HISTORICAL SKETCH OF VICTORIA   

Atlas Page 29
By James Smith

JOHN PASCOE FAWKNER.

WHile Batman was negotiating with the tribal chiefs for the acquisition of six hundred thousand acres of land on the northern and western shores of Port Phillip, another Launceston man, John Pascoe Fawkner, was organising an expedition for the colonisation of the same territory. It consisted of Captain Lancey, George Evans, Robert Hay Marr, W. Jackson, a blacksmith named James, and a plough man named Wyse. Fawkner had been on board the "Calcutta," when Collins had made his abortive effort at a settlement, and therefore knew some thing of the harbour. He was an energetic little man, "whose life in low estate began"; who had fought his way up, and who had been called upon to breast the blows of circumstance, and grapple with his evil star."

Self-educated, self-reliant, and self-assertive, he possessed some excellent qualities for a pioneer; and he lived to witness the obscure settlement he may claim to have founded on the banks of the Yarra, grow and ripen into a great city. He had chartered for his expedition the "Enterprise," a fifty-ton schooner, trading from the port of Launceston. She dropped down the Tamar in the middle of July, 1835, but was detained by foul weather from putting to sea until the 4th of August. Fawkner was prevented by illness from accompanying the expedition, the command of which devolved upon Captain Lancey. After calling at Western Port, the vessel entered the heads on the 16th of August, and carefully feeling her way up, the bay, she reached the mouth of the Yarra, and a boat was sent to explore that stream. It proceeded as far as the site of Melbourne and having found a suitable landing-place, where the river widened into a spacious pool below a ledge of rocks, which barred further progress at that spot, the "Enterprise" sailed up the, Yarra on the 29th, but, mistaking the Saltwater River for the main channel, pursued a wrong course until the error was discovered and retrieved. On the day following, the vessel was moored on the north bank of the stream, immediately opposite the present customs-house in Flinders Street. It was in the early spring, and the scene which presented itself to the eyes of the newcomers was a charming one. The land rose in a series of gentle undulations to the northward of the river, and was as lightly timbered as the pleasure grounds of a country mansion in England. Freshened by the winter rains, the green sward was vividly verdant; and in the far distance, ranges of purple mountains lifted their massive outlines to the north and east against the stainless azure of the sky. The banks of the Yarra were fringed with feathery scrub, :and the stream itself, as yet untainted by the sewage of a populous city, glided downward to the sea in its pristine freshness and purity. It was evidently permanent, and therefore the future settlement was assured of an abundant supply of one of its prime necessities. The "Enterprise" landed its cargo, consisting of horses and ploughs, pigs, dogs, farming implements, household furniture, and blacksmith’s materials; tents were pitched; five acres of land were broken up and planted with corn, fruit trees and garden seeds; and the vessel was sent back to Launceston for sheep and cattle.

But, in the meantime, Batman’s party —encamped at Indented Head —had seen the "Enterprise" as she cautiously crept up the bay, and they hastened to warn the intruders off the soil, which had been conveyed to the association. The newcomers disputed the title of their predecessors, and the latter, forsaking Indented Head, transferred their camp to an eminence afterwards known as Batman’s Hill, overlooking the spot of which Fawkner’s party had taken possession. The hill itself has long since been levelled in order to meet the requirements of the great railway station which now covers its site. Fawkner came over from Launceston on the 10th of October, 1835, and shifted his quarters to the south side of the river, where the writer remembers to have seen the furrows of a cornfield upon a low-lying plot of ground at present occupied by manufactories and warehouses. Five hundred sheep and fifty head of cattle arrived from Launceston in the following month, and Mr. John Aitken, who had chartered the schooner "Endeavour" at that port, brought with him a number of sheep, and proceeding in the direction of Mount Macedon, where a gap, which he discovered, perpetuates his name, he became the pioneer of the pastoral industry in that part of Victoria.

In a map delineating Port Phillip Bay, which seems to have accompanied Batman’s letter to Governor Arthur immediately after the transaction of the former with the native chiefs, the applicant had marked out a large block of land embracing the whole of the area now covered by South Melbourne, Port Melbourne, and Fishermen’s Bend, as a reserve for a township and other purposes, while the marshy ground, which afterwards came to be known as Batman’s Swamp, he proposed to set apart as a public common. But when the legality of the purchase of territory from the blacks was disallowed by the authorities in Van Diemen’s Land and Westminster, and the whole country was free for occupation, Fawkner, with superior judgement and foresight, chose the rising ground on the north side of the river as the more eligible site for the rudiments of a township.

Batman, who had returned to Port Phillip from Launceston at the end of April, I836 —bringing with him his wife and family, Mr. James Simpson, who married his daughter, and the Rev. James Orton, a Wesleyan minister —fixed his residence on the hill which afterwards bore his name, opened a store there, and pastured a flock on the grassy slopes stretching thence to the hollow now known as Elizabeth Street, his shepherd’s hut being erected on the site now occupied by St. James’ Cathedral. Soon afterwards Mr. James Sutherland arrived from Van Diemen’s Land in the "Francis Freeling " with eight hundred sheep, and formed a station in the neighbourhood of Geelong.

By the middle of June the settlement on the banks of the Yarra had assumed sufficient cohesion and importance to justify its residents in taking some steps for organising a form of government or for establishing a tribunal empowered to settle any disputes which might arise among themselves. Accordingly a public meeting was held, attended by thirty-one persons, including Fawkner, Batman, and Wedge; and two resolutions were passed —one appointing Mr. James Simpson to arbitrate between disputants on all questions excepting those relating to land, with power to name two assistants if he thought proper; and the other directing that a petition should be prepared, praying Governor Bourke to appoint a resident magistrate at Port Phillip. This request was complied with, and when Mr. George Stewart, who had been designated to fill that office temporarily, arrived from Sydney, he found that one hundred and seventy-seven persons from Van Diemen’s Land had settled in the district, and were possessed of live stock and other property to the value of one hundred and ten thousand pounds. During the remainder of the year 1836 the settlement continued to receive numerous accessions to its population and large numbers of sheep and cattle; and the first funeral —that of a child named Goodman —took place on Flagstaff Hill.

CAPTAIN LONSDALE.

ON the 29th of September the "Rattlesnake," Captain Hobson, arrived in the bay, bringing Captain Lonsdale, who was afterwards to act as resident magistrate. The harbour was thoroughly surveyed by the commander of the "Rattlesnake," and it received his name in consequence; one of his lieutenants gallantly bestowing upon Mounts Martha and Eliza the epithets they bear in honour of Mrs. Lonsdale and Mrs. Batman respectively. A survey was soon afterwards made by Mr. Russell and his assistants of the site of the present city of Melbourne, a spot which was sometimes spoken of as Bearbrass, and sometimes as Dutergalla, its native name. When a census was taken on the 8th of November, 1836, the population of Port Phillip was found to number one hundred and eighty-six males and thirty-eight females; while the, aborigines within a circuit of thirty miles round the settlement were ascertained to consist of seven hundred men, women and children. They composed three tribes —the Wawoorongs, Boonoorongs, and Watourongs. It was with the last-named tribe that Buckley had become affiliated.

The year 1836 was memorable in other respects. Not only had the pioneers of settlement signified their desire for orderly rule and self-government, but they had taken steps to secure for themselves the ministrations of religion, and divine service was celebrated for the first time under a group of trees upon the slope of Batman’s Hill, in the month of April, by the Wesleyan minister previously referred to. Nor were the spiritual wants of the natives overlooked, for Mr. George Langhorne was entrusted with the charge of a missionary station which was established on the site of the present Botanical Gardens, and Mr. John Thomas Smith, subsequently celebrated as the "Australian Whittington," acted as his assistant. In Mr. Arden’s pamphlet some authentic particulars are given of the appearance of the little township at this date: —"In the six months which had elapsed since the close of the preceding year (1835), the settlement had assumed the appearance of a village, several buildings, although of rude construction, having been erected; of these many had their plot of ground attached. A blacksmith’s forge was at work; soil fit for the manufacture of bricks had been discovered and experimentally tried, and upwards of fifty acres of rich light black loam had been brought into general cultivation." A public-house erected and occupied by Fawkner in Collins Street west, near the corner of what is now Market Street, may be regarded as the core and centre of the infant settlement, which spread thence in an easterly direction. The cottages, constructed for the most part of wattle-and-dab, were few and far between, the thoroughfares were mere bush tracks, and the rising ground eastward of Swanston Street was a sylvan wilderness. During the rainy season, a turbulent creek flowed down the valley, separating the two divisions of the present city, and the blacks came in and camped and held corroborrees upon sites now occupied by some of the most important buildings in Melbourne.

In March, 1837, the first flock of sheep brought overland from New South Wales reached the shores of Port Phillip, and it may be interesting to note that the first sheep-shearing commenced on the 9th of November, 1836, opposite the present racecourse. On the 4th of March the settlement received a visit from Sir Richard Bourke, who occupied an encampment at the westerly extremity of the street which bears his name. Not long after his arrival he experienced a somewhat strong shock of earthquake, which occasioned some misgivings in his mind as to the expediency of laying out a town in such a locality. But as the shock was not repeated, Mr. Hoddle was instructed to proceed with the survey. By some happy inspiration he gave a width of ninety-nine feet to the principal streets, but in deference to the wishes of Sir Richard Bourke, he made provision for some narrow lanes to be called mews, intending them as entrances to the gardens in the rear of the houses in the main streets. Upon the town itself was bestowed the name of the English premier of the day; the thoroughfare running east and west receiving their titles in honour of Captain Flinders, Lieutenant-Governor Collins, Sir Richard Bourke and Captain Lonsdale. That the principal street in the city should have been called after an officer by whom the settlement of Port Phillip was so emphatically condemned is another example of the irony of fate. Williamstown and Geelong were also laid out, the former bearing the name of the reigning sovereign, while the latter is a corruption of the native name Jillong. On the 30th of April the first child born in the settlement was baptized by the name of John Melbourne Gilbert; and on the 1st of June the first land sale held in Melbourne took place, Mr. Robert Hoddle, the surveyor in charge of the district, performing the duties of auctioneer. The average price obtained was thirty-five pounds the half-acre allotment; but five months later, when a second land sale was held, the price averaged forty-two pounds for the same area. During his stay in the infant settlement Sir Richard Bourke made two excursions into the interior of the country, visiting Mount Macedon and Geelong, bestowing upon the latter the name by which the locality had previously been known among the natives. In the same year the first steamer, the "James Watt," entered Hobson’s Bay from Sydney; and on the 30th of December an overland mail was established between that city and Melbourne; an intrepid stock-rider, named John Bourke, undertaking to carry it on horseback from Yass to Port Phillip. Some tragic incidents darkened the annals of 1836. Two of the first settlers, Messrs. Gellibrand and Hesse, endeavoured to explore the Cape Otway ranges and were never again heard of; but long afterwards a skeleton was discovered which was identified as that of Mr. Gellibrand from the gold stopping of one of the teeth in the skull. A bushranger named Cummerford confessed to having, in concert with two accomplices, murdered six bushrangers, while they were asleep, on the track between Melbourne and Portland Bay. A police sergeant, two constables and a soldier were directed to accompany him to the scene of the crime for the purpose of verifying his statements. On arriving there, they found nearly two bushels of calcined bones, besides various relics of the murdered men. On their way homeward one of the constables and the soldier turned back for some tea which had been left behind, and, whilst the sergeant was making a fire, Cummerford seized his musket, and shooting the remaining constable dead, made his escape into the bush, where he baffled the ineffectual pursuit of the sergeant. Two days afterwards, however, he was captured while attempting to steal a horse, and met with his just punishment at the hands of the law.

In the early part of 1838, Messrs. Joseph Hawdon and Charles Bonney, with a party of nine men, started on an overland expedition with cattle from a station on the Murray for Adelaide, discovering and naming en route Lakes Victoria and Bonney, arid after a journey of upwards of three months, reaching their destination on the 30th of April. At the beginning of the year, Fawkner had commenced the issue of a weekly newspaper in manuscript, entitled the Melbourne Advertiser, which the frequenters of the hotel were privileged to read; and in the following March the arrival of a hand-press and some type from Launceston enabled him to produce a printed journal. This was styled the Melbourne Daily News and Port Phillip Patriot, and was edited for a time by a brother of Mr. Boucicault, the dramatist. A rival sprang up six months later in the Port Phillip Gazette, edited by Mr. Arden.

Life was still very insecure in the pastoral districts of the settlement, aid on the 11th of April, 1838, as a party of fifteen men, in charge of travelling stock, were crossing the country from the Broken River to Goulburn they were attacked in overwhelming numbers by the natives, and eight of the Europeans were killed by the spears of their assailants and most of the others wounded.

Two branches of Sydney banks were established in Melbourne; the Port Phillip Bank was likewise instituted; the first post-office was opened in a small brick building somewhat to the westward of what is now Temple Court; a mail cart began to travel between Melbourne and Geelong; the aborigines were placed under the protection of Government officers; the first Roman Catholic clergyman and the first Presbyterian minister arrived in Melbourne; Mr. Peter Snodgrass was appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Port Phillip district, and the price was raised from five to twelve shillings an acre; a general fast was observed on account of a prolonged drought; the Melbourne Club was instituted; the barque "Hope" arrived from Sydney bringing about two hundred immigrants, and Captain Lonsdale on the 1st of January, 1839, began to exercise the functions of police magistrate. By this time the incoherent settlement had assumed the character of a definite organism, and was already nearly ripe for a. corporate existence.

GOVERNOR LATROBE.

ON the 4th of February, 1839, Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for the Colonies, saw fit to appoint Mr. Charles Joseph Latrobe Superintendent of the district of Port Phillip, an office carrying with it the authority and functions of a lieutenant-governor. Mr. Latrobe was the son of a Moravian minister, and had acquired the reputation of being an amiable man of studious habits and philanthropic principles, and it seems to have been considered that, having previously identified himself with the cause of negro emancipation in the West Indies, he was eminently well calculated to look after the temporal and spiritual interests of the aborigines in the south-east of Australia. He arrived with his family in the "Pyrenees" on the 2nd of October, 1839, and shortly after wards erected on a gentle eminence eastward of the city, upon which he bestowed the name of Jolimont, a wooden house he had brought with him from England. In later years, when a more suitable residence was provided for him, Jolimont was tenanted by the Protestant bishop of Melbourne. The pleasure grounds surrounding the house have been since subdivided, and are now covered by a populous suburb.

Captain Lonsdale was appointed secretary to Mr. Latrobe, and also sub-treasurer at Melbourne, and it was considered necessary for the more effectual administration of justice to station a resident judge at Port Phillip. Mr. Justice Wills was selected for that purpose, and the choice proved to be an unfortunate one, for he was afterwards removed on account of infirmities of temper exhibited on the bench. By the end of the year 1840, Governor Gipps was enabled to report to the Colonial Office that villages had been laid out along the road from Sydney to Melbourne, that police stations had been formed, and that the route between the two places was as safe and as easily traversed as any other in New South Wales. The large and fertile province of Gippsland was discovered and partially explored by Angus McMillan, who started on the 11th of January, 1840, from a station near the Snowy Mountains, accompanied by a stock rider and a native, and penetrated to within sixty miles of Wilson’s Promontory. On his return he met Count Strzlecki, who was setting out on a similar expedition. That gentleman ascended the Murray to its sources in the Australian Alps, discovered and named Mount Kosciusko, travelled thence in a south-westerly direction to Mount Tambo and the Omeo district; crossed the great Dividing Range, and heading for Western Port, passed over and named eight large rivers; was compelled to abandon his horses, which were exhausted, and after undergoing the severest hardships and privations, succeeded in opening up a magnificent country covering an area of five thousand six hundred square miles, with two thousand square miles of coast range and two hundred and fifty miles of sea-board, rich in natural resources, remarkable for its picturesqueness and fertility, and capable of supporting a population of several millions. It only remains to add —by way of completing the record of Victorian exploration —that in 1854 Dr. Baron F. von Mueller supplemented the important discoveries to the northward of the Great Dividing Range, by the ascent of Mount Wellington, by exploring the sources of the Mitta Mitta, and by scaling the two highest peaks of the Bogong Range, which he named Mounts Hotham and Latrobe respectively.

By an Act of the Imperial Parliament, passed in 1842, the inhabitants of Port Phillip were empowered to send six representatives to the Legislative Council of New South Wales, and, in the same year, municipal government was bestowed upon Melbourne. Mr. Henry Condell was the first mayor of the town, and he was also chosen to represent it in Sydney, while Mr. C. H. Ebden and Dr. Alexander Thomson, settlers in Port Phillip, the Rev. Dr. Lang, Dr. (now Sir Charles) Nicholson, and Mr. Thomas Walker, all then of Sydney, were elected by the voters outside the metropolis of the district. Some time previously, an agitation had arisen among the people of Port Phillip for separation from New South Wales, and expression was given to this feeling by Dr. Lang, who moved a resolution affirming its necessity in the Legislative Council on the 20th of August, 1844. It was negatived, however, by more than three to one, and the debate upon it was rendered somewhat remarkable by a speech from the present Lord Sherbrooke, in which he declared his belief that the time would come when the mother country would "knit herself and her colonies into one mighty confederacy, girdling the earth in its whole circumference, and confident against the world in art and arms." Sedulously bent upon attaining separation, the electors of Melbourne, having occasion soon afterwards to choose a fresh representative, selected Earl Grey, the Secretary for the Colonies and this argumentum ad absurdum probably contributed to bring about the desired object. By way of preparation for it, her Majesty allowed the settlement to substitute her own name for that of Port Phillip, and on the 5th of August, 1850, an Imperial enactment erected the district into a separate colony, Mr. Latrobe being appointed its first Governor.

During his term of office two events occurred which rendered the period memorable in the history of the colony. The first was a calamity which created widespread consternation and suffering, while the second filled the whole civilised world with magnified reports of its actual marvels. The year 1850 had been one of exceptional heat and drought. Pastures had withered; creeks had become fissured clay-pans; water-holes had disappeared; sheep and cattle had perished in great numbers, and the sun-burnt plains were strewn with their bleached skeletons; the very leaves upon the trees crackled in the heat, and appeared to be as inflammable as tinder. As the summer advanced, the temperature became torrid, and on the morning of the 6th of February, 1851, the air which blew down from the north resembled the breath of a furnace. A fierce wind arose, gathering strength and velocity from hour to hour, until about noon it blew with the violence of a tornado. By some inexplicable means it wrapped the whole country in a sheet of flame —fierce, awful, and irresistible. Men, women and children, sheep and cattle, birds and snakes, fled before the fire in a common panic. The air was darkened by volumes of smoke, relieved by showers of sparks; the forests were ablaze, and, on the ranges, the conflagration transformed their wooded slopes into appalling masses of incandescent columns and arches. Farm houses, fences, crops, orchards, gardens, haystacks, bridges, wool-sheds, were swept away by the impetuous on-rush of the flames, which left behind them nothing but a charred heap of ruins, and a scene of pitiable desolation. The human fugitives fled to water, wherever it could be found, and stood in it, breathing with difficulty the suffocating atmosphere, and listening with awe to the roar of the elements and the cries of the affrighted animals. Many lives were lost, and the value of the property and live stock destroyed on "Black Thursday " can only be vaguely conjectured. Late in the evening a strong sea-breeze began to blow, driving back the heavy pall of smoke that had deepened the darkness of the night, and the next day dawned upon blackened homesteads, smouldering forests, charred carcasses of sheep, oxen, horses, poultry and wild animals, and the face of the country presented such an aspect of ruin and devastation as could never be effaced from the recollection of those who had witnessed and survived the calamity.

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