The History of Australia and New Zealand from 1606 to 1890

by Alexander Sutherland

  The First Hotel in Victoria.

  It soon became apparent that the site selected would never prove suitable, and Collins sent Lieutenant Tuckey in search of a better place. That officer seems to have made a very inefficient search. He found no river, and no stream better than the little one on which the town of Frankston now stands. Here he was attacked by a great crowd of blacks, and had a conflict with them sufficiently severe to prevent his landing again. He was thus debarred from exploration by land, and the stormy weather prevented him from remaining long in the open bay. Tuckey therefore returned with a very gloomy report, and increased the despondency of the little community. Every one was dull and dispirited, except the two or three children who had been allowed to accompany their convict parents. Among these, the leader of all their childish sports, was a little lad named John Pascoe Fawkner, who was destined to be afterwards of note in the history of Port Phillip. Everybody grew dispirited under the heat, the want of fresh water, and the general wretchedness of the situation; and very soon all voices were unanimous in urging the Governor to remove. Collins then sent a boat, with letters, to Sydney, and Governor King gave him permission to cross over to Tasmania. He lost not a moment in doing so, and founded the settlement at the Derwent, to which reference has already been made.

  Before he left, there were four convicts who took advantage of the confusion to escape into the bush, hoping to make their way to Sydney. One returned, footsore and weary, just in time to be taken on board; the other three were not again seen. Two are believed to have perished of hunger, and thirty-two years passed away before the fate of the third was discovered.

  3. Western Port.—When Hume and Hovell returned to Sydney after their exploring expedition, Hovell insisted that the fine harbour he had seen was Western Port. He had really been at Geelong Harbour, but was all that distance astray in his reckoning. Induced by his report, the Government sent an expedition under Captain Wright to form a settlement at Western Port. Hovell went with him to give the benefit of his experience. They landed on Phillip Island; but the want of a stream of permanent water was a disadvantage, and soon after they crossed to the mainland on the eastern shore, where they founded a settlement, building wooden huts and one or two brick cottages. Hovell had now to confess that the place he had formerly seen was not Western Port, and he went off in search of the fine country he had previously seen, but came back disappointed. The settlement struggled onward for about a year, and was then withdrawn.

  It is not easy to explain in a few words why they abandoned their dwellings and the land they had begun to cultivate. It seems to have been due to a general discontent. However, there were private settlers in Tasmania who would have carried out the undertaking with much more energy. For in Tasmania the sheep had been multiplying at a great rate, while the amount of clear and grassy land in that island was very limited. One of the residents in Tasmania, named John Batman, who has been already mentioned, conceived the idea of forming an association among the Tasmanian sheep-owners, for the purpose of crossing Bass Strait and occupying with their flocks the splendid grassy lands which explorers had seen there.

  4. Batman.—John Batman was a native of Parramatta, but when he was about twenty-one years of age he had left his home to seek his fortune in Tasmania. There he had taken up land and had settled down to the life of a sheep-farmer in the country around Ben Lomond. But he was fond of a life of adventure, and found enough of excitement for a time in the troubled state of the colony. It was he who captured Brady, the leader of the bushrangers, and he became well known during the struggle with the natives on account of his success in dealing with them and in inducing them to surrender peaceably. But when all these troubles were over, and he had to settle down to the monotonous work of drafting and driving sheep, he found his land too rocky to support his flocks. Knowing that others in Tasmania were in the same difficulty, he and his friend Gellibrand, a lawyer in Hobart, in the year 1827 asked permission to occupy the grassy lands supposed to be round Western Port, but the Governor in Sydney refused. In 1834 some of them resolved to go without permission, and an association of thirteen members resolved to send sheep over to Port Phillip, which was now known to be the more suitable harbour.

  Before they sent the sheep, they resolved to send some one to explore and report. John Batman naturally volunteered, and the association chartered for him a little vessel, the Rebecca, in which, after nineteen days of sea-sickness and miserable tossing in the strait, he succeeded in entering Port Phillip on the 29th of May, 1835. Next morning he landed near Geelong and walked to the top of the Barrabool Hills, wading most of the way through grass knee-deep. On the following day he went in search of the aboriginals, and met a party of about twenty women, together with a number of children. With these he soon contrived to be on friendly terms; and after he had distributed among them looking-glasses, blankets, handkerchiefs, apples and sugar, he left them very well satisfied.

  5. The Yarra. A day or two later the Rebecca anchored in Hobson’s Bay, in front of the ti-tree scrub and the lonely shores where now the streets of Williamstown extend in all directions. Batman again started on foot to explore that river whose mouth lay there in front of him. With fourteen men, all well armed, he passed up the river banks; but, being on the left side, he naturally turned up that branch which is called the Saltwater, instead of the main stream. After two days of walking through open grassy lands, admirably suited for sheep, they reached the site of Sunbury. From a hill at that place they could see fires about twenty miles to the south-east; and, as they were anxious to meet the natives, they bent their steps in that direction till they overtook a native man, with his wife and three children. To his great satisfaction, he learnt that these people knew of his friendly meeting with the women in the Geelong district. They guided him to the banks of the Merri Creek, to the place where their whole tribe was encamped. He stayed with them all night, sleeping in a pretty grassy hollow beside the stream. In the morning he offered to buy a portion of their land, and gave them a large quantity of goods, consisting of scissors, knives, blankets, looking-glasses, and articles of this description. In return, they granted him all the land stretching from the Merri Creek to Geelong. Batman had the documents drawn up, and on the Northcote Hill, overlooking the grass-covered flats of Collingwood and the sombre forests of Carlton and Fitzroy, the natives affixed their marks to the deeds, by which Batman fancied he was legally put in possession of 600,000 acres. Trees were cut with notches, in order to fix the boundaries, and in the afternoon Batman took leave of his black friends. He had not gone far before he was stopped by a large swamp, and so slept for the night under the great gum trees which then spread their shade over the ground now covered by the populous streets of West Melbourne. In the morning he found his way round the swamp, and in trying to reach the Saltwater came upon a noble stream, which was afterwards called the Yarra. In the evening he reached his vessel in the bay. Next day he ascended the Yarra in a boat; and when he came to the Yarra Falls, he wrote in his diary, “This will be the place for a village,” unconscious that he was gazing upon the site of a great and busy city. Returning to Indented Head, near the heads of Port Phillip, he left three white men and his Sydney natives to cultivate the soil and retain possession of the land he supposed himself to have purchased. Then he set sail for Tasmania, where he and his associates began to prepare for transporting their households, their sheep and their cattle, to the new country.

  Edward Henty.

  6. The Henty Brothers.—But even earlier than this period a quiet settlement had been made in the western parts of Victoria. There, as early as 1828, sealers had dwelt at Portland Bay, had built their little cottages and formed their little gardens. But they were unauthorised, and could only be regarded by the British Government as intruders, having no legal right to the land they occupied. In 1834, however, there came settlers of another class—Edward, Stephen, and Frank Henty. Their father—a man of some wealth—had in 1828 emigrated with all his family to Western Austr
alia, carrying with him large quantities of fine stock. But the settlement at Swan River proving a failure, he had removed to Tasmania, where his six sons all settled. Very soon they found the pastoral lands of Tasmania too limited, and as Edward Henty had in one of his coasting voyages seen the sealers at Portland Bay and noticed how numerous the whales were in that bay, and how fine the grassy lands that lay within, he chartered a vessel, the Thistle, and crossed in her to settle at Portland Bay with servants, sheep, cattle, and horses.

  The land was all that had been anticipated, and soon Frank, and then Stephen, arrived, with more stock and more men to tend them. Houses and stores were put up, and fields were ploughed. Ere long other settlers followed, and in the course of five or six years all the district lying inland from Portland Bay was well settled and covered with sheep, while at Portland Bay itself so many whales were caught that there were not tanks enough to hold the oil, and much of it was wasted. The English Government after some delay agreed to sell land to the settlers, and before 1840 a thriving little town stood on the shores of Portland Bay.

  John Pascoe Fawkner.

  7. Fawkner.—John Pascoe Fawkner, who, as a boy, had landed at Sorrento in 1803, had grown up to manhood in Tasmania through stormy times, and had at length settled down as an innkeeper in Launceston; with that business, however, combining the editing and publishing of a small newspaper. For he was always a busy and active-minded worker, and had done a great deal to make up for the defective education of his earlier years. When Batman arrived in Launceston with the news of the fine pastoral country across the water, Fawkner became quite excited at the prospects that seemed possible over there. He accordingly began to agitate for the formation of another association, and five members joined him. At his expense, the schooner Enterprise was chartered and loaded with all things necessary for a small settlement. On the 27th July, 1835, he set sail from Launceston; but the weather was so rough that, after three days and two nights of inexpressible sickness, Fawkner found himself still in sight of the Tasmanian coast. He therefore asked to be put ashore, and left Captain Lancey to manage the trip as he thought best. The captain took the vessel over to Western Port, as had been originally arranged; but the land there was not nearly so good as they understood it to be in the Port Phillip district. So they sailed round and safely anchored in Hobson’s Bay, bringing with them horses and ploughs, grain, fruit trees, materials for a house, boats, provisions, and, indeed, everything that a small settlement could want. Getting out their boat, they entered upon the stream which they saw before them; but, unfortunately, they turned up the wrong arm, and, after rowing many miles, were forced to turn back, the water all the way being salt and unfit for drinking. For this reason they called this stream the Saltwater; but next morning they started again and tried the other branch. After pulling for about an hour and a half they reached a basin in the river whose beauty filled them with exultation and delight. A rocky ledge over which the river flowed kept the water above it fresh; the soil was rich, and covered with splendid grass, and they instantly came to the conclusion to settle in this favoured spot. Next day they towed the vessel up, and landed where the Custom House now is. At night they slept beside the falls, where the air was fragrant with the sweet scent of the wattle trees just bursting into bloom.

  They had not been on the river many days before Mr. Wedge—one of Batman’s party—in crossing the country from Indented Head to the Yarra, was astonished to see the masts of a vessel rising amid the gum trees. On reaching the river bank, what was his surprise to find, in that lonely spot, a vessel almost embedded in the woods, and the rocks and glades echoing to the sound of hammer and saw and the encouraging shouts of the ploughmen! Wedge informed Fawkner’s party that they were trespassers on land belonging to John Batman and Company. Captain Lancey, having heard the story of the purchase, declared that such a transaction could have no value. When Wedge was gone, the settlers laid their axes to the roots of the trees, and began to clear the land for extensive cultivation. A fortnight later Wedge brought round all his party from Indented Head in order to occupy what Batman had marked as the site for a village, and the two rival parties were encamped side by side where the western part of Collins Street now stands. A little later Fawkner arrived with further settlers and with a wooden house, which he soon erected by the banks of the Yarra, the first regularly built house of Melbourne. He placed it by the side of the densely wooded stream, which was afterwards turned into Elizabeth Street. Great crowds of black and white cockatoos raised their incessant clamour at the first strokes of the axe; but soon the hillside was clear, and man had taken permanent possession of the spot.

  8. William Buckley.—Meanwhile a circumstance had happened which favoured Batman’s party in no small degree. The men left at Indented Head were surprised one morning to see an extremely tall figure advancing towards them. His hair was thickly matted; his skin was brown, but not black, like that of the natives; he was almost naked, and he carried the ordinary arms of the aborigines. This was William Buckley, the only survivor of the three convicts who had escaped from Governor Collins’s expedition. He had dwelt for thirty-two years among the natives. During this long time he had experienced many strange adventures, but had not exercised the smallest influence for good upon the natives. He was content to sink at once to their level, and to lead the purely animal life they led. But when he heard that there was a party of whites on Indented Head, whom the Geelong tribes proposed to murder, he crossed to warn them of their danger. Batman’s party clothed him and treated him well, and for a time he acted as interpreter, smoothing over many of the difficulties that arose with the natives, and rendering the formation of the settlement much less difficult than it might have been

  9. Excitement in Tasmania.—The news taken over by Batman caused a commotion in Tasmania. Many settlers crossed in search of the new country, and, before a year had passed, nearly two hundred persons, with more than 15,000 sheep, had landed on the shores of Port Phillip. But they soon spread over a great extent of country—from Geelong to Sunbury. They were in the midst of numerous black tribes, who now, too late, began to perceive the nature of Batman’s visit, and commenced to seek revenge. Frequent attacks were made, in one of which a squatter and his servant were killed beside the Werribee. Their bodies lie buried in the Flagstaff Gardens.

  10. Governor Bourke.—These were not the only troubles of the settlers; for the Sydney Government declared that all purchases of land from ignorant natives were invalid, and Governor Bourke issued a proclamation, warning the people at Port Phillip against fixing their homes there, as the land did not legally belong to them.

  Still new settlers flocked over, and a township began to be formed on the banks of the Yarra. Batman’s association found that their claims to the land granted them by the natives would not be allowed; and, after some correspondence on the subject with the Home Government, they had to be content with 28,000 acres, as compensation for the money they had expended.

  Governor Latrobe.

  11. Lonsdale.—Towards the close of 1836 Governor Bourke found himself compelled to recognise the new settlement, and sent Captain Lonsdale to act as a magistrate; thirty soldiers accompanied him to maintain order and protect the settlers. Next year (1837) the Governor himself arrived at Port Phillip, where he found the settlers now numbering 500. He planned out the little town, giving names to its streets, and finally settling that it should be called Melbourne, after Lord Melbourne, who was then the Prime Minister of England.

  12. Latrobe.—in 1838 Geelong began to grow into a township, and the settlers spread west as far as Colac. Next year Mr. Latrobe was sent to take charge of the whole district of Port Phillip, under the title of Superintendent, but with almost all the powers of a Governor. The settlers held a public meeting, in an auction-room at Market Square, for the purpose of according a hearty welcome to their new Governor, whose kindliness and upright conduct soon made him a great favourite.

  A wattle-and-daub building was put up as a polic
e-office, on the site of the Western Markets, where it did duty for some time, until one night it fell; some say because it was undermined by a party of imprisoned natives; but others, because a bull belonging to Mr. Batman had rushed against it. A court-house was erected, and four policemen appointed. A post-office next followed, and, one by one, the various institutions of a civilised community arose in miniature form. Numerous ships began to enter the bay, and a lucrative trade sprang up with Tasmania. In 1838 the first newspaper appeared. It was due to the enterprise of Fawkner. Every Monday morning sheets containing four pages of writing were distributed to the subscribers, under the title of the Advertiser. After nine issues of this kind had been published, a parcel of old refuse type was sent over from Tasmania; and a young man being found in the town who had, in his boyhood, spent a few months in a printing office, he was pressed into the service, and thenceforward the Advertiser appeared in a printed form—the pioneer of the press of Victoria. Mr. Batman had fixed his residence not far from the place now occupied by the Spencer Street Railway Station. Here, in the year 1839, he was seized with a violent cold; and, after being carefully nursed by one of his daughters, died without seeing more than the beginning of that settlement he had laboured so hard to found. Mr. Fawkner lived to an advanced age, and saw the city—whose first house he had built—become a vast metropolis.

  Collins Street, Melbourne, in 1840.

  (Compare with page 177.)

  The year 1839 brought further increase to the population; and before the beginning of 1840 there were 3,000 persons, with 500 houses and 70 shops, in Melbourne. In 1841, within five years of its foundation, it contained 11,000 persons and 1,500 houses.

  CHAPTER IX.