A week or so ago I went by ferry
along the Yarra River from Docklands in
Melbourne to Williamstown just down the
coast a bit. The ferry chugged along at roughly the speed I would imagine was
taken by the early settlers. I love my city despite its ever-growing concrete
and glass towers. The story goes that John Batman wrote in his journal on 8th June 1835 two days after sailing up the Yarra
River, "So the boat went up the large river, and I am glad to state about
six miles up found the river had all good water and very deep. This will be the
place for a village."That last sentence later became famous as the "founding charter" of Melbourne.
Batman signed a so-called treaty
with 8 Wurundjeri Aborigine elders to gain 600,000 acres of land around Port
Philip, or Melbourne as it would become, and another 100,000 acres around what
is now Geelong on the other side of Port Philip Bay. For some time Batman's
Treaty, as it came to be called, was assumed by some historians to be a forgery.
By 1838, just 2½ years after John
Batman’s announcement that “This will be the Place for a Village“, Melbourne’s population
and infrastructure had already grown. By then Melbourne had 3 churches, 13
hotels, 28 business places, and 64 dwelling houses. On October 27, 1839, the ship David
Clark arrived from Scotland in what was then called Hobson’s Bay with 166
adults and 63 children—a voyage of more than four months. The
new arrivals were taken ashore in the ship’s boats at the beach opposite
Williamstown, and walked overland two miles to the banks of the
Yarra River, where 50 tents were pitched in three parallel lines, each numbered
to avoid confusion. The newcomers could only reach Melbourne via a punt on the
Yarra. What began as a collection of tents and huts on the banks of the Yarra
River that was used for bathing and drinking water, by 1850 become so polluted
it was the cause of an epidemic of typhoid fever resulting in many deaths.
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