History of Port Phillip and Victoria

Victoria, Australia, is located south of New South Wales and north of the island of Tasmania. It is only since 1850 that it has been known as “Victoria” (after Queen Victoria).

Coming of the Europeans: The Hentys

Permanent settlement in the area now known as Victoria effectively began in 1834, when the Henty family (including James Henty and Edward Henty) migrated from Tasmania (then known as “Van Diemen’s Land”) to Portland, a coastal area to Victoria's west. The Hentys had emigrated from Great Britain in 1829, stopping first at Swan River, Western Australia, but finding the land there unproductive travelled to Van Diemen’s Land. However, finding the prices there prohibitive, they were motivated to make the momentous move to the “Port Phillip District of New South Wales” (as Victoria was then known). Given that Port Phillip was uninhabited by Europeans, the Henty family must have been especially adventurous. Thomas Henty, in writing to a friend, John Street, some years prior to emigration, noted that he hoped to attain “independence” so “desirable” and “delightful” by migration. He despaired that in England “ruin stares the farmer full in the face” and was fearful of the looming “Property Tax”. Their motives are further illuminated in a letter by one of the Henty sons; he hoped to acquire “stock and land on a most extensive scale” and hoped that, by emigrating, they would be “placed in the first rank of society”; conversely, staying in England would mean having to “descend the many” steps in “the scale of society”. Landing at Portland on 19 November, 1834, on the "Thistle", the Henty family began settlement.

Batman and his treaty

News of the Henty families success soon reached Van Diemen’s Land, and soon 13 Launceston capitalists formed the Port Phillip Association. They sponsored one of their members, John Batman, to voyage to Port Phillip, inspect that land, and strike up a treaty with the Aborigines. Reaching his destination in 1835, Batman was struck by the beauty of the area—and indeed its suitability for pastoralism: It surpassed his “most sanguine expectations”. During his time there, he purportedly made a treaty with members of the Kulin tribes (i.e. the tribes around Port Phillip Bay). Eight Aboriginal “chiefs” (this is doubted, as Aboriginal society did not, generally, have chiefs) are said to have signed a treaty which gave Batman 600 000 acres (2 400 km²) of land. It was decidedly one-sided: in return for this extensive area, Batman gave them assorted paraphernalia, including a mirror, flour etc., which was to be repeated on an annual basis.

Batman’s report (which sung the praises of Port Phillip) was very well received in Van Dieman’s Land. Rev. John Lang commented that it was as if his report had “electrified” the whole of that colony. Historian A. G. L. Shaw writes that the report “whetted the appetites“ of pastoralists who might be able to acquire land “at no cost”. Much migration from Van Dieman’s Land ensued; John Robinson, an emigrant, notes that it was Batman’s “flattering” report that was the catalyst. Migrants from Van Dieman’s Land were known as “over straiters” (since they travelled over the often treacherous Bass Strait).

Immigration to Port Phillip

Almost all migrants to Port Phillip came from Van Diemen’s Land until September 1836, when Governor Bourke (Richard Bourke) proclaimed the settlement of Port Phillip legal. This spurred many migrants from New South Wales, known as “overlanders”, to embark on the convert|600|mi|km|sing=on journey to “Australia Felix” (as Major-General Mitchell had dubbed Port Phillip). Migration occurred from the UK too; emigrants, either assisted or unassisted, came from the late 1830s onwards. Those that came unassisted (without government funding), were as Shaw notes “a mixed bag”, some “educated” and “literate”, others “abstermious”. They were generally motivated by the economic prospects of Port Phillip, where “rich” land, was available. The assisted emigrants, whose passage was paid for by the Government, made the momentous decision to leave the UK generally in the hope of improving their condition. Friedrich Engels, the radical German, wrote of the “miserable” condition in Manchester, where the streets and cottages were filthy. Many Scottish emigrants were motivated due to the land clearance system, whereby land-lords would eject tenants. Many started a sort of “amphibious” life-style on the coast, but finding the land thoroughly unsuitable for cultivation fell into the most hopeless poverty. Those in Ireland were the worst off. The cruel system of distraint was practised on tenants, whereby small croft farmers would be forced to pay rent with their produce—it was often violently taken from them. The tragic Potato Famine of 1836 was however the greatest “push-factor”.

Effects on Aborigines

From 1834 to 1850, about 90,000 migrated to Port Phillip. This had deadly effects on the Aboriginal populations (they were divided into about 38 tribes). From an estimated pre-contact population of at least 10,000, by the 1850s this had fallen to 1,903. In other words, there had been a decline of 80% in one generation. While historians like M. F. Christie maintain that a major cause in this destruction was inter-racial violence, Richard Broome is more accurate in asserting that pastoralism—which was incompatible with the natives’ hunting and gathering life-style—was the real cause of the decrease. To use his words, it in a broader sense a clash of traditional itinerant land use with modernism. Disease is believed to have taken 40–50% of the population, and a mixture of inter-racial and inter-tribal violence, among some other things, the remainder. For detailed analysis of practise of inter-tribal killings—which seemingly increased after colonisation—Beverley Nance’s pioneering article “The Level of Violence” should be consulted (see below).

Victoria gained “glorious” separation from NSW in 1850; its population was c. 70,000. Its future would be rocked by the discovery of gold in 1851.

Bibliography

*Richard Broome and Alan Frost,"The Colonial Experience: The Port Phillip District, 1834 - 1850", (1997)

*Beverley Nance, "‘The Level of Violence: Europeans and Aborigines in Port Philip, 1835-1850’", Historical Studies (Melbourne), 19, 77 (1981), pp. 532-552.

*Shaw, A.G.L, "A History of the Port Phillip District: Victoria before Separation", MUP, 1996