The initial European settlement at Port Fairy is closely connected with Launceston, the Tamer River Estuary, and the northern part of the Tasmanian Midlands. During the early nineteenth century, whalers and sealers seasonally visited the Southwest coast in pursuit of their quarry. Crews would establish temporary camps along the beaches of the mainland, remaining for several months during the peak hunting season before returning to their bases in Tasmania. In 1828, the sealing cutter “The Fairy” anchored at the bay. Captain Wishart named the bay after the vessel he commanded. Other sealers and whalers adopted the name and by the mid-1830s Port Fairy had come into common usage.
Tasmanian vessels frequently crossed Bass Strait to several bays along the mainland coast before returning to Van Diemen’s Land at the end of the season. Portland served as the most reliable anchorage between Port Phillip Heads and the Gulf of Saint Vincent in South Australia. The harbour had safe mooring, fresh water, and substantial whale populations in the bay. It was also quickly discovered that there was good cultivable land there. Beginning in the early 1830s, whalers from Portland routinely visited Port Fairy to pursue Right Whales there. By 1836 Port Fairy had emerged as a satellite station for whaling operations based in Portland. For the Tasmanian seafarers, the entire coastline between Portland and Port Fairy became known as Portland Bay, in contra-distinction to Port Phillip Bay further to the east.
When the whaling captains set up their tryworks onshore at Portland in the early 1830s, the British had been in Tasmania for approximately thirty years. The first onshore operations at Portland commenced in 1832 and bay whaling at Portland grew quickly. These seasonal shore-based operations were considered legal because they were not permanent and were offshoots of enterprises based in Van Diemen’s Land.
Permanent European settlement on the southern Australian mainland opposite Van Diemen’s Land had yet to be officially sanctioned and so the on-shore settlement at Portland established by the Henty’s in 1834 was not in accord with New South Wales regulations. The Henty’s intended to stay on the mainland and take up land there.
According to British colonial legal doctrine dating from 1827, the entirety of the Australian continent was claimed by the British Monarchy as Crown Land. In 1829, British settlements at Fremantle and Perth were established, reinforcing British claims over the entire continent. Prior to their coming to Tasmania in 1831, the Henty family had first made an abortive attempt to settle near Perth, and so the legal situation was well known to the Henty family.
Bay whaling at Portland was a significant enterprise, with at least seven on-shore whaling operations there by 1838. At least forty whaleboats and their crews were actively whaling in the bay that year. Whaleboats were rowed out from the shore to hunt migrating whales or females entering the bay to give birth. The whale fat would be converted into whale oil at the onshore tryworks. Large metal pots containing whale blubber were heated by firewood and the resulting oil was then collected and exported aboard visiting trading vessels. The crews spent time in the off-season maintaining and repairing whaleboats for the upcoming season and in order to keep whaleboat crews intact, some firms employed them as hunters or wattle-bark cutters along the coast during the off-season.
This maritime activity at Portland spilled over to Port Fairy to lesser degree and by 1835 a whaling establishment was set up on the island at the mouth of the Moyne River. The whaling station was first established by Penny and Reiby early in 1835. Later that year it was sold to John Griffiths and Michael Connolly. Griffiths was involved in whaling and sealing all along the Australian coast, particularly at Portland, Launceston and Twofold Bay. In partnership with Connolly, Griffiths began to bring sheep and cattle over from Tasmania. Before too long they had established a small farm to the east of Port Fairy. The island at Port Fairy is now called Griffiths Island.
Captain John Griffiths was the mainstay of whaling at Port Fairy together with Captain Alexander Campbell and Captains John and Charles Mills. Griffiths was the son of convicts transported to New South Wales. John’s father, called Johnathon Griffiths, arrived in Sydney at sixteen. When he was just fifteen, Johnathon was convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to transportation for seven years. In 1790 he arrived at Norfolk Island where he remained as a convict for five years.
While on Norfolk Island, Johnathon met Eleanor McDonald with whom he would have seven children, mostly born at Richmond, New South Wales. By 1804 Jonathan Griffiths was established as a boatbuilder and he moved to Richmond around 1806 where was granted one hundred acres of land. This was during the period when convicts who had served their sentences could obtain land grants of modest size, a practice later stopped for the most part. Johnathon Griffiths with two of his sons moved to Launceston in 1822. By 1830, John Griffiths, one of these sons, was whaling and sealing across Bass Strait and was involved in boatbuilding at Launceston.
John Griffiths partnered with Michael Connelly, a prominent Tasmanian financier, to establish the Launceston Fishing Company. At least two workhouses were constructed on the islands at Port Fairy where the tryworks were located. There is a plaque by the shore to commemorate the enterprise of John Griffiths, erected in 1985 by some of his Tasmanian descendants. The plaque is now overshadowed by some well-designed interpretive signage more aligned with the values of current times. Today’s tourists read about migratory birds rather than the slaughter of whales by parties of rough hewn convicts and the commercial men of Bass Strait.
The memory hole in George Orwell’s novel was a small oblong slit connected to hidden furnaces used to incinerate documents so as to curate the past. In Australia, what happened years ago is thoughtfully policed by the gatekeepers of the present day.
As an offshoot of the whaling enterprise, livestock was brought over from Tasmania to Port Fairy. The maritime entrepreneurs ran their livestock on the coastal strip to the east of the river. This was of questionable legality as these gentlemen did not take out pastoral leaseholds from the Crown, whose remit must have seemed very distant in that remote spot. Income from their pastoral enterprise allowed Griffiths and Connolly to keep their whalers working on shore during the off season. The whaling season in Port Fairy commenced in May and closed in October, and so the off season corresponded with the warmer months on the coast.
The whaling industry declined rapidly through the 1840s, even though in 1843 a total of fifteen whales were caught that season. This was the year in which Griffiths settled permanently at Port Fairy, joining a few others from Tasmania who were already there. Griffiths continued whaling in Port Fairy up until 1847 and then he was engaged in constructing harbour works in the bay. It is very likely that Thomas Jones knew him personally.
Among the earliest shipmasters to establish a base at Port Fairy during the late 1830s were Captains John and Charles Mills of Launceston. They had been active hunting whales and seals at Portland and around the Bass Strait Islands. Thomas Jones likely knew them well. He may have worked on boats skippered by them. As well as whaling, the captains would take command of trading vessels used by the Henty shipping firm based at Launceston which sailed to and from Portland Bay. Other companies were also involved in the trade.
The Mills boys were the Australian-born children of Peter Mills, a Dublin-born officer in the British Navy. During his tenure as a British officer, Peter Mills became involved in some truly bizarre scandals, even by Van Diemen’s Land standards. He was involved in bushranging, prison escape, and several alleged offences including corruption and misappropriation of land, before disappearing at sea in 1816. His sons, John and Charles, were competent sailors and adventurers from an early age. By the mid-1830s, they had acquired a good knowledge of Bass Strait and its islands, including the coastline of Portland Bay in particular. The Mills brothers had a sister, Eliza, who married James Glare in 1830 and she settled at Port Fairy with her husband from 1846 around the same time as Thomas Jones settled there.
The mother of the Mills siblings was Jennifer Ann Brabyn. She arrived in Australia with her father in 1802 when she was seven. Her father, Captain John Brabyn, was a British Military Officer with a colourful career in New South Wales, one of many seemingly corrupt British officers in early New South Wales. Captain Brabyn was an ally of John Macarthur in the military coup against Governor Bligh in 1808 that has come to be known as the “Rum Rebellion”. Essentially, this was the only time in Australian history that a government was overthrown by the military. The Australian Dictionary of Biography has an entry on John Brabyn and also one on Peter Mills.
Captain Alexander Campbell was the supervisor of the whaling station at Port Fairy when John Griffiths was not there. Port Campbell is named for him. In addition to running cattle, Campbell and Griffiths first began farming land ten kilometers to the east of Port Fairy at the location now known as Illowa. Their initial patch of cultivation was called “The Farm”.
In the late 1830s, the number of Europeans camping along the coast at Port Fairy varied greatly with the seasons, from a dozen to perhaps around one hundred men during the whaling season. Whether working on the mainland, or on the islands, or on the whaling vessels, the European men on this remote coast were under the command of the sea captains. Captain Campbell remained in the district till the mid-1850s and so Thomas Jones would likely have known Alexander Campbell.
Thomas Jones would also have known Archibald McNeil, who had been an overseer for Alexander Campbell at Port Fairy, Illowa and Yangery during the early whaling years. McNeil later became an early farmer at Killarney. As with Alexander Campbell, Archibald McNeil was originally from Mull, and the men could speak to each other in Gaelic. There were quite a few in the Southwest in the first few decades who could speak this ancient language. McNeil opened the first pub in Port Fairy in 1842, called the Merrijig Inn. Archibald McNeil’s children would later attend school in Koroit. There are accounts unverified that McNeil saw many fights involving Aboriginal people he was acquainted with in the early days. Who knows how much of an old man’s recollections are true.
The financial backing to the whaling enterprise at Port Fairy was sourced through Michael Connolly, a Launceston based gentlemen and a financier of Irish Protestant heritage. Connolly was one of the original fifteen shareholders in the Port Phillip Association, the pastoral syndicate that launched the venture to take land at Port Phillip in 1835. He moved to Port Fairy with his wife in 1843, and was living at Port Fairy in the late 1840s, the period when Thomas Jones likely arrived. Connolly died there in 1855 and is buried in the old cemetery in the sandhills. Thomas Jones would have known Michael Connolly, although they did not mix in the same society.
Connolly was a gentleman and socialized with the squatter and mercantile families. His wife was a member of the Bostock household, a landed gentry family with extensive interests in Van Diemen’s Land. Her father, Robert Bostock, was a former British slaver who turned his hand to pastoral pursuits in Australia, first in New South Wales and then in Tasmania. When Superintendent Charles Latrobe and his party visited Port Fairy, Michael Connolly hosted them at his property. Without the backing of Britain’s administrative, security, and financial systems, none of this enterprise could have happened.
The Henty brothers operated both whaling and trading enterprises at Portland Bay in the 1830s. When they first engaged in farming and grazing on the mainland, these activities were not permitted under New South Wales regulations. Several proclamations and decisions taken by Governor Bourke in 1835 and 1836 began the regularization of the situation. The land-rights claims of First Nations peoples were explicitly deemed to have no status under British law and it was made clear that no treaties with Aboriginal leaders could be entered into.
By 1839, a few squatters with sheep were already taking up country to the north and west of Port Fairy. Some moved north from Portland and Port Fairy and others came west from Geelong. Cattle were beginning to be moved to the Southwest overland from New South Wales, the herds of the Bolden brothers reputedly the first of these. From 1838 squatters had to apply for pastoral leases. Most of the squatters who came to the Southwest had some form of Tasmanian connection, even if it just involved buying sheep there prior to entering the Western District. Some had a connection with Van Diemen’s Land of much greater duration, having first been awarded land grants there by the government led by Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur.
The first trading store at Port Fairy was opened in 1839 by John Cox, a Launceston merchant and trader of wealthy gentry family. Like Michael Connelly, John Cox had married into the Bostock family. His wife was the sister of Michael Connelly’s wife, both women being the daughters of Robert Bostock, a former British enslaver of African people who traded them with the masters of vessels heading for the Americas.
Eliza Cox, a sister of John Cox, married James Youl whose sister Elizabeth had married Captain James Webster of Mount Shadwell station. James Youl and Eliza initially lived in Tasmania and then moved to London in 1854. He was created C.M.G. in 1874 and K.M.G. in in 1891 and thus became Sir James Youl. He died in London in 1904 and his estate was valued at around 160,000 pounds sterling. Jane Cox, another sister of John Cox, married Claud Farie, the squatter who took over the Merrang run near Mount Shadwell. Claud Farie was from a wealthy Scottish gentry family and his father financially backed his son’s enterprise in Australia from the time Claud left Scotland in 1839.
In 1840 Claud wrote to his parents back home, and parts of this letter reads as follow: “There was a [white] man murdered at a cattle station near Mount Rouse a month ago in the most treacherous and cold-blooded manner. Nearly all my neighbours have been losing sheep lately. They (aborigines) came back to one of Mr Black’s outstations in the most daring manner in open day and drove off 90 sheep. The black scoundrels could not be found, notwithstanding the strictest search by a party of mounted men. I think Mr Black’s men were afraid of the natives or this might not have happened. They [the shepherds] allowed them [the clansmen] to come to the hut and spoke to them [the shepherds] in the most friendly manner for a short time, then grasping their spears as if they would throw them at the men, if they dared to interfere, they rushed the flocks and drove off unharmed the above number of sheep.”
Farie then goes onto explain that “the two men [the shepherds] who were well armed, each having a double-barrelled gun and a brace of pistols, which ought to have brought four of the black rascals to their bearings …and the rest would have taken to their heels … I never let any of them [the clansmen] … to come closer than 50 or 60 yards without making them throw away their spears and hold up their open hands .. whenever I fall in with any of them I threaten them with instant death if they don’t ‘Gigo Mage’ (go away). I hope by keeping them at a distance to prevent loss to myself and also save spilling of their blood …”
In Ian D Clark’s book “Scars in the landscape: a register of massacre sites in Western Victoria 1803–1859”, on page seventy-nine, the following entry found: “Captain James Webster (Mount Shadwell station, adjoining Mortlake) and Claud Farie (Konawarren and Merrang stations near Hexham) were involved in a killing at Mount Rouse. As Aborigines had been plundering sheepfolds regularly by night and as Webster and Farie had lost 100 sheep from two stations in three weeks, they were induced to drive the Aborigines off their runs. Acheson French, the police magistrate at ‘the Grange’, heard reports of an Aborigine having died from wounds inflicted during the conflict. In a statement, Webster and Farie denied having shot anybody.” Clark references Police Magistrate Acheson French as source.
John Cox’s store at Port Fairy specialized in whaling gear and supplies for the early squatters. In 1839 there were just two other conventional buildings along the river in Port Fairy. These were the residential cottages of the sea captains, Captain Alexander Campbell and Captain John Mills. There were also the whaling buildings on Griffiths Island and some crude workers huts along the coast. By around 1840 Captain Charles Mills had commenced farming at the lagoon on the east side of the river. The sea captains had workers in their service, mostly men from Van Diemen’s Land but sundry others from other places as well. Seafarers were an international set of men.
While whaling contributed to the initial growth and development of Port Fairy it was not responsible for its ongoing development as a township. Port Fairy in 1840 was noted as a small and not very secure harbour. It functioned chiefly as a whaling station and supply depot for those on the coast and for those commencing squatting in the interior. There were just a few buildings on the river bank. The most prominent building was Cox’s wharf and store, where the cargoes were unloaded and stored after having been taken from the vessels in the bay.
From 1843 agriculture and pastoralism had supplanted whaling in importance. John Cox was one of the pioneers of squatter pastoralism in the hinterland north of Port Fairy. Cox developed his squatter interests from the early 1840s, acquiring a large run initially centered on Mount Rouse between Port Fairy and the Grange.
John Cox was forced to move his headstation from Mount Rouse closer to Mount Napier because the government insisted that an Aboriginal Protectorate station should be established at Mount Rouse on the land which Cox squatted. Cox was not happy to have to move and he complained most bitterly. He did his best to ensure that Assistant Protector Charles Sievwright was removed following a campaign of denigration and inuendo.
Most of the squatters considered that Cox had been dealt with unfairly. As a group they greatly resented the Aboriginal Protectorate. Perhaps their thinking is an early manifestation of something that continues today, a pattern of ideological belief foundational to white society in the Southwest. Whatever the case, these self-centered feelings of entitlement represented a permanent rupture for traditional Aboriginal people that is aptly described as genocide.
In order to concentrate on squatting, in late 1843 Cox sold the land, buildings and assets of his trading station at Port Fairy to William Rutledge, who had recently arrived in Port Fairy after acquiring his Farnham Special Survey from the government.
John Cox after moving north from Port Fairy became one of the most prominent squatters in the Western District. The impact of Cox’s intrusion was devastating to Aboriginal people, although there were many other squatters equally responsible. There was considerable conflict, great cruelty and indescribable misery inflicted upon the traditional owners.
In his published letters, Commissioner Foster Fyans describes John Cox as one of his closest friends. Cox is also a character in the well-known account of this period of frontier conflict written by Rolf Boldrewood. This tale of British derring-do, titled “Old Melbourne Memories – Revisited,” was written well after the events it describes. It was published for British audiences as a romanticised tale of colonial adventure, although it is based on first-hand experience of squatting life in the Southwest during the early 1840s.
Rolf Boldrewood knew John Cox well. Both men were squatters in the Southwest at the time of the Eumeralla Wars. In his retelling of his early days at Port Fairy, Boldrewood includes a description of a confrontation between squatters and Aboriginal clansmen. In Boldrewood’s account, Cox is reported as saying: “It was the first time I had ever levelled a gun at my fellow-man. I did so without regret or hesitation. . . I distinctly remember knocking over three blacks, two men and a boy, with one discharge of my double barrel.” For those seeking insight into the ideological mindset of the squatters, Boldrewood’s “Old Melbourne Memories – Revisited” is a must read, provided one has the stomach to cope with its imperial fantasy.
Boldrewood’s account is based on fact. Aboriginal men were hunted down in retaliation for their “stealing” a flock of Cox’s best sheep.
John Cox eventually held 30,000 acres of the Western District and was an early member of the Melbourne Club. At Port Fairy he formed the Mount Rouse Hunt Club and provided the pack of hounds for these exclusive affairs. His children married the children of other Western District squatter families. They were entrenched in the civic and philanthropic affairs of the district.
A crucial development in the Southwest occurred in 1837 when the Henty’s and a couple of other squatter families, including the Winters, established runs on the Wannon River far inland from Portland.
Major Thomas Mitchell was an officer in the British military and the Surveyor General of New South Wales. Mitchell passed through the Western District in 1836 on his well-known exploration expedition. He named Mount Shadwell at Mortlake as he passed to the north of this mount and was highly impressed by the country he saw. This intelligence may have influenced the men of the Derwent Company to scout as far as Mount Shadwell on their 1838 expedition heading west from Geelong into the interior. They were soon to take up runs in the vicinity, followed by men of the Clyde Company. The men acting as agents of these two commercial companies were heavily armed with pistols and long barreled weapons and they had horses available to them.
The Clyde Company was financed by the proceeds of slavery whereas the Derwent Company relied more upon money from the British East India Company. Among the squatters who acted as agents for the Clyde Company was Henry Gibb who took up the country later known as Hopkins Hill near Chatsworth. Gibb also held squatting licences for Eilyer near Lake Bolac and Drysdale and Liberton stations near Purnim. He married Robina Hoyle at the Presbyterian Church in Geelong. She was the sister of Duncan Hoyle who took up Mount Bute station north of Lismore in 1838.
Information concerning good pastoral land on the Wannon River was provided by Major Thomas Mitchell to the Hentys at Portland. The New South Wales government had tasked Major Mitchell with investigating the country lying far beyond the limits of settlement in order to ascertain its potential worth to the British. Mitchel informed the Henty’s of the excellent pastoral land on the Wannon country in 1836 and they soon acted on this intelligence. Sheep were transported from Tasmania to Portland and then taken inland to the Henty’s new squatter runs on the Wannon. By 1839 there was a small town at Portland.
The first official government visit to Portland was from Captain Foster Fyans, who travelled overland from Geelong to Portland in June 1839. At that time Fyans was the Police Magistrate for the Western District. There had been reports of violence. The Hentys were believed to have first-hand knowledge of the killing of Aboriginal people in the area but Police Magistrate Fyan’s investigation found there was little to be concerned about.
New South Wales Governor Sir George Gipps, in a dispatch to the Colonial Office in London of December 1840, informed Lord John Russell, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, of conditions at Portland. Gipps was relying upon correspondence from Police Magistrate Blair to Superintendent La Trobe in which it was stated that: “The township consists at present of one good house and six decent cottages, besides a few huts, and contains a population of at least one hundred souls. The population of the entire district amounts to about six hundred.”
In his communications with his superiors, Police Magistrate Blair did not speak favorably of the laboring classes, but be considered the harbor at Portland to be better patronized than he expected. “I have examined a list of the vessels which have visited it since the 1st of January last and find that up to the 13th of November, 49 vessels whose tonnage amounted to 7010 tons had been here and all of them with the exception of 5 whalers and 2 revenue cutters were traders. … I also ascertained that at least 1700 bales of wool will be shipped here this year and two vessels are expected immediately to load for England.”
Virtually the whole of the Western District was officially designated as the Portland Bay District in the early 1840s. The former Police Magistrate at Geelong, Foster Fyans, was made Commissioner of Crown Lands over this vast territory. The ports of Geelong, Portland and Port Fairy were the maritime gateways to the Portland Bay District.
There were already ship wrecks at Port Fairy by 1839. Prior to 1841, Captain Alexander Campbell and Captain John Griffiths were in command at the whaling station and directed livestock and farming operations along the coast. Towards the end of his career, Alexander Campbell was appointed harbor master at Melbourne. Two of Campbell’s brothers, Colin and Neil, had emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land in the early 1820s to take up land grants and Alexander joined them there in 1825. The family were considered middle-ranking Gaels, being tacksmen to the laird.
During his time in Tasmania, Alexander Campbell and his brothers took some part in the conflicts known as the Black Wars. In 1830 he was placed in charge of fifteen armed convicts as part of campaign to scour the bush for Aboriginal people, aiming to trap them at the Tasman Peninsula. For his services he obtained a land grant of three hundred and twenty acres, which he subsequently sold. He then went whaling around the Pacific Ocean. He sailed to Guam, Japan, and the south sea islands, looking for profit and adventure.
In 1836 Alexander Campbell was employed to take charge of a whaling station at Portland Bay. Campbell joined other Tasmania based whaling captains there, including John and Charles Mills and William Dutton. Alexander Campbell then joined John Griffiths at Port Fairy.
Portland was the main base for whaling operations at a time when onshore whaling was at its height. In the peak whaling seasons of the mid-1830s, Portland harbor hosted many whaleboats, and several tryworks dotted the shore. There are documented reports of violence involving clanspeople and whalers at Portland Bay at this time, including the well-known Convincing Ground incident in which many First Nations people were killed.
It is well attested that Captain William Dutton “owned” an Aboriginal slave during this period, a girl who had reportedly been kidnapped from the South Australia mainland and who was subsequently traded to Dutton at Kangaroo Island. Like Captain Griffiths and Captains John and Charles Mills, Captain Dutton was Australian born. Some of the men at the whaling stations were referred to as being Aboriginal natives of New South Wales or Van Diemen’s Land. The whalers were a motley lot, among whom were Māori, Black American and Aboriginal men, as well as emancipated convicts.
Thomas Jones would likely have known William Dutton, who was well known in the ports on either side of Bass Strait. In the 1840s Dutton commanded the “Lady Mary Pelham” in association with the Henty Company. In the off season the “Lady Mary Pelham” was used as a cargo and general transport vessel between Hobart and Portland, transferring goods and stock for the Henty operation. In total there is one Tasmanian arrival record and four departure records for a Thomas Jones in this period. For all but the last voyage to Port Fairy, there must have been a return voyage to Tasmania. This indicates that Thomas Jones made at least seven or eight crossings of Bass Strait. The last of these voyages was in 1848 and it was probably from this time that Thomas settled permanently at Port Fairy. From the late 1840s, Thomas Jones was a tenant farmer in the vicinity of the lagoon farm of Captain Charles Mills.
In the very early years of Port Fairy, there were considerable interactions between Aboriginal people and the Europeans along the shore. There would have been trade in goods and services. Interestingly, there is no record of any workers on the coast at Port Fairy being attacked by Peek Whurrong people in the first years of contact. There was a series of wetlands just inland from the coastal dunes. It is possible that there were informal arrangements regulating inter-racial relations between Peek Whurrong clanspeople and Europeans in the period from 1838 to 1840. The potential for conflict must have been quite high and the Europeans were outnumbered and in an exposed position. The question as to why Peek Whurrong did not attack Europeans in the initial period is an interesting one.
At Eden, on Twofold Bay, Aboriginal men and Europeans cooperated in whaling activity and shared parts of the catch. While there is little evidence that this happened at Port Fairy, the whalers there may have allowed the clansmen access to whale meat as a way to maintain peaceful relations and for trade. Each whaling firm at Portland had several whaleboats in action during a hunt, and this likely was the case with John Griffiths’ operations at Port Fairy. Six or eight whalers would be in each boat. There would have been dozens of men working there during the season.
From the period 1841 to 1842, once farming starts, there are reports of retaliatory attacks by parties of Campbell’s men on Aboriginal people, who were fired upon in retaliation for the loss of livestock or the “theft” of agricultural produce, supplies and implements. The details of what happened are unclear. The refusal of Europeans to share food and resources would have been deeply troubling to First Nations people whose guiding social principle was reciprocity. Many Europeans considered it dangerous to allow close contact with Aboriginal people, least a surprise attack eventuate at close quarters.
Peek Whurrong people were dependent on marine resources and coastal lagoons for food. Their finely balanced system of land and water management was easily disrupted once farming and grazing commenced. Unfortunately, the open and well-watered areas were very suitable for cattle and other livestock. Sometimes the cattle drank water that was too salty and got sick. Clanspeople maintained tracks along the coast which aided the movement of whalers, shepherds and bark collectors. These “native tracks” became the first European pathways, such as the path along the coast between the Moyne and Merri Rivers.
Wetlands were carefully maintained and enhanced by clans to optimize fish and game resources. Patches of grassy ground were kept clear of bushy vegetation and fire was employed seasonally to maintain open country. Designated areas were purposely set aside for hunting and ceremonies. The patches of cleared land maintained by Peek Whurrong were the initial places where European huts and enclosures were built and crops planted. From there Europeans moved to clear the more heavily vegetated country.
The workers employed by Campbell and Griffith were virtually all living in crude huts stretching along the coast toward Warrnambool, apart from Alexander Campbell himself who lived in a wooden cottage on the lower Moyne River. It was reportedly Alexander Campbell’s workmen that first started using the name Tower Hill. In 1841 there were just a couple of proper houses at Port Fairy, in addition to John Cox’s trading store on the riverbank. In 1842 Archibald McNeil opened the Merrijig Inn on the river.
By 1843, there were several farms established to the west of Tower Hill. One was called Kangaroo Ground and another was called Emu Flat. These names indicate Aboriginal grasslands usurped by Europeans for fields in what became Crossley and Kirkstall. The islands in the lake and the slopes of the northern banks were too heavily timbered to be of immediate interest.
The Chief Protector of Aborigines
George Augustus Robinson, the Chief Protector of Aborigines, was responsible for overseeing the welfare of Aboriginal people in the Port Phillip District, including providing assistance and protection. Robinson undertook extensive journeys through the Western District, including one in 1841 during which he visited Tower Hill. He was instructed by Superintendent Charles La Trobe to investigate the conflict between European settlers and Aboriginal people in the Western District. During his journeys, Robinson recorded details of Aboriginal life, including cultural practices and ceremonies, as well as details of the original landscape.
During this time there were massive changes wrought on traditional Aboriginal society in Victoria, and everywhere there was a dramatic decrease in Aboriginal population. Robinson soon discovered upon his arrival in 1840, that in some regions closer to Geelong the Aboriginal population had already been greatly reduced, and swathes of the landscape there were virtually empty of Indigenous people even by that year.
From 1840 Robinson was a participating witness to genocide. He was well aware of what was happening, but felt almost powerless to restrain the events unfolding on the frontier. He viewed the demise of the Aboriginal clans as inevitable but thought it was his role to record what he could before it all disappeared. He seems to have been of the view that his protection efforts were ultimately doomed to failure. In many cases, whole clans ceased to exist over the course of the decade of his journeying on the mainland. Robinson’s first diary entry was in 1840 and his last was in 1849.
In 1841, Robinson made a trek across the Western District recording what he saw in his journal. He notes that Campbell and Griffith had established a rudimentary farm at Illowa to the southeast of Tower Hill. He writes of a conference he held with hundreds of clanspeople among the hills eleven miles east of Port Fairy, not far to the west of the Merri River. This location appears to be about where Rundell’s farm is today.
Robinson records that on 27 April 1841 three hundred clanspeople gathered to meet him. According to the journal, the Aboriginal men were well armed. Over the course of two days and nights Robinson explained the purpose of his visit, which was to protect Aboriginal people in their dealings with the Europeans. The location of this meeting was just a few kilometers from the huts of “The Farm”. Given the numbers at the meeting, at this stage it seems there were more Peek Whurrong than Europeans in the area.
The existence of “The Farm” is also recorded by Foster Fyans in a journal entry of his from 1842. Fyans was at the time on a visit to the district with a contingent of mounted Border Police in his role as Crown Lands Commissioner for the Portland Bay District. According to Fyans, “The Farm” was a collection of a few simple huts and some fenced enclosures where crops of wheat and potatoes were grown. Fyans wrote that most of the European men were camping in huts along the coast.
In his report, Fyans stated that one hundred and forty acres were cultivated. He also reported that fifty-nine European people were on the coast to the east of Port Fairy involved in farming and livestock operations, including five women. Most camped in huts south of Tower Hill and they ran thousands of cattle and sheep for their masters. They had ten horses. Captain Fyans visited Port Fairy with his paramilitary troopers during the campaign of pacification known as the Eumeralla Wars.
According to Alexander Campbell’s testimony from a later date, violence and intimidation were used to enforce a regime of segregation whereby Aboriginal men were forcibly kept at a distance. Following the “theft” of supplies and produce, Peek Whurrong men were not tolerated to come close to the huts and fields. Alexander Campbell admitted in his memoirs that an exclusion zone was in place. He and his men were concerned about surprise attack and so did not tolerate the clansmen to come too close. Campbell and his men apparently had no intention of sharing agricultural produce.
Perhaps the clanspeople hoped that Protector Robinson might be able to defend them. They undoubtedly knew something of what had happened in other locations. Instead, Robinson’s presence in the Southwest and the activities of the Protectorate in general may have actually acerbated conflict. Most squatters resented the role of the Protectorate, and they especially detested the presence of Assistant Protector Sievewright. They actively sought to undermine the Protectorate’s role. Clandestine actions of a preemptive nature may have been taken to forestall any possibility of legal scrutiny. There seems to have been a code of silence amongst the gentlemen, with the aim of preventing evidence from reaching the government. Most servants knew to keep their mouths shut.
During his visit to Port Fairy, Chief Aboriginal Protector Robinson stayed in the house of Alexander Campbell, the leader of the Europeans on the coast. George Augustus Robinson clearly enjoyed the hospitality of the squatters and the leading men. The relative comfort of a gentleman’s hut must have been in stark contrast to sleeping rough with his Aboriginal guides. George Robinson styled himself as a British gentlemen and he wished to be regarded as such. He viewed the company of gentlemen as preferable to that of emancipist workers.
George Robinson’s actions show a clear conflict of interest. Like many travellers through the frontiers, Robinson relied upon Aboriginal guides and interpreters. He sought out Aboriginal leaders to communicate his message of reconciliation. On the other hand, he associated closely with some of the European gentlemen whose presence was the cause of the conflict. He was well disposed to many of them and wanted to impress the people he considered his peers.
Superintendent Charles La Trobe acted cleverly to finesse the situation on the frontier. On the one hand, he sent Aboriginal Protectors such as Robinson and Sievwright to the Southwest in order to be seen as doing something for Aboriginal protection. On the other hand, La Trobe sent para-military detachments led by Foster Fyans and Henry Dana to establish British law and order and to defend the property rights of squatters.
Foster Fyans and Henry Dana were both squatters, at least for a time. They took out pastoral leases over substantial runs in their names while holding senior government positions. This was a serious conflict of interest. As British government officers tasked with securing British interests, they did their duty but there was personal gain for themselves and their families.
Superintendent La Trobe and Captain Henry Dana were friends as well as professional associates. As colleagues they enjoyed a very cordial relationship. While on tour of duty, Dana and La Trobe rode affably together through the countryside of the Western District. Charles La Trobe wrote very positively of his friend shortly after Dana’s sudden death in 1852, commending Dana and his Native Police Corp to the British authorities in the highest terms.
Although never close personal friends, Superintendent Charles La Trobe and Commissioner Fyans worked professionally together very effectively for years, and relied upon each other in their respective professional roles.
The revolving door between those who spent time as squatters and those who were government officials is well illustrated in comments made by Richard Bennett in “Early Days of Port Fairy”. Bennett was of the landed elite of the Southwest and he associated with many squatters across several diverse parts of Australia. Looking back on earlier days in the 1850s when gold was discovered, Bennett comments: “I knew many squatters, who, upon selling out their runs, went into the Government Service as goldfields’ commissioners, police superintendents, inspectors, &c. There were no Civil Service examinations required to qualify for an appointment, in those days. If a candidate were a gentleman and had influence, which most had with the then ruling powers, appointments were easily obtained and preferment rapid.”
The various officers of the Crown worked in conjunction with the squatters to tacitly achieve the desired outcomes, even though this involved the dispossession of First Nations peoples. This was despite the policies of protection imposed upon them from London, perhaps designed as fig leaf rather than anything truly effective. As John Cary states in his recent book on Foster Fyans, “The British government had created conditions in which violence was unavoidable. It had provided no means to resolve the competing interests without fighting. Henry Reynolds points out that there was no provision for the negotiation of treaties. The British government in 1837 had determined that Aboriginal people were British subjects, but was unable to provide them with the protection of the law.” The Protectorate Stations were not successful in protecting First Nations peoples and the outcome of their efforts may have served to hasten the alienation of clans from country.
Nor were the Church mission stations successful either. There was the Wesleyan Mission of Buntingdale, near Birregurra, and several others as well. Disparate clan groups were gathered together at the missions to receive rations, religious instruction, and training in agriculture, but bringing groups together in a confined area resulted in some serious inter-clan violence, which should have been predicted. It seems not a single Aboriginal person could be induced to become a Christian during this initial period of dispossession. After the clan system had been devastated, some survivors did accept Christianity.
When Assistant Protector Charles Sievwright sought to bring European perpetrators to justice for the murders of Aboriginal men and women he was pilloried by the squatters and condemned by the newspapers. He was eventually hounded out of office and then left the district. Sievwright tried to do his job but it was very difficult in a system where legal depositions from First Nations people were inadmissible as evidence in trials of European men. Aboriginal clanspeople, as uncivilized non-Christians, were judged to be unable to swear oaths on the bible. Nevertheless, although inadmissible as evidence, depositions from Aboriginal witnesses could be recorded in legal proceedings, and for squatters the existence of written testimony was to be avoided wherever possible.
Survival entailed compromise. The enlistment of Aboriginal men into native police units was a practice employed in many parts of Australia. In the Port Phillip district, it was employed at an early stage. Some men of the Pyipgil Gunditj clan of the Port Fairy area were enlisted in the Native Police Corps. In the 1840s they waged conflict with Aboriginal men of distant parts of the country.
A census in 1850 taken by the Commissioner of Crown Lands for Portland Bay, William Grey, indicates there was a population of four hundred and twenty-two Aboriginal people, down from perhaps several thousand prior to invasion. By 1862 this had dropped to just one hundred and fifty-seven. Even if the figures are not entirely accurate, this is an indication of genocide.
The Assistant Protector at Port Phillip, William Thomas, reported that Aboriginal women were not raising babies, or only a very few. Many children died in the first weeks of life, possibly due to the ravages of the syphilis with which they had been born. Syphilis was a disease which ravished many clanspeople, as well as Europeans. Assistant Protector Thomas was of the view that certain children were deliberately killed within the clan if it was thought that they had been conceived illegitimately, although this view is disputed by some contempory writers.
Within a very few years, some of the Aboriginal people George Robinson met at Tower Hill were reduced to living as beggars on the margins of European settlements. People camped on the fringes of Port Fairy and Warrnambool. Indigenous people continued to die through violence of one form or another. Malnutrition and disease were common. While many Europeans lived in relative poverty, it was even harder for Aboriginal people.
Around this time, it is reported in the Koroit Sentinel newspaper that there were a couple of Aboriginal families living on the outskirts of Koroit, but they soon disappeared as well, apparently moved to the Framlingham mission, established by the Board for the Protection of Aborigines. Aboriginal people were then rarely seen in town.
At Lake Condah and Framlingham missions were established by the Victorian Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines. Such an ironic name. Perhaps the mission did some good. Many Aboriginal people in Victoria are connected to the mission stations in some way.
The Moyne Heritage Study of 2006 by Helen Doyle has a chapter called “Administering Aboriginal Affairs”. It is a harrowing read. The chapter focuses on how state government policy was implemented in the Southwest, and it provides details of Victoria’s official efforts in Aboriginal Affairs from 1838 till the mid-1980s. This is a damning indictment of state policy, every bit as genocidal as the frontier period.
