Apocalyptic escape, picturesque destination, and imperial colony, the Australian island-state of Tasmania is repeatedly imagined as a distant ‘lifeboat’ escape. How the climate crisis intersects with escapism and utopian imaginaries of place is a concern that cultural geography can help address. Research into how geography and colonialism influence imaginaries of escape is underdeveloped. Critical discourse analysis is applied to three types of text to address this gap. These are online news articles, travel blogs, and history texts. These texts showcase the Tasmanian archive through popular cultural discourses of Tasmanian identity, which inform how Tasmania is imagined. These text types correlate with three emergent themes. Firstly, Tasmania as an apocalyptic escape, including the Earth’s Black Box. Secondly, Tasmania as a lifestyle migration and tourist escape. Thirdly, the relationship between Tasmanian escapism and colonial history. This paper contributes to an international interest in places of escape, such as New Zealand. Analysing the Tasmanian archive reveals what place identities are deemed desirable, why, by whom, and how escape opportunities are distributed inequitably due to colonial legacies. Identifying these legacies helps to recognise the role escapism plays for emerging research, long-term catastrophe planning, and dangers from a colonial geographical imaginary.