Company was to attract new free settlers as tenant farmers of the company’s lands. An article in the Hobart Town Courier in 1833 accused the paid agents of the company of seeking to enrich themselves at these migrants’ expense and roundly criticised the scheme.
After stating that their intending tenants can transport themselves to their scene of banishment for a sum varying from 16l. [£] to to 25l. [£] and holding out (most falsely holding out) that the East Indies afford a ready market for all kinds of produce that the deluded migrant may raise, the publication goes on to blazen forth its flattering allurements…
The article goes on to describe the “unblushing effrontery” of the Company in suggesting that the settlement would offer good and steady wages for all manner of trades from ploughmen to boat-builders, brick-makers to shoe-makers and tailors. It describes the company’s lands as “remote deserts” while the road to Launceston, for much of the year was a track “not inaptly designated a canal of mud a foot and a half deep”. By 1844, life had not improved for the tenant farmers as they struggled to pay their rent and were dependent on the company for provisions, which they were compelled to buy at high prices. The road, however, had improved.
Among the depredations attributed to the Van Diemen’s Land Company is the virtual elimination of First Nations people from their territory. There were many violent acts by company personnel that, by 1842, saw the last Indigenous people driven from their lands. There was also a determined campaign to wipe out the thylacine, with the company employing “tiger catchers” whose sole duty was to hunt and kill the animals.
Judging by newspaper reports, Tasmanians in general remained hostile to the Van Diemen’s Land company for many decades. In 1881, one article remarked that “the Tasmanian people were very apt to lose sight of the fact that this company had spent a very large sum of money at a time when it was impossible to obtain capital in any other way for the improvement of the country.” In 1889, the company was still being “stigmatised by some as a ‘gigantic monopoly,’ a ‘money-grubbing syndicate’ and a curse to the colony”. In fact, the shareholders had seen the value of their holdings depreciate considerably by this time and had received little by way of dividends.
When minerals including tin and silver were discovered close to the Van Diemen’s Land Company holdings, the company did gain some revenue from a tramway, later a railway, it constructed to provide access to the mines. In 1896 it sold the railway along with 150,000 acres of land to the Waratah and Zeehan Railway Company. In 1912, after failing to sell the company to an Australian syndicate, the directors expressed their intent to reduce its landholdings. Four years later, Robbins and Walker Islands were sold to James Holyman whose descendants are now famous for their wagyu beef.
The company’s holdings dwindled over the years, and by the mid-1950s it retained only 91,557 acres of its original land. Large tracts of land had been sold for timber production, including 40,000 acres to Australian Pulp and Paper Mills. The company’s main farming pursuits at this time were sheep and beef cattle. In the 1980s, the main property, the 22,100-hectare (54,6100 acre) Woolnorth station was offering tourists the opportunity to visit the oldest Hereford-breeding property in Australia.
The future of the company, though, lay in dairying. In 1993, the Van Diemen’s Land Company became part of a New Zealand-owned publicly listed dairy group, Tasman Agriculture Ltd. It changed ownership via various company restructures and in 2007 passed into the ownership of a New Zealand local government authority, the New Plymouth District Council via its Perpetual Investment Fund’s investment in Tasman Farms Ltd.
Controversially, the Van Diemen’s Land company was sold in 2016 to a Chinese billionaire Xianfeng Lu. At the time of the sale to Mr Lu’s Moon Lake Investments, the company was the largest supplier of milk in Australia. Lu down-sized the operation, selling off farms and livestock but a contract with Fonterra for milk supply meant the company remained a major force in the dairy industry. Then, in 2024, Fonterra cancelled its contract. As a result, the Van Diemen’s Land Company was again for sale and, at the time of writing (July 2024), the future ownership of one of Australia’s oldest businesses is uncertain.