HISTORICAL SKETCH OF VICTORIA   

Atlas Page 27
By James Smith

THE DISCOVERY OF PORT PHILLIP.

So far as we have any authentic information to guide us, we are bound to conclude that the coast-line, of what is now the colony of Victoria was first sighted by Captain Cook as he was beating-up from New Zealand towards the mysterious continent spoken of by earlier navigators as the Great Terra Australis. It was on the morning of Thursday, the 19th of April, 1770, that his first-lieutenant made out a promontory supposed to be that now known as Cape Everard, but which then received the name of Point Hicks, in honour of the discoverer. Gabo Island and Cape Howe were noted on the evening of the same day. Twenty-seven years elapsed before anything more was seen or heard of the southern trend of the huge island, which was believed to run down below the forty-third parallel. Then came the expedition of the gallant adventurer, George Bass, fully described in an earlier chapter of this work. He entered the inlet of Western Port on the 4th of January, 1798; but after a stay of thirteen days there was compelled by stress of circumstances to retrace his course to Port Jackson. In a subsequent voyage he doubled Cape Grim, thus conclusively proving that Tasmania was an island, and proving also the existence of the strait which bears his name. But to Lieutenant Grant, of the brig "Lady Nelson," belongs the honour of having discovered and defined the whole of the coast line of Victoria, from Cape Bridgewater to Cape Schank, and of having circumnavigated by way of Bass’ Strait the south-east of Australia, from the first-named cape to Port Jackson.

The annals of maritime adventure narrate few more gallant and successful exploits than that of the commander of the "Lady Nelson." She was a small brig, fitted with sliding keels, the recent invention of a Captain John Schank, a friend of Grant’s, whose name has been commemorated in connection with a headland to the eastward of Port Phillip Heads. The vessel was manned by a crew of twelve men, and provisioned for a voyage of nine months. Among seafaring folk on the river Thames she had obtained the nickname of "His Majesty’s tinder box," and when she had taken her stores on board and shipped her four brass guns and ammunition, her gunwale was only two feet nine inches above the water line. That such a craft would ever reach the other end of the globe was regarded by many people as a chimerical expectation, and these apprehensions communicated themselves to the crew, so that Lieutenant Grant had considerable difficulty in keeping them together. He had been commissioned by the Duke of Portland, then First Lord of the Admiralty, to survey the south and south-west coast of. Australia, to examine the shores of Van Diemen’s Land, to search for and determine the course of any rivers of importance that might exist, to report upon the soil, products and indigenous inhabitants of these regions, and to take possession, in the King’s name, of such territory as it might be desirable to acquire in the interests of Great Britain. Grant sailed from Portsmouth on the 17th of March, 1800 put in at the Cape of Good Hope on the 8th of July, and did not depart thence until the 7th of October. At eight o’clock on the morning of the 3rd of December land loomed through the hot haze right ahead of the little craft, and a bold promontory, with a reef of rocks at its base, and two mountains behind it, the one peaked and the other table-topped, revealed themselves. Upon the headland he bestowed the name of Cape Northumberland, and the mountains he designated Gambier and Schank respectively. Shifting his course somewhat to the southward, Grant successively sighted and named Capes Banks, Bridgewater, Nelson and Solicitor, also Lawrence Island and Lady Julian’s Island, both of them at the entrance of that half-protected bight which he called Portland Bay. As he coasted along, Grant was much struck by the beauty of the scenery, which he compared to that of Devonshire and the Isle of Wight, and he attempted to land a little to the westward of Apollo Bay, but failed to do so on account of the heavy surf. Cape Otway he had previously passed and named, and then, steering a point or two to the south of east, and disregarding the deep indentation of the coast to the northward, he sighted and named Cape Liptrap, and on the 10th of December made an ineffectual effort to land on an island off Wilson’s Promontory. Having sailed through the Strait, Grant reached Sydney on the 16th of that month. Thus the "Lady Nelson" was the first vessel to go "sounding on, a dim and perilous way," along a route which is now traversed by a fleet of ocean and coasting steamers and merchantmen, laden with the produce of all nations; and compared with the magnitude and importance of her commander’s achievements, the exploit of Jason and his companions in the "Argos" fades into insignificance.

On the 8th of March, 1801, the "Lady Nelson" sailed from Port Jackson on a second exploring expedition, passing Wilson’s Promontory on the 20th of that month. Grant saw and named Cape Paterson, entered Western Port, cleared and planted a garden upon Churchill’s Island, and after surveying twenty miles of the coast between the inlet and Wilson’s Promontory, returned to Sydney on the 14th of May, 1801. Grant left Sydney for England, and was succeeded in the command of the "Lady Nelson " by his chief officer, John Murray, who in the following December reaped the first Victorian harvest from the grain which had been sown by his predecessor. The little brig quitted Port Jackson on the 12th of November, 1801, and, after visiting Western Port, left there on the 5th of January, 1802, intending to explore the coast which trended to the north-westward. Beaten back by baffling winds, and unable to enter what appeared to be the inlet to an estuary, Murray sent round his first mate, Bower, with five seamen in a launch to examine the inlet. Rounding the promontory, which the lieutenant designated Point Nepean, the launch was carried through the rip on the 1st of February, and the adventurous crew saw a great inland sea expand before them, remaining in it until the fourth of the same month, when they returned to the "Lady Nelson " to report the important discovery they had made. Eleven days later the brig herself sailed through the Heads:

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
They were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.

The natives on shore must have looked with mingled feelings of wonder and consternation on that strange apparition, shaped like a fish, but winged like a bird, which skimmed over the surface of the water, and contained within its capacious body a number of men with white skins and curious garments —men who were armed with long tubes which vomited fire and thunder, and could inflict sudden death upon creatures far beyond the reach of the black man’s spear. Their dismay would have been still greater if they could have foreseen that the vision which met their gaze portended the ultimate extinction of their own race.

Lieutenant Murray was charmed with the landscape scenery of the "noble harbour" he had entered, and compares it to that of Greenwich Park and Blackheath, "the hills and valleys rising and falling with inexpressible elegance." On landing, he saw numerous native huts, and several hundred acres of land which had recently been cleared by fire. Upon an island in the west channel, much affected by aquatic birds, he bestowed the name of Swan Island; and to a lofty eminence on the eastern shores of the bay he gave the title of Arthur’s Seat, from its resemblance to the massive hill which overlooks Edinburgh. Next day, the 16th, he saw some natives, with whom he and his party entered into friendly conference; but, in spite of the gifts made to them, and the conciliatory spirit exhibited by the newcomers, the blacks endeavoured on the day following to spear the white men, and the latter were obliged to discharge their guns at their assailants. Three weeks were spent in exploring the narrow peninsula off which the "Lady Nelson" was moored, and on the 9th of March Lieutenant Murray took formal possession of the country in the King’s name, hoisting a flag on Point Patterson and discharging three volleys of small arms and artillery. On the 12th the vessel ran through the rip with the ebb of the tide, and regained the harbour of Port Jackson on the 24th. The last we hear of this staunch little vessel is that about the month of January, 1825, while trading in Torres Straits she fell into the hands of the Malays, who massacred her crew and probably destroyed her. Certain it is she was never heard of afterwards.

When Captain Flinders, after having skirted the south-west coast of Victoria from Cape Bridgewater to Cape Otway, as described in a previous chapter, sailed through the Heads into Port Phillip on the 27th of April, 1802, he was under the impression that it must be Western Port. He soon discovered his mistake, and found to his great surprise that the sheet of water was so extensive as to leave its northern boundaries indiscernible, even from a hill which he ascended for the purpose of ascertaining them. He visited and named Indented Head, and crossing the western arm of the bay, made for the isolated range which bears the native name of Wurdi Youang, conferring on its highest eminence, which he climbed, the title of Station Peak. He was much struck with the fine grazing capabilities of the country, but failed to discover any runs of fresh water, although there were three within a few miles of Station Peak.

COLLINS AT SORRENTO.

CAPTAIN FLINDERS quitted Port Phillip for Port Jackson on the 3rd of May, and his report to Governor King was of such a favourable character that that functionary warmly urged upon the Duke of Portland the advantage and necessity of authorising the formation of a settlement at Port Phillip, partly on account of the fertility of the soil and the amenity of the climate, and partly to forestall the French, who contemplated a similar step —Captain Baudin, of "Le Geographie," having explored portions of the Australian coast with that object in view. Before Governor King could receive a reply from the Home authorities, he commissioned Surveyor-General Grimes and Lieutenant Charles Robbins to walk round the harbour discovered by Lieutenant Murray and to report upon it. This was in December, 1802. In fulfilment of the duty thus imposed upon them, Mr. Grimes, as the leader of the expedition, discovered the river Yarra on the 30th of January, 1803, and ascended it as far as Dight’s Falls. The course of the Saltwater River was also traced from its outfall back to Keilor, but although Corio Bay was carefully circumambulated, the party hugged its margin too closely to allow of their discovering either the Barwon or the Moorabool. Strange to say, the report of the Surveyor-General was altogether condemnatory of the country as a place of settlement. The British Government, however, had meanwhile arrived at a different conclusion, and had issued instructions, eight days after the discovery of the Yarra, to Lieutenant-Governor Collins to proceed to Port Phillip, or any part of the southern coast of New South Wales or the islands adjacent, and establish a settlement there. The selection of that officer was unfortunate, for he appears to have come out to Australia with a foregone conclusion that his mission would prove an unsuccessful one. Collins sailed from England in the "Calcutta," accompanied by the "Ocean" as a store ship, on the 24th of April, 1803, having on board two hundred and ninety-nine male convicts, sixteen married women, a few settlers, and fifty men and petty officers belonging to the Royal Marines. The "Calcutta" entered Port Phillip Heads on the 18th of October following, and found that the "Ocean" had preceded her. A landing was effected at what is now Sorrento, and Lieutenant Tuckey, with two assistants, was dispatched in the "Calcutta’s" launch to survey the harbour, which occupied the party nine days. "The disadvantage of Port Phillip," and the unsuitability of the "bay itself, when viewed in a commercial light," for the purposes of a colonial establishment, were strongly dwelt upon by Collins in his despatches to the Admiralty, and he ventured to predict that the harbour would never be "resorted to by speculative men." Influenced by his representations, Lord Hobart sent him ‘instructions to break up the settlement and proceed to the river Derwent, in Van Diemen’s Land. These were cheerfully obeyed, and on the 27th of January, 1804, Collins quitted Port Phillip in the "Ocean." During the fifteen weeks which the expedition had spent on shore there had been one birth, one marriage, and twenty-one deaths. The first white child born in Victoria saw the light on the 25th of November, 1803, and received the name of William James Hobart Thorne. The first wedding took place on the 28th of that month the contracting parties being Richard Garratt, a convict, and Hannah Harvey, a free woman; and the first death was that of John Skilhorne, a settler, on the 10th of October.

For twenty years the interior of Victoria remained untrodden by the foot of the white man, and the first to penetrate the virgin territory were Hamilton Hume, who was a native of New South Wales, and Captain Hovell. The former had previously distinguished himself as a good bush traveller —energetic, resolute and intrepid; and had been consulted by Sir Thomas Brisbane, in Sydney, on the subject of an overland expedition to the south coast of New South Wales. With his approbation, a party of eight men was organised for that purpose by Mr. Hume, and a start was made on the 3rd of October, 1824. Taking a south-westerly direction, the explorers crossed the Murray on the 17th of November, and on the 24th discovered and named the Ovens River, after Major Ovens, who had been private secretary to Sir Thomas Brisbane; struck the head waters of the Goulburn on the 3rd of December; discovered King Parrot Creek on the 7th; and reached the shores of Corio Bay, near the site of the present city of Geelong, on the 17th of that month. They commenced their homeward journey on the day following, and arrived in safety at their starting-point, near Lake George, on the 18th of January, 1825.

As there was some danger of the French founding a settlement in Western Port, an expedition was despatched thither from Sydney by Governor Darling, in December, 1826, under the command of Captain P. R. Wetherall, of H.M. Ship "Fly," who was accompanied by Captain Wright, of the brig "Dragon." Their reports were not unfavourable on the whole, but Captain Wright declared the situation to be unsuited for a penal settlement, and the expedition was recalled.

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