To say that "VDL became confused in the folk mind... means with Oz as a whole" is to say very little. Anyone who would assume the two were identical would have had such a vague notion of Australia and Tasmania in the first place that the idea of "confusion" hardly seems to be applicable.

For such people, VDL, regardless of detail, was just "that place far away where they send convicts to be slaves. The animals there are odd too, so I've heard." Some may have assumed that Australia, Tasmania, and Van Dieman's Land were three different places with shared characteristics, with VDL the most prominent.