[3] The site (originally called Circular Head) was named after Lord Stanley, the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in the 1830s and 1840s, who later had three terms of office as British Prime Minister.

Today Stanley is a tourist destination and the main fishing port on the northwest coast of Tasmania.

The most distinctive landmark in Stanley is Munatrik,[7] commonly called The Nut, an old extinct volcano.

Bass and Flinders sighted it on their circumnavigation of Van Diemen's Land (now called Tasmania) in 1798 and named it Circular Head.

Tourists regularly travel to Highfield (the original home of the Van Diemen's Land company in Circular head, northwest of the township) to view the picturesque northern beaches with The Nut in the background.