Ulverstone is a town on the northern coast of Tasmania, Australia on the mouth of the River Leven, on Bass Strait. It is on the Bass Highway, west of Devonport and east of Penguin. As of June 2021 Ulverstone had an urban population of 11,613, being the largest town in Tasmania. The town is a part of the municipality of the Central Coast Council which also includes Penguin, Turners Beach, Leith, Gawler and surrounds, and Forth. History The town area was first settled by Europeans in 1848, when Andrew Risby, his wife Louisa and their five young children arrived to settle and develop farmland from what was mostly a thickly forested wilderness. Andrew & Louisa arrived in Adelaide, South Australia in 1839 as a newly married couple from their ancestral town of Horsley, Gloucestershire in England. The first of their five children were born in Adelaide. Soon after the birth of their 2nd child they moved to Tasmania. In 1841 they arrived at the Forth River where a young 19-year-old James Fenton had pioneered just prior to their arrival. After clearing land and subsistence farming for a few years, they were evicted from their "patch" after a land dispute with a wealthy speculator and moved westward. The district was, at that time, known as 'the Leven' and recognised as a good source of quality timber with a similar climate to England. When their 5th child, Andrew Risby jnr. was just 2 years old the Risby family moved and settled on a patch of land known as The Rises, at the south-eastern perimeter of the present day Ulverstone town boundary where they farmed for many years. Descendants of this pioneering family still live in the district. During the 1850s, the district received a few new settlers but was also frequented by transient timber getters. The timber found ready markets in Melbourne, which desperately required good quality split timber during the Victorian gold rush. Until June 1854, land releases in the district were often purchased under 'pre-emptive rights legislation' by distant purchasers whose intention was to keep the land for later sale at an increased price. With the repeal of that legislation, the conditions for settlers to take up residence improved. The name Ulverstone is first known to have been used in 1854 when Hugh Ross McKay opened the Ulverstone store. Leven Post Office opened on 30 May 1857 and was renamed