EARLY MELBOURNE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21396, 20 October 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

EARLY MELBOURNE

BY KOTARE

FIRST SETTLEMENT

For a. city like Damascus, so old that history does not know a time when it was, not, or for other rose-red cities of the East half as old as time, a hundred years may be no more in

restrospect than a watch in the night. But in the modern world a hundred years may mean the transformation of a wilderness into a mighty city of over a million inhabitants. That has been the case with Melbourne. One hundred years ago Tort Phillip had not a single white man along all its wide expanse of coastline. The rich territories behind it were occupied only by wild animals and wilder men. To-day Melbourne proudly holds up her head among the greatest cities of all times and nations. Whatever new glories the future has for her, nothing will ever match the hopes and the struggles and the magnificent achievements of her first hundred years.

In 1796 it was not oven known that Port Phillip existed. Tasman and other Dutch navigators had discovered Tasmania, and the west and the north of Australia as far as the Gulf of Carpentaria. Cook in 1770 had made a landfall on the east of Victoria and traced the coastline northwards. It was left to Bass to discover in 1797 that Tasmania was an island, and to open to the world the strait that bears his name. Britain, with the bitter memories of the American Revolution controlling her attitude to overseas colonies, had found no better use for the new land Cook had given her than to serve as a dumping ground for her undesirables. Botany Bay and the adjacent coast and back country provided her with more than ample room. New Stations But for several reasons it was found necessary to establish subsidiary convict stations. Norfolk Island was well enough in its way. But there were many jjolitical prisoners being sent to Australia, and it was desirable to segregate them from the ordinary type of convict. Besides, a considerable sealing industry had developed on the Tasmanian coast and on the southeastern coast of the mainland, and it was obviously a sound commercial proposition to afford trading facilities closer to the sealing grounds. There were reports of vast areas of first-class timber on the southern coasts, and the wars in Europe were exhausting the available English material for shipbuilding. There was always the French menace. Bold navigators had been scouring the Pacific in the interests of France, and it was known the French authorities had their eyes on Australia and New Zealand. The more of the country that could be effectively occupied the better the chance of restricting the ambitions of other nations in southern waters.

King, the Governor of Botany Bay, advised the Home authorities to establish a convict settlement somewhere on Port Phillip. The party of occupation, under Colonel Collins, left England in 1803 in the Calcutta, a. fifty-gun frigate, and the Ocean, an East man chartered for the voyage. There were some three hundred convicts on board, a few of them accompanied by their wives. Collins, the leader, lacked initiative, and dwelt, as no pioneer should, on the difficulties of his position. When he entered Port Phillip he chose for the site of the new settlement a position close to the entrance, where Sorrento now stands. There was the usual trouble with the natives, but the chief obstacle was the lack of water. Failure Time and again convicts took to the bush, but they always were driven back through lack of food and water. One of them, however, a famous figure in Australian annals, a gigantic Englishman named Buckley, was accepted into a local tribe, and lived with the natives for thirty years. For many years he was the only white man in what was later to be kriown as Victoria. Collins very early gave up hope. A month after his arrival he wrote to Lord Hobart,, the Secretary of State, suggesting the complete abandonment of the Port Phillip scheme in favour of Tasmania. There were places in Van Diemen's Land, he wrote, that appeared to possess " those requisites for a settlement in which this very extensive harbour is so wholly deficient. Every day's experience convinces me that it cannot, nor ever will be, resorted to by speculative men." He was as poor a prophet as he was a coloniser. Note his emphatic " nor ever will."

Later in his letter he declared —" when all the disadvantages attending this bay are publicly known ; it cannot be supposed that commercial people will be very desirous of visiting Port Phillip." Melbourne will be amusedly recalling these gloomy prognostications of the man who is honoured in the name of one of her principal streets. So they abandoned Port Phillip and established their new settlements in Tasmania. A second attempt was made from the landward side in 1824 by Hume and Hovell. They penetrated further and further south, found much rich and well-watered farmland, and reached Port Phillip on the long inlet upon which Geelong now stands. They thought they were in Western Port, a

large harbour to the east of Port Phillip, and on their recommendation a new scheme of settlement was tried out here. It was hopeless from the start- The settlers gave up in despair, and Victoria was again left to the blacks and the kangaroos. Success

.hi 1834 John Batman, encouraged

by the recent success of the Hentys, who had taken possession of a large area of grazing land far to the west of Port Phillip, organised a company to acquire land and breed stock in the Port Phillip disti ict. Ho had tried before to get grants of land in what is now Victoria, and the refusal of Government authority led him and his fellow Tasmanians in the new venture to take possession without official sanction. Like so many others of his bold and enterprising type, he would present the authorities with a fait accompli, and trust to official confirmation afterwards. Batman, in his explorations, came across the Yarra, and chose the present site of Melbourne as being an excellent position for a village. The arrival of a new party of Tasmanians, under Fuwkner, who also selected the same site and took possession of it, led to some complications; but in the end the Batman party induced the newcomers to shift their camp across the river. .Governor Bourke, of Botany Bay, refused to acknowledge Batman's title, but bis representations to the Colonial Office lot! to the official confirmation of Batman's claim to ownership. Lonsdale was sent by Bourke as first magistrate to the new community, and surveyors laid out the first plan of the Melbourne that was to be. It was originally called Batmania and Glenelg, but Melbourne was adopted as its official title. So Melbourne, one of the great cities of the world, was in its origin a colonising enterprise of the small hut vigorous settlements in Tasmania'. I