Macquarie Harbour is a large, shallow, inlet on the west coast of Tasmania, Australia.
The first settlement at Macquarie Harbour was on Sarah Island, a small island in the harbour. This island was used as a prison for recalcitrant prisoners from other settlements in Tasmania, due to its extreme isolation and very bad climate.
Later the small port of Strahan was developed on the shores of Macquarie Harbour to support the nearby mining settlements. Today Strahan is the base for tourism on the west coast.
The King River and the Gordon River empty into Macquarie Harbour. The narrow entrance to Macquarie Harbour has hazardous tidal currents and is called Hells Gates.
Lachlan Macquarie was born on the island of Ulva off the coast of the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, a chain of islands off the West Coast of Scotland.
Macquarie's policies, especially his championing of the emancipists and the lavish expenditure of government money on public works, aroused opposition both in the colony and in London, where the government still saw New South Wales as a place to dump convicts and not as a future dominion of the Empire.
Macquarie was buried on the Isle of Mull in a remote mausoleum with his wife and son.
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