Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Friday 19 February 1954, page 8


QUEEN TO HONOUR DAVID COLLINS IN HISTORIC UNVEILING

★ ★

Hobart was born here

February

20, 1804

★ ★

HISTORICALLY, February 20, 1954, will be the most joy-

ous, most important day ever to dawn on Tasmania.

• Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II—the first reigning monarch

ever to visit us—will be given a mighty welcome as she sets foot on Tasmanian soil.....

• Exactly 150 years to the day since Lieut.-Col. David Collins

founded Hobart in the name of the British Crown. A great and happy coincidence!

Her Majesty will honour Hobart's sesquicentenary to-morrow, when, at 3.50 p.m.,

she will unveil the memorial which will commemorate the city's 150th anniversary.

This will climax the sesqui-centenary year, a period of

State-wide celebrations, which is second only to the Royal tour in scale and im-portance.

The memorial is of Tas-manian red granite, a rock of enduring beauty and strength, symbolic of the spiritual and physical ties with the Home country which bind and encourage us.

Collins landed at Sullivans Cove on February 20, 1804, to establish the first permanent

settlement in Van Diemen's Land.

And tomorrow, 150 years later, the Queen will have travelled 13,000 miles in hon-ouring the memory of Tas-mania's first Lieutenant-Gov-

ernor.

She will be here both to honour Hobart's founder and to receive our homage and

our love.

• Picture at left shows

an artist's impression of the sesquicentenary memorial as it may appear after the unveiling tomor-

row.