Past Hinsby Beach, the Alum Cliffs form a section of cliffed coast to the neighbouring suburb of Bonnet Hill.

[2][3] Prior to the British colonisation of Tasmania, the land had been occupied for possibly as long as 35,000 years[4] by the semi-nomadic Mouheneener people, a sub-group of the Nuennone, or "South-East tribe".

The first European settlement at Taroona took place in the early 19th century, when land was granted to settlers who had relocated from Norfolk Island.

In the mid 1890s, Clarendon James Cox Lord purchased an 18-acre property which he called Taroona, after an Aboriginal word for sea shell.

Lord built himself a pretty homestead and also established tea rooms where visitors could indulge in delicacies such as strawberries and cream while overlooking the River Derwent, Hobart.

[8] On the foreshore above Taroona Beach there is the grave of a young sailor, Joseph Batchelor, who died on the sailing ship Venus in the Derwent Estuary in 1810, and was buried ashore on 28 January 1810.

After World War II, significant subdivision of Taroona was undertaken, and the suburb's population rapidly expanded.

[6] In 1958 a public high school was established on a large parcel of land on the Channel Highway central to the suburb, and with a frontage on to the foreshore of the Derwent River.