HISTORICAL SKETCH OF VICTORIA   

Atlas Page 28
By James Smith

THE FIRST SETTLEMENT-THE HENTYS.

PASSING over Captain Sturt’s exploration of the Murray, which belongs to the history of geographical discovery in Australia generally, we come to the first permanent settlement in Victoria by a little colony of Englishmen, who had previously tested and been disappointed with the capabilities of Western Australia and Van Diemen’s Land. These were the brothers Henty —Edward, Stephen, Frank and John —two of whom, Edward and Stephen, landed in Portland Bay with farm servants, live stock, agricultural implements and stores, on the 19th of November, 1834, and became, by means of a flock of merino sheep they had brought with them from England, the pioneers of the great pastoral industry of the colony, just as, at a later period, they, were foremost in commercial enterprise.

The head of the family, Mr. Thomas Henty, who had been a banker and landed proprietor in Sussex, came out to join his sons at Launceston, in Van Diemen’s Land, after they had relinquished their project of settling in Western Australia, and he memorialised the Secretary of State for the Colonies for permission to purchase two thousand five hundred acres of land, at five shillings an acre, between the parallels of 135° and 145° of east longitude, on the south coast of Victoria; offering at the same time to relinquish his title to eighty thousand acres of land on the Swan River. But the application was refused; and we learn from a subsequent memorial to the Governor of New South Wales, in 1840, that the Hentys had erected two considerable houses at Portland Bay, one of them containing twelve rooms, and two other substantial habitations at Merino Downs; and had expended altogether between eight and ten thousand pounds in the construction of barns, stores, stabling, workshops, a dairy, and other permanent improvements.

By a remarkable coincidence the scene of this settlement was the precise point of the coast struck by Major Mitchell, afterwards Sir Thomas, on his memorable journey overland from the Murray to the sea. That intrepid explorer, after having spent three months in examining the river systems of what are now known as the Riverina and the Darling, districts, turned southward on the 20th of June, 1835, at the junction of the Loddon with the Murray. Ascending the banks of the former for three days, he then lost it, and, bending his course to the westward, he crossed the Avoca and the Wimmera, sighted the Grampians, and climbed to the summit of Mount William, overlooking thence a lovely panorama, combining such elements of grandeur, beauty, and extent, such an interchange of solemn forests and far-stretching pastures, of undulating downs and green valleys, of gleaming lakes and refreshing watercourses, as more than confirmed all the favourable impressions he had previously received from the country he had passed through, and justified him, as he conceived, in denominating this part of the continent Australia Felix. Looking southward, he saw few obstructions to the prosecution of his journey, and so he set his face in the direction of the sea. Passing Mount Arapiles, Mitchell reached a river bearing the native name of Nargula, on the 31st Of July, and called it Glenelg, after the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He subsequently discovered the beautiful valley of the Wannon, lying to the eastward of the Glenelg and on the 20th of August Mitchell and his party came in sight of the sea, and found to their immense astonishment a "considerable farming establishment belonging to the Messrs. Henty," from whom the travellers met with a hospitable reception. We need not follow the energetic explorer on his homeward way. Enough to say that he varied his route, crossing a gap in the Australian Pyrenees, and, skirting the Great Dividing Range, he ascended Mount Macedon, in order that he might obtain a view of Port Phillip, passed over the site of the present town of Castlemaine, and reached the River Murray on the 17th of October.

Speaking of the view from the summit of the mountain upon which he bestowed the name it bears, Major Mitchell says, "I could trace no signs of life about this harbour (i.e., Port Phillip). No stockyards, cattle, nor even smoke, although at the highest northern point of the bay I saw a mass of white objects, which might have been either tents or vessels." Yet, fifteen months before, a settlement had been already effected near the shores of the bay, and the foundations had been laid of the future city of Melbourne.

THE ARRIVAL OF BATMAN.

As early as the month of January, 1827, Messrs. J. T. Gellibrand and John Batman, of Launceston, Van Diemen’s Land, solicited a grant of land at Western Port, with a view to establishing a pastoral settlement there but the application was curtly refused by Governor Darling, to whom it had been addressed. The project was allowed to slumber until the year 1835, when a vessel was chartered at Launceston, and this same John Batman, accompanied by seven aborigines from Sydney, proceeded to Port Phillip, and landed there on the 26th of May. Falling in with some natives, Batman succeeded in disarming their fears and conciliating their confidence by numerous presents and reiterated assurances of his pacific intentions; the blacks he had brought with him acting as interpreters. He then asked to be conveyed to the chiefs of the tribe, with whom he spent four-and-twenty hours negotiating for the purchase of a tract of their country in order to stock it with sheep and cattle.
The proposition is alleged to have been agreeably received and cheerfully acquiesced in; the boundaries of the laid to be purchased were defined; and, on the day following, Batman and the chiefs proceeded to mark the trees at each angle of the estate of half a million acres which was to be conveyed to the purchaser in consideration of twenty pairs of blankets, thirty tomahawks, one hundred knives, fifty pairs of scissors, thirty looking-glasses, two hundred handkerchiefs, one hundred pounds of flour, and six shirts, to be paid down at once; and an annual tribute of one hundred pairs of blankets, one hundred knives, one hundred tomahawks, fifty suits of clothing, fifty looking-glasses, fifty pairs of scissors, and five tons of flour. A contract of sale was drawn up in due form on the 6th of June, 1835 —the original document is in the Melbourne Public Library —and possession was given of this magnificent principality by the chiefs delivering to Batman a sod of earth, after which he returned to Launceston, leaving three white men and five of the Sydney natives to lay out a garden and commence the erection of a house "near the harbour." A second conveyance had been executed, covering one hundred thousand acres of land belonging to a tribe named Iramoo and Geelong, professing the lords of an extensive domain encircling Corio Bay. Had these ambitious and overreaching transactions been carried through, they would have conferred upon Batman and his fourteen associates —all of them, with one exception, residents in Launceston —boundless affluence; for the value of the territory thus acquired can only be estimated at the present time by scores of millions sterling. This vast estate was to be divided into seventeen equal parts two of which were to be awarded to Batman; and the government of the new settlement was to be entrusted to Messrs. Charles Swanston, James Simpson, and Joseph Tice Gellibrand, three of the partners in the enterprise, subject to code of rules prepared for that purpose. Batman forwarded a detailed statement of his proceedings to Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, in Van Diemen’s Land, who transmitted a copy of it, together with a draft of the conveyance, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. That gentleman, however, declined to confirm the grant, but promised that the serious consideration of the Home Government should be given to the subject of forming a settlement in the vicinity of Port Phillip. Meanwhile, Mr. J. H. Wedge, one of Batman’s partners in the undertaking, and formerly an officer in the Survey Department, had made an examination of the country surrounding Port Phillip, and had extended his investigations to a distance of from twenty-five to forty miles inland, laying down the various eminences, as well as the rivers and creeks, upon a chart.

THE STORY OF BUCKLEY.

IN spite of the friendly relations which Batman believed he had established with the natives, some of them had concerted an attack upon the little party he had left behind him, and it was only frustrated by the interposition of a white man who had lived among them for a period of thirty-two years. This was William Buckley, the narrative of whose career constitutes one of the most romantic episodes in the early history of Victoria. He was one of the convicts who had been landed from the "Calcutta" at Sorrento in 1801, and made his escape into the bush with two other men under sentence, both of whom are believed to have perished. He was a man of commanding stature —six feet five inches in height without his shoes —and to this circumstance probably, coupled with the belief that he was muurnong guurk —that is to say, a chieftain who had been killed in battle and had been resuscitated a white man —he owed his escape from death. He had been wandering about for a whole year, however, before he fell in with the natives; and the lonely cavern in which he is reported to have taken refuge at night is still pointed out as Buckley’s Cave. One of the blacks detected some immense foot-prints in a sand hummock near the outfall of the River Barwon, and following them up, found the white stranger sunning himself upon the beach after a bath in the sea. An alarm was given, and Buckley presently found himself surrounded by the whole of the tribe. "Yon kondak Baarwon?" asked one of the party. It was the name of a departed chief. The white man nodded and grunted assent. Other questions were put to him on the subject of his reincarnation, all of which he fortunately replied to in the affirmative, and he was forthwith admitted a member of the tribe, gradually learning their language and forgetting his own. They gave him a wife, but she preferred a lover of her own complexion, and she and her paramour were put to death in consequence. A second consort was bestowed upon him, bearing the name of Purraninurnin Tallarwurnin, but he had no offspring by either wife. It was she, in her widowhood, who furnished the foregoing particulars of his discovery and adoption. She added that the children of the tribe always regarded him with awe as a mooroop, or spirit of the departed; and that when vessels touched at the coast for wood and water Buckley avoided making himself known to them. When a wreck occurred, the white stranger and the other members of the tribe would acquire what salvage they could in the shape of blankets, axes, and useful implements, in the employment of which, Buckley taught them to become almost as expert as himself. So, without seeing the face or hearing the voice of a civilised being for upwards of thirty years, the bearded giant gradually lapsed into barbarism, conforming in all things to the habits of his associates; sharing in their pastimes; partaking of their food, and refraining only from the practice of cannibalism. When he learned that white men had landed in Port Phillip he also discovered that some of the natives, who had been threatened with punishment for stealing an axe, had resolved on spearing the Europeans. Blood is thicker than water, and Buckley determined to prevent the attack and to obtain an interview with the strangers. He intimidated the blacks by representing to them the overpowering numbers of the whites, and he made a two days’ journey for the purpose of discovering who the newcomers were. His majestic figure, bronzed by exposure to the weather, was rendered more imposing by his flowing hair, the great sweep of his beard, the growth of three-and-thirty years; by the kangaroo-skin which enveloped his sinewy limbs, and by the native weapons which he carried. He sat himself down in grim silence, and affected to take no notice of the white men, who were puzzled alike by his features and his demeanour. But a closer scrutiny of the former left no doubt upon their minds that he was a European. To the questions which were addressed to him he could make no answer. All recollection of his mother tongue seemed to have faded out of his mind; nor was it until ten days afterwards that the secret cells of his memory began to be gradually unlocked, and the language of his childhood and of his early life slowly came back to him. He had escaped from the short-lived settlement at Sorrento on the 27th of December, 1803, and on the 28th of August, 1835, he experienced the gratification of receiving from Governor Arthur a free pardon, which occasioned so much delight and excitement to the recipient as to deprive him of the power of utterance for some time afterwards. It only remains to piece out the story of his life. Buckley was a native of Macclesfield, where he was born in 1780. He enlisted in the Cheshire Militia, and thence was drafted into the 4th Regiment of Infantry, known as the King’s Own. He appears to have taken part in the inglorious Walcheren expedition, and was tried, convicted, and sentenced to transportation for having been concerned, it is said, in a mutiny at Gibraltar. After receiving his pardon, Buckley rendered important assistance to Batman’s party as an interpreter, and when Captain William Lonsdale was sent round from Sydney to the infant settlement with a small detachment of the very regiment to which "the wild white man" had formerly belonged, Buckley entered that officer’s service. But, dissatisfied with the treatment he received, he quitted Port Phillip in 1837 and settled down in Van Diemen’s Land, where Sir John Franklin, who was then Governor, provided him with suitable employment. There he married a widow with one daughter, but had no children of his own. In 1852 the Government of that island bestowed a pension of twelve pounds per annum on Buckley, to which the Victorian Government added ten pounds, and he lived to be seventy-six years of age, his death having resulted from an accident on the 2nd of February, 1856.

During his solitary wanderings, Buckley had discovered a cavern on the sea shore, in which the lonely fugitive took up his abode, subsisting upon shellfish, and gradually acquiring those habits of taciturnity and reserve which clung to him for the rest of his life. Separated for something like a twelve month from all human intercourse, his intellect became permanently enfeebled, and his organs of speech seemed to be partially atrophied by disuse. When discovered by the natives, in the manner described, he acquiesced with a dull resignation, if not a placid stupidity, in every thing they assumed or proposed concerning him, whether by word or sign. Yet this very obtuseness of mind and stolidity of manner wrought with them in his favour, for they accepted both as the direct consequence and clear evidence of the transmigration of Kondak Baarwon’s soul into the body of a white man, a process which, in their opinion, implied mental and physical degeneration. The first thing which roused him from his intellectual torpor was a feast, at which certain black men, killed in battle, were served up as the principal dishes. Against this his emotions and his appetite alike revolted, and he severed himself for a time from the tribe, taking with him two children —a blind boy and his sister —whom he had adopted. The latter married, and the former is said to have been murdered and eaten. Some time afterwards —for Buckley had lost all memory of dates, and the narrative of his life among the aborigines is a confused and a confusing one —occurred his first marriage, and he appears to have derived a grim satisfaction from the fact that the wife who deserted him was speared by a lover who had been violently incensed by the coquetry of the sable flirt. Twice only, during the lengthened period of his association with the blacks, did some faint prospect of escape present itself. On the first occasion an unknown vessel entered the heads and, anchored in Port Phillip. Most of the crew landed to obtain supplies of wood and water, and in their absence a number of natives swam to the ship and helped themselves to whatever portable articles they could lay their hands on. When the Europeans returned and discovered their loss, they tripped their anchor and hastily departed. Buckley endeavoured to attract their attention from the shore, but was probably mistaken for one of the marauders and his signals were disregarded. On another occasion, a boat was stranded in the harbour, and the two sailors who were in it were kindly treated by the natives of his own tribe, but were afterwards speared by those of the Yarra tribe. He had been also told by his black companions, of a third vessel having entered Port Phillip, of a boat-load of seamen having landed, and of two men having been tied to a tree and shot. But statements like these must be received with a certain amount of suspicion, owing to the clouded condition of Buckley’s faculties; the man who had lost the memory of his native tongue, had naturally little recollection of past facts. Governor Bourke, who saw him in 1837, could extract nothing from him but a few monosyllables; Captain Lonsdale was equally unsuccessful; Mr. J. P. Fawkner called him "a mindless lump of matter," and Mr. George Arden, who wrote the earliest pamphlet published in the colony (1840), tells us that Buckley’s extreme reserve rendered it almost impossible to learn anything from him of his past life, or of his acquaintance with the aborigines The last glimpse we obtain of him is in Hobart Town, where his gigantic figure was to be seen almost daily "pacing along the middle of the road with his eyes vacantly fixed upon some object before him, never turning his head to either side or saluting a passer by; and seeming as one not belonging to the world."

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