CHAPTER XXI.

NEW SOUTH WALES AND THE PORT PHILLIP DISTRICT.

THE DISCOVERY OF PORT PHILLIP-CAPTAIN COLLINS' ATTEMPTED SETTLEMENT ON ITS COAST-LATER ENTERPRISES- HENTY, BATMAN, FAWKNER, AND MITCHELL-BUCKLEY'S ADVENTURES AMONG THE ABORIGINES-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PORT PHILLIP SETTLEMENT THE PROGRESS OF NEW SOUTH WALES-THE SQUATTERS AND THEIR WORK-MELBOURNE BETWEEN 1838 AND 1850 SYDNEY IN 1848. [1802-1851.]

IN

O sooner had Bass's Straits been discovered than projects began to be formed for making use of the districts on either side. The experiment in Van Dieman's Land, on the south, has been described. The experiment in Port Phillip, now the colony of Victoria, on the north, was more successful, though the success has only recently become very notable.

The bay still known as Port Phillip was first entered by Lieutenant Murray, R.N., in the Lady Nelson, in February 1802, and within a few weeks the harbour was also visited by Flinders and by Baudin, the French explorer. It was thus discovered thrice over in the space of less than three months; and it was probably the fear that France would lay claim to a district that all three voyagers joined in praising, which led the authorities in New South Wales and the British Government to make speedy arrangements for its settlement. The arrangements were made too speedily to be prosperous. Two ship-loads of convicts

and military guards, about 500 in all, were sent out from England under Captain Collins, with orders to form a penal establishment in Port Phillip on the model of that already flourishing at Sydney. They arrived in October 1803, and were landed near Point Nepean, at the mouth of the bay, where there was no adequate supply of fresh water to be obtained without sending the colonists far inland on excursions which made escape easy to them. Captain Collins, dissatisfied with this position, did not care to seek a better one in a different part of the bay. Early in the following year he abandoned it, with all the convicts remaining in his charge, and, crossing Bass's Straits, and passing round the west coast of Van Dieman's Land, there founded Hobarton. His indolence caused the colonization of Victoria to be delayed for a generation, but saved it from the troubles that might have befallen it as a convict settlement.

After that, Van Dieman's Land being able to receive all the criminals for which there was not room in Sydney and its neighbourhood, Port Phillip was forgotten till 1824, when two bold colonists of New South Wales, Hume and Hovell, crossed overland to the bay and visited the site of Geelong. They thought, however, that they had reached Western Port, and their favourable account of what they had seen led to the sending of an exploring party by sea to the latter district in 1826, with the view of fixing the locality for another convict settlement. But this project, being badly conducted, also failed.

The first successful colonizing expeditions to this part of Australia came from Van Dieman's Land, now almost at the height of its prosperity. Thomas Henty,

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an enterprising farmer of Launceston, visited Portland Bay in 1833, and in the following year transferred to its shores his family, a flock of sheep, and all the materials necessary for pastoral and agricultural pursuits. Much more was done in 1835. In June, John Batman, another resident in Launceston, who had been planning the exploit for eight years, went with his family in a small vessel to Indented Head, near Geelong; then went through the form of buying about 600,000 acres of land with £200 pounds' worth of merchandise, and with amusing boldness assumed the title of King of Port Phillip. He had hardly done this, however, before his assumed prerogatives were disputed by another party, headed by John Pascoe Fawkner, who entered Port Phillip in August, and, passing on to its inmost corner, landed on the bank of the Yarra Yarra, and there built a hut which was to become the centre of the great city of Melbourne. The quarrels of Batman and Fawkner are only important in that they helped to direct attention to this most valuable of all the scenes of Australian enterprise.

The enterprise was also encouraged by the inland discoveries of Sir Thomas Mitchell in 1834, 1835, and 1836. Starting from Sydney he wandered through the beautiful regions watered by the Murray and the Darling, and then, proceeding farther south, explored the yet more beautiful expanse of mountains, valleys, and table-lands, to which he gave the name of Australia Felix. He visited Portland Bay, where, to his astonishment, he found Henty's little settlement, and thence journeying eastward, had a distant view of the Yarra Yarra and the other districts of Port Phillip, in

which Batman and Fawkner were roughly laying the foundations of a prosperous settlement, which seems still to have only begun its career of wealth and greatness. His description of what he had seen in all this noble territory stirred up an enthusiasm in the already peopled districts of New South Wales, and in the mother country, which, leading at once to notable results, has never since been lessened.

Thus was founded the district of Port Phillip, as it was termed during the fifteen years in which it flourished as a province of New South Wales.

In memorable contrast with its busy history during the last thirty years or more, is the history of its single white inhabitant throughout the previous term of thirty years. Of the many convicts who escaped from Captain Collins's shortlived settlement in 1803, one, and apparently the only one who was not lost in the bush or did not return to captivity, was William Buckley, then a strong man about twenty-four years old, and six feet five inches in height. With three others he made his escape and traversed the whole circuit of Port Phillip. Soon after that he lost sight of his comrades, and for more than thirty years he had no intercourse with any Englishman. At first he wandered about alone on the sea-shore, or lived in a hut of his own building. Then a tribe of natives came in his way, and by them he was treated with high honour. "These, as well as other Australian natives," we are told, "had a superstitious belief that white people are persons of their own race who have come to life again after death. If such resuscitated persons are deemed to be their own friends, the tribe will treat them well.

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Buckley came upon the scene opportunely in this respect. A chief of the tribe with which he afterwards lived had died about the time he was spending his first summer of wild independence near the Port Phillip Heads, and had been buried near his rude domicile. A piece of a native spear had been left to mark the grave. Buckley had seen and appropriated this fragment, and, as he carried it in his hand when first seen by the tribe, they joyfully hailed him as no other than their deceased chief come again to life. In accordance with this happy prepossession, Buckley found he was always well cared for. He often saw himself indeed to be the subject of very ardent and earnest discussion, and on the occasion of the frequent tribal battles, he was carefully secluded among the females so as to be out of harm's way." 1 Once, or more than once, weary of his life among the natives, he went back to his hut, though there a native woman installed herself as his wife, and helped him to collect the shell-fish, herbs, and fruits on which he subsisted. Having gradually acquired the language of the aborigines, he gained fresh influence over them, which he was able to use to his own and their advantage, whenever he chose to mix with them. Thus he lived till he was fifty-five, now and then seeing a ship's sail passing along the coast, but failing to make any signal which might enable him to return to his own countrymen, if indeed he greatly cared to do so. The one and thirty years passed so easily that he imagined they were only about twenty, when he heard that a party of white men had come to settle in the neighbourhood, and

1 Westgarth, "The Colony of Victoria," pp. 47, 48.