Colonial historians, writing in the late nineteenth century, established a standard ideological narrative. For them, Australia was a British society, part of the British Empire, ruled by wise men who understood the world better than the poorly educated masses. Free settlers of respectable middle-class backgrounds were the primary agents of progress and civilization. Aboriginal people had no agency in these accounts.
While narratives based on this entrenched ideology have been challenged by more critical accounts in recent years, they still maintain a grip on the popular mind. The public is not necessarily convinced alternative modes of thinking about our past are more honest or accurate than the old narratives. Those who identify as progressives in our politics have not won the “history wars,” except within their own quite restricted circles.
In the countryside, the tenants of some progressive and alternative interpretations of our history are viewed as quite hurtful and denigrating. It seems pointless to replace the old prejudices with new ones equally as tendentious. The confusion generated by conflicting visions of the past results in a reticence to engage with history in public forums, least it lead to seemingly pointless disputation.
Nevertheless, it is important to provide an account of how we got here based on the evidence now available. Every society needs an origin story which is open to periodic reinterpretation, even though consensus is likely to remain elusive. This is especially the case when examining the legacy of the members of the squatter class in the Western District and their relations with the subaltern people who worked in association with them. Perhaps even more contentious is the legacy of the tragic interactions between First Nations peoples and the Europeans who intruded into their country.
The reality for most working people was quite different to the picture portrayed in the foundational narratives of the late nineteenth century historians. For working people, life in colonial Victoria was not glorious or glamorous in the least. For many, conditions in the new world were as harsh as they were in the old. People were traumatized by the penal regime and the often-brutal conditions of frontier society. Substantial numbers of assisted immigrants were essentially dumped on our shores after being induced to emigrate as a consequence of woeful conditions at home. They entered into a world of dislocation and exploitation and many did not cope well at all. For those with aspirations to respectability, there was a pronounced incentive to adopt the vision and values of those who controlled the narrative.
In Van Diemen’s Land, the convict legacy was downplayed by the end of the nineteenth century. The island’s name was changed to Tasmania in an effort to obscure its grim and embarrassing history. When convicts were mentioned, it was usually in a disparaging or derogatory manner, a few success stories of convicts made good notwithstanding. Hardship was inherent in the process of settlement and the struggles of people to establish a foothold in Australia were whitewashed or glorified as “the triumph of our noble pioneers over adversity.”
The violence in the Midlands of Tasmania in the 1820s was part of life for people such as James and Ann Lowndes. There were undoubted psychologically impacts on transported people resulting from the violence between settlers and First Nations people during the period of warfare. Many Europeans were killed in these conflicts and James and Ann might have known some of the victims. It is impossible to know of every action of every individual so long ago.
It seems trite to attempt to convey what this violence felt to Aboriginal Tasmanians and it is not a story for outsiders to authorize in any case, apart from listing the basic facts of the situation. It does seem reasonable to speculate on the experience of our direct forebears, however; particularly when some of the same patterns emerged in the Western District.
By the time the Lowndes family arrived in Geelong in 1846, the frontier had already been pushed into the more remote corners of what was soon to become the Colony of Victoria. Europeans were well entrenched in Geelong and its environs by that stage. The town of Geelong grew steadily in the years after its survey in 1838, and was in a sense thriving when the Lowndes family arrived. White supremacy was effectively instituted in the town and across its hinterland.
To understand the world into which James and Ann stepped it is necessary to examine the long decade prior to 1846. The arrival story of our community is closely tied to what happened in those dozen or so years.
In times of war, accountability should lie primarily with the generals and the senior officers in charge, rather than with the conscripted men in the field. Men in battle follow a hierarchy of command. Those who lead the conflict are responsible for its outcome. In the context of colonial Australia and the Western District in particular, those in command were the gentlemen in the country. These men were the representatives of the state and the responsibility for what happened rests with them.
The planting of a British society in the Western District was a state-sponsored affair, greatly influenced by what had happened earlier in Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales. The gentlemen of Foster Fyan’s correspondence were the delegates of the British regime, the loyal subjects of Her Majesty. A small cohort ran affairs of state.
Captain Foster Fyans arrived at Geelong in 1837 to become the first Police Magistrate. His police district covered the entire Western District from Corio Bay to Portland. In 1840, he was appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands for much the same region. Like other senior government officials, Fyans, was also a squatter, holding the license for a run near Colac. It was common for officials to also be squatters and for squatters to be made district magistrates, the dispensers of justice on the frontier.
Following the passing of the Crown Lands Unauthorised Occupation Act of 1839, Border Police units were formed by the Government of New South Wales, which was then responsible for Port Phillip. Pastoralists could request assistance from the Police Magistrate or the Commissioner of Crown Lands when there was a significant threat to their lives and property. The Border Police was organized into several detachments, each under the authority of the Commissioner of Crown Lands for the respective district. Starting in 1839, a small group of mounted police troopers was available to assist Captain Fyans in responding to squatters’ demands.
Each Commissioner had about a dozen troopers. To reduce costs, the troopers assigned to the units were usually ex-soldiers transported to Australia due to military indiscipline. They were supplied with horses, equipment, and rations but were otherwise unpaid. The troopers sometimes performed paid work for the squatters to whom they were billeted.
The Border Police force was funded by a levy imposed on the squatters, calculated according to the number of livestock they ran. Under Captain Foster Fyans’ command, the Border Police Corps operated as a mobile paramilitary force in the Western District. Equipped with the latest firearms and well mounted, the corps were often led into the field personally by Captain Fyans.
The aim of the Border Police force was to protect the squatters and their property while trying to “conciliate” the Aboriginal people with British rule. This approach was intended to minimize the involvement of armed free settlers in ongoing conflicts with Aboriginal clans. Despite this professed desire to minimize conflict between squatters and First Nations people, the squatters were generally expected to handle their own security to at least some extent, as indicated in Fyans’ correspondence with Superintendent Charles La Trobe.
From the perspective of First Nations people, the newcomers who entered their lands did not adhere to any established norms of conduct. Reciprocal exchange and acknowledgement of country was the basis of social interactions between groups. The intruders did not ask for permission to enter country. Beyond an initial limited commitment to provide certain European goods such as blankets and flour, the newcomers did not share what they had with those whose land they sought. In nearly every part of Western Victoria, pastoralism and traditional Aboriginal land-use did not coexist for long. Typically, there was a brief period of relative peace as both sides evaluated the unfolding situation, followed by a devastating outbreak of violence.
After outright violence subsided, some surviving Aboriginal people accepted the need to work for squatters on pastoral stations. This allowed them limited ability to live in a traditional way, albeit much diminished in scope. Those who resisted were generally hunted down and killed. Starvation and disease stalked the survivors, reducing many to begging for sustenance. Although contact was frequently violent, it was not always so. There were various forms of contact, sometimes involving the sharing of food and sexual relations.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines subterfuge as the use of deceit, trickery, or strategic evasion to achieve a specific goal, or to escape consequences or conceal something. It describes deliberate, sly behavior, such as telling a calculated lie or creating a false pretext, in order to manipulate a situation or avoid taking responsibility. The subterfuge surrounding the European settlement at Port Phillip under the aegis of the Port Phillip Association initially carried out by a small group of free settlers and their servants from Van Diemen’s Land, resulted in several hundred Europeans being at Port Phillip by mid-1836. Men with sheep were crossing to Port Phillip with great regularity.
By January 1836, Joseph Gelibrand was at Port Phillip and by February he was exploring the Barwon River Valley. The previous year, the legally trained Gellibrand had drafted the famous “treaty” which John Batman presented to a small group of traditional owners on the banks of the Yarra on behalf of the Port Phillip Association.
John Helder Wedge, another shareholder in the Association, explored the Bellarine Peninsular, the Barwon River valley and Port Phillip in August 1835. Guided by William Buckley, the escaped convict who had lived with the Wadawurrung for decades, Wedge conducted a seven-day tour that followed the Barwon River from near its mouth at Lake Connewarre to Pollocksford before trekking back to the bay across the Barrabool Hills. He drew a sketch map based on his surveys at Port Phillip that was circulated to other gentlemen of the Association and more widely in Van Diemen’s Land. Copies were made of the map to send to the authorities. Each of the seventeen allocated runs were roughly delineated on the map and this information regarding boundaries was thereby provided to Van Diemen’s Land gentlemen for the purpose of excluding any new venturers onto land claimed by the Association. Wedge was personally invested in the scheme and was one of the first to bring over sheep from Tasmania to his allocated station on the Werribee River.
Van Diemen’s Land based investors had an intense interest in the lie of the land at Port Phillip. They were aware of the claims of the Association and thought it expedient to pursue their own runs away from land that had been included in the Association’s preposterous proposition. The Association was not without clout and its claims had to be given at least some regard until the situation with the authorities was established. In March 1836, David Fisher, the manager of the Derwent Company’s operations on the Barwon, together with George Russell of the rival Clyde Company, and Dr. Alexander Thomson, the catechist who took up Kardinia Park, all arrived at Williamstown aboard the “Caledonia”.
The three newly arrived squatters subsequently emerged as among the most prominent of the civic and pastoral gentlemen at Geelong and in its districts. They set up on land at the western end of the Bay at Geelong outside the runs claimed by the Association. Dr. Alexander Thomson, in particular, has a most delightful entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
Not all the new arrivals were gentlemen affiliated with either the Derwent or Clyde companies. For example, a consignment of many thousands of sheep was brought over to Corio Bay by the Manifold brothers in July of 1836. The animals were offloaded by emancipist shepherds at Point Henry. The Manifold family had earlier become landowners in the Tamar River estuary at the start of the 1830s but the patriarch was looking for more land for his sons. The same was true of William Roadknight. He and his son Thomas arrived at Point Henry with their initial consignment of sheep around the same time. There were many others as well.
All such gentlemen were accompanied by convict servants and laborers from Van Dieman’s Land. Some workers were the personal servants of the gentlemen, and some were shepherds or stockmen paid to transport, herd, and guard the animals.
The Port Phillip Association’s fifteen shareholders laid claim to seventeen or so runs around Port Phillip Bay and so new arrivals not shareholders of the Association prioritised taking up runs immediately outside the boundaries of these runs. Land along the Barwon and Moorabool Rivers was not included in the Association’s claims and thus was heavily favoured by new arrivals, as was country beyond Mount Cottrell on the upper reaches of the Werribee River and along the upper tributaries of the Saltwater River towards Mount Macedon.
There were casualties among the Europeans. A free settler named Charles Franks was killed in July 1836 near Mount Cottrell along with an obscure servant named Flinders. This “outrage” resulted in a violent reprisal led by some of the most prominent free settlers, including Henry Batman and Dr. Alexander Thomson, in which an unknown number of Clanspeople were killed. Franks had arrived at Williamstown in June 1836 with five hundred sheep and had reached the Mount Cottrell area by early July.
Franks was an early partner of George Armytage, who later became one of the most extensive squatters of the Geelong district, together with his sons. In Tasmania, Armytage had received sizable grants of land in the 1820s and been an active participant in the Black War on the island.
On the Bellarine Peninsular, two emancipist servants were lured to their deaths by “native treachery” that same year. Most shockingly for the free settlers, one of the Association’s key members, Joseph Gellibrand, together with George Hesse, another gentleman from Van Dieman’s Land, disappeared southwest of Geelong in February 1837, never to be seen again but presumably killed by Aboriginal people of the Colac or Otway region. This presumed “murder” of gentlemen settlers sent shockwaves through the tight knit community of investors. One “benefit” of this tragedy was that new country was scouted, soon to be taken up, in the efforts to recover Gellibrand and Hesse.
Meanwhile, officials in New South Wales and London came to accept that the days of restricting European settlement to confined and designated limits surrounding Sydney were over. The restriction had been in place for years, but because of its increasing ineffectiveness in holding back settlers the British policy regarding the limits of settlement was changed.
Concern was expressed in Britain about how the relaxation of restrictions on settlement might affect the Aboriginal people. After consultation with London, Governor Sir Richard Bourke came to the view that the Port Phillip District should be brought more firmly under the control of Sydney. If effective measures could be put in place by central authority to control and regulate squatters and thereby protect Aborigines then the anticipated harm might at least be mitigated.
Reports of acts of violence on both sides had already reached Britain. In light of what had previously happened in Tasmania and parts of the mainland, it was felt that unless steps were taken to address the potential dangers, any increase in free settlers would lead to further prolonged conflict as settlers spread out.
The idea of evacuating the settlement and of leaving Port Phillip to its original inhabitants was likely never seriously considered by British officials. Such an action would have required significant political will and would have been challenging logistically. Furthermore, it would have faced strong resistance from influential men invested in the new settlement on the mainland. A substantial amount of money was at stake at Port Phillip, not to mention the British national interest.
In any case, the window in which to act was very narrow, given the rapid pace of events on the ground. In May 1836, Governor Richard Bourke dispatched George Stewart, a police Magistrate at Goulburn in New South Wales, to Port Phillip to inquire into the circumstances of the ad hoc settlement there and report back to him.
Governor Bourke seems to have felt he was not being kept fully appraised of what was happening at Port Phillip by the gentlemen from Van Diemen’s Land who were now operating without proper authorisation in what was clearly Bourke’s jurisdiction. Stewart reported that the number of Europeans at the settlement on the Yarra was one hundred and forty-two males and thirty-five females. Included in the head count were several gentlemen of the Port Phillip Association.
It might have been possible to send this fairly modest number of interlopers back to where they had come from if Bourke acted quickly. More concerning for Bourke, there were now 26,500 head of sheep in the surrounding districts, tended to by an unascertained number of convict or emancipist shepherds.
Sheep were a form of currency and the gentlemen who owned them were influential, as were the backers of the wool industry in Australia generally. It seems not credible that this number of sheep could be returned to Tasmania or be allowed to just roam without ownership. The gentlemen squatters from Van Diemen’s land were trying to have Bourke accept a fait accompli on the ground.
From September 1836, Governor Bourke sent down from Sydney to Port Phillip a series of administrators, police magistrates, surveyors, and troopers, all with the aim of asserting his jurisdictional control over the expanding population, primarily from Tasmania. Bourke had been lobbied to do so by some of the foremost gentlemen at Port Phillip, now that it was clear New South Wales would assert its jurisdictional right. It was clear by that stage that the gentlemen would not be forced to abandon their enterprise at Port Phillip and it was also clear that New South Wales was going to fully exert its control over them while in that territory.
Among the first Bourke sent to Melbourne was Police Magistrate William Lonsdale, who was a competent British military officer who had served most recently at Port Macquarie in New South Wales. In 1834 while serving there he purchased a captain’s commission for around £1000. Lonsdale came to Australia with his regiment in 1832, having previously served as a junior officer in the British slave based colonies of Jamaica, Barbados, and Antigua. While serving in New South Wales, Lonsdale was tasked with controlling and disciplining convicts. Lonsdale resigned from his regiment in March 1837, six months after arriving in Melbourne.
The Colonial Secretary’s Office in Sydney issued the following notice on 9 September 1836: “His Majesty’s Government having authorised the location of Settlers on the vacant Crown Lands adjacent to the shores of Port Phillip under the same Regulations as are now in force for the alienation of Crown Lands in the other parts of New South Wales, and several persons having already passed over there from Van Diemen’s Land, His Excellency the Governor has been pleased to appoint Captain William Lonsdale, of the 4th, or King’s Own Regiment, to be Police Magistrate for that district, of which all persons concerned are hereby required to take notice”.
The sovereign rights of the Aboriginal people were completely disregarded in this announcement. Moreover, it is clear that the notice was primarily directed at the enterprise of the “several persons” from Van Diemen’s Land. The persons were the squatters of the Port Phillip Association. The hundreds of serving men and women at Port Phillip were not addressed in this notice, just the gentlemen were conferred with the status of persons. The task set for Lonsdale was to bring the servants and laborers from Van Diemen’s Land firmly under Crown control, through the exercise of harsh disciplinary measures over these “non-persons.”
Upon arriving at Port Phillip from Sydney, Lonsdale, together with his family and retinue, were ceremoniously rowed up the Yarra River in a small naval boat to the new settlement. His biographer, John Wilkins, describes Lonsdale’s arrival as follows: “The boat was tied up to the sloping riverbank and Lonsdale stepped ashore to be greeted by Dr Thomson … wearing a formidable brace of pistols in his belt, who proceeded to tell Lonsdale… that they were ‘in a most lawless state, with the possibility of being assaulted …’”. It seems some gentlemen such as Dr. Alexander Thomson were evidently more afraid of the men of Van Diemen’s Land’s working class than they were of the Indigenous people. Perhaps there was a class war at Port Phillip as well as an incipient race war.
When Captain Lonsdale arrived at Port Phillip on 29 September 1836, his enforcement team consisted of three civil police constables and a military detachment of thirty-three men from Lonsdale’s regiment. The British Army had arrived to rule over the servants and laborers from Tasmania as well as the Aboriginal population. Punishments were harsh, and included frequent lashings, confinement in leg irons, and heavy fines. As for the squatters, the persons in other words, they would have to submit to a licensing regime which regulated their pastoral activities through the taking out of annual leases to depasture stock over Crown Land.
When Governor Bourke visited Port Phillip in March 1837 he praised Captain Lonsdale’s zeal and discretion. Lonsdale took on the role of acting superintendent of the Port Phillip District until the appointment of Charles Joseph La Trobe as Superintendent in September 1839, after which Lonsdale continued in his role of police magistrate. The two men worked closely together.
After his retirement in the early 1840s as Police Magistrate, Captain Lonsdale took on a pastoral leasehold at the Grange, near Hamilton. He timed his run well, for he knew the period of most violent conflict in the district had passed. When taking up the lease from previous squatters, Captain Lonsdale knew that the era of clearing the land on the Grange was nearly over.
Squatters had the right to occupy land for pastoral purposes, but they did not own it. Under the terms of their annual licenses, they could use Crown Land solely for grazing livestock. Despite the limited rights these licenses provided, these enabled sufficient rights to property to secure the land initially. To maintain their licenses, squatters were required to stock the land according to its potential carrying capacity and to make infrastructure improvements, like building sheds, pens, and sheep washes.
The Port Phillip Association was backed by some of Van Diemen’s Land’s leading bankers, pastoralists, and merchants. From the outset, the Association acted on its own behalf, testing the bounds of British law and government. The investors prepared well and proceed cautiously in crossing to the mainland, as Port Phillip was part of New South Wales even though it was far from any other settlement administered from Sydney. The idea was to obfuscate and to play for time. Batman’s treaty with the Aboriginal peoples of Port Phillip was designed to convince the colonial and imperial authorities that the gentlemen of the Association should be allowed to establish settlement upon the land.
In Britain, the chief investor in the Association was George Mercer, a Scottish estate owner and former officer and merchant of the East India Company. Mercer had sent two of his sons to Van Diemen’s Land to oversee his investments there. Mercer was in partnership with Captain Charles Swanston, a Hobart-based merchant and banker, also formerly of the East India Company. Swanston thus knew Mercer from their earlier links in the British India trade.
Another gentleman in on the scheme was Thomas Learmonth. Learmonth Senior moved to Van Diemen’s Land from his estate in Scotland in 1835, doubtless influenced by Captain Charles Swanston and George Mercer, who were his colleagues in the financial affairs of the East India Company. Learmonth Senior had made a great deal of money in the service of the Company in Calcutta as a merchant. British India was the source of the family fortunes of all three gentlemen who were to form the nucleus of the Derwent Company, which emerged as a restructured Port Phillip Association.
Thomas Learmonth Senior arrived in Tasmania in 1835 with several young sons at a time when there were no longer any land grants being handed out to free settlers. The pastoral land there was all occupied, so there was no prospect of securing a great estate in Van Diemen’s Land as Swanston had done. Harriet Edquist, Professor of Architectural History at RMIT University, Melbourne, suggests that Thomas Senior had privileged knowledge and learnt in advance through insider information about the possibility of taking up land on the mainland opposite Tasmania. Edquist is the author of “Thomas Learmonth and Sons: Family capitalism, Scottish identity and the architecture of Victorian pastoralism,” published in 2019.
At the time of the family’s arrival in Hobart, Thomas Learmonth Senior’s four sons were still quite young. John was aged twenty-three and had recently graduated as a doctor, Thomas Junior was seventeen, Somerville was sixteen, and Andrew was just ten. Both Thomas Junior and Somerville had been born in Calcutta.
Thomas and Somerville were still in their teens in 1837 when they were sent over by their father to Port Phillip to find suitable land for sheep. The young chaps were doubtless under the watchful eye of older men associated with the Derwent Company, such as David Fisher, who was the manager of Company operations at Geelong, and who doubled as the personal agent for George Mercer’s investments at Port Phillip.
Thomas Learmonth Senior’s four sons were all involved in squatting at Port Phillip almost from its inception. At Batesford, Buninyong and Burrumbeet they took up land and built homes on a scale that was not possible for them to do in Scotland at that time. The Derwent Company was an investment vehicle. The Company bought land at Batesford in 1839 and this freehold property was conveniently conveyed to Dr. John Learmonth in 1845 when he and his family permanently moved there from Tasmania. John was busy setting up house at Batesford the year James Lowndes and family arrived at Geelong.
The Learmonth family’s baronial home, Ercildoun House, was built on the Burrumbeet run which Thomas and Somerville Learmonth acquired shortly after they took up their Buninyong run south of Ballarat, a run they first leased in 1838. The Learmonth lads had identified Buninyong as a great prospect for sheep in 1837 when they explored the region in the company of Dr Alexander Thomson, David Fisher, and Captain Hutton of the East India Company.
The Cartel of Agents
When news of the Association’s arrival at Port Phillip became known beyond a small group of opportunists from Van Diemen’s Land, Governor Bourke in New South Wales initially deemed it unauthorized. For one thing, it was contrary to the policy which aimed to confine European settlement to a designated zone around Sydney. There were also concerns regarding an uncontrolled influx of convicts and emancipists into the district who would then be difficult to bring to heal if an unregulated intrusion were allowed to continue unchecked for long. Bourke was also aware of the sensitivities in London regarding the likelihood of further unchecked violence between Europeans and Aboriginal people. The British relationship with the indigenous people of Port Phillip needed to be shaped by government regulation, and could not proceed by way of ad hoc deal making.
In a proclamation of August 1835, Governor Bourke in Sydney declared that all settlers in the Port Phillip District of New South Wales were trespassers on Crown land. Any deals or “treaties” with Aboriginal people were void. By the end of the following year, however, political lobbying and government deliberation ensured that the legal and regulatory situation was changed to accommodate the facts that had been established on the ground in Port Phillip and to address the concerns of the British governing elite.
In October 1836, the New South Wales government passed legislation to legalize squatting on Crown Land. Grazing rights would be offered for an annual fee to appropriate people. Without apparent irony, this act was titled “An Act to Restrain the Unauthorised Occupation of Crown Lands,” and was commonly referred to as the “Squatters Act.” This act took effect on January 1, 1837, allowing graziers to obtain a license to occupy Crown Land outside designated settlement areas. The squatters just needed to pay a modest annual fee of ten pounds.
The question of what to do regarding the claims of the Port Phillip Association had been an issue of considerable deliberation over the months prior to the promulgation of the “Squatters Act”. In November 1836 Governor Bourke, having consulted Lord Glenelg in the Colonial Office in London, announced that the land taken up by the Association would go up for auction, although the government agreed to pay compensation of £7000 to the shareholders.
George Mercer in London made regular appeals to the Colonial Office on behalf of the Port Phillip Association, to some effect. He was a major shareholder in the venture and acted as the London agent for the scheme. Because of the uncertainty surrounding the future of their venture, and the status of their land claims, many of the Association’s initial partners sold out to Swanston and Mercer. By 1837 Swanston, Mercer, and Thomas Learmonth had control of nearly all the shares, and the Association was reformed as the Derwent Company with these men as its major shareholders.
Eighteen months after Batman’s initial expedition to Port Phillip in May 1835, the Port Phillip Association had evolved into the Derwent Company, with Mercer, Swanston and Learmonth the primary shareholders. All three gentlemen had amassed their fortunes in British India and had money at their disposal. Although a single commercial company, the men were at the head of their individual family businesses.
In setting up at Port Phillip and Geelong, Mercer, Swanston, and Learmonth Senior were assisted by their sons and other close relatives. The focus of their endeavours shifted to the Geelong district and away from the runs around Melbourne which had been declared invalid by the government and which were to be auctioned. What happened subsequently north and west of Geelong set the scene of our history for the next century.
Men associated with the Derwent Company took up some of the largest and most prime squatting runs in Western Victoria. Substantial capital was injected into these ventures and was thereby placed at risk. At Geelong, the loyal and talented David Fisher oversaw Company operations.
In 1837, David Fisher and other men of the Company, including Dr. Thomson and a youthful Thomas Learmonth Junior, explored west and north of Geelong to identify the best runs in the heart of the Western District. By the end of 1837, Fisher, Thomas Learmonth, and others had secured the Mt. Mercer, Weatherboard, Native Creek No. 3, Mt. Shadwell, and Warrambine runs for the company. They also explored to the north of Geelong as far as Mount Buninyong and identified good runs along the way. When the speculators initially spied the sheep runs, the Wadawurrung clanspeople controlled the country, but within a decade the pastoralists had overturned the basis of their economy and severely disrupted a ceremonial culture that had existed for millennia.
Applying for a squatter license in 1838, David Fisher declared his ownership of 12,000 sheep, six hundred cattle, and nine horses. In addition, he declared a servant workforce of thirty-seven men and three women, all of whom he said were free. Nevertheless, these servants were mostly emancipated convicts from Van Diemen’s Land and were treated as such.
David Fisher was considered one of the most esteemed civic gentlemen at Port Phillip, and was a leader of the Geelong Presbyterian community in particular. At the first land sales in Melbourne, he purchased a block on Collins Street, which he immediately lent to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland for their first church. Fisher was also a key figure in establishing St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Geelong from 1841. It was the first proper church building in town.
On 13 March 1837, Richard Bourke, the New South Wales Governor, visited David Fisher at his house at Geelong and camped beside it. Governor Bourke was undoubtedly aware of Fisher’s connections to influential men such as George Mercer and Charles Swanston. During his visit, Governor Bourke spent several days up-country along the Moorabool River visiting the remote stations of George Russell, Peter Manifold, and the Sutherland brothers, among others. These men had crossed from Van Diemen’s Land with their sheep during 1836.
That Governor Bourke’s stayed and enjoyed the hospitality of these squatters on their remote stations shows that Bourke was now reconciled with such independent enterprise. The Governor understood that the squatters were representatives of respectable gentry families and of commercial interests in the colonies and in Britain.
In an address to an assembled group of squatters which gathered at Geelong to welcome his arrival, Governor Bourke is recorded as saying the following: “The principal object of this visit is to accelerate the means by which those who have transferred, or are about to transfer, capital and stock to this district may be able to convert without further delay, an uncertain and insecure occupation into a legal possession. The means at my disposal are as usual in many undertakings in newly settled countries, hardly adequate to the end. But it is my anxious desire to hasten the survey and consequent disposal of the Crown lands which His Majesty has directed to be alienated in this district.”
The policy of the British Crown is revealed in this statement. His Majesty the King was invoked as lending his support to the squatters. Spearheaded by the gentlemen assembled at the gathering in Geelong, British investments in pastoralism could safely go ahead with His Majesty’s endorsement. The Governor assured the assembled squatters that soon all land ownership issues would be properly regulated under British law just as soon as the New South Wales government could act on the matter and proceed to survey and sell the land soon to be “alienated in this district.” In the meantime, the Crown would lend its support to the new pastoral enterprises established on leaseholds.
With the imprimatur of the Crown in place, plans for expansion could be rolled out. Every effort would be made by the Governor, through the work of Crown’s surveyors and government administrators, to ensure the satisfactory transfer of the Crown Land now occupied by squatters into their “legal procession.” The plantation of the Port Phillip District as a British settlement could proceed with the Crown’s blessing.
The licensing system began the process of bringing squatters under more formal control, while at the same time not blocking their movement into unsecured country. The so called “Squatters Act” authorized the appointment of Commissioners of Crown Lands to manage the squatters and oversee the issuing of licences. It formalized their legal status in Australia, transforming them from illegal trespassers into the licensed tenants of the Crown.
The Government of the Commonwealth of Australia is the successor to the British administration led by Governor Bourke, then the highest civil representative of the Crown in the colony. Senator Lidia Thorpe rightly points out that the Crown was the principal “legal” authority enabling the seizure of land from its traditional owners. She asserts that usurpation of country was carried out without recognising any form of compensation, treaty, or formal acknowledgment of prior occupation.
Senator Thorpe uses the term “stolen land”, which might seem severe. Nevertheless, it underscores her crucial point. Not only was the land taken by force, but the original inhabitants were also the subjects of genocidal violence. The definition of genocide is outlined under the United Nations Genocide Convention, and a dispassionate examination of what happened in subsequent decades in Victoria can only conclude that the threshold for genocide was well and truly passed. The Crown might argue that it was not responsible for the violence perpetrated by settlers, and had put in place measures to protect “the Aborigines,” but the evidence suggests that this disclaimer in no way absolves the Crown from an indictment of genocide.
Men with military training, previously serving as officers with the East India Company, accompanied the earliest exploration parties that ventured deep into First Nations territories. Following Governor Bourke’s visit to Geelong, these scouting parties pushed beyond the relative safety of Corio Bay. For example, Captain Charles Hutton was with David Fisher on an 1837 expedition that reached as far as Mount Buninyong. The party also included the teenage brothers Thomas and Somerville Learmonth and Dr Alexander Thomson.
Captain Hutton joined the East India Company army in 1825, enlisting at the young age of sixteen. After spending a decade or so in India, he migrated to Australia while still in his twenties. He was ambitious to secure his own colonial property. As part of David Fisher’s 1837 exploration party, he can be considered an agent of the Derwent Company. The same can be said of the two Learmonth boys. Their father, Thomas Learmonth Senior, now based in Van Diemen’s land and a major investor in the Derwent Company, had also previously served with the East India Company, which was an entity intimately connected with the British imperial state.
Captain Hutton was hired by former officers of the East India Company, men such as Swanston, Mercer and Learmonth Senior. The Learmonth brothers in subsequent years established vast squatter runs around Ballarat. Charles Hutton was their colleague in the squatting business and they knew him well.
In mid-1838 Charles Hutton took up the Campaspe Plains Run near Heathcote. His party arrived in July of that year. The group was primarily composed of his assigned convict servants and they camped on the upper reaches of Wild Duck Creek for about a month while Hutton explored the surrounding land. Hutton then moved his camp downstream and established his head station, the first in the district. A series of violent confrontations with clansmen took place in 1838 and early 1839, resulting in the deaths of several hutkeepers and a number of clanspeople.
In June 1839, Charles Hutton led a war party of Europeans on a raid against clanspeople, resulting in the Campaspe Plains massacre. In reprisal for the loss of sheep and the deaths of two servants, Hutton led his armed party of Europeans to follow and finally catch up with a group of Aboriginal men camped near the Campaspe Creek. They had with them a flock of “stolen” sheep. Armed conflict between the Europeans and the clanspeople continued for about half an hour. Hutton claimed privately that nearly forty Aboriginal people were killed in the battle.
The following month Hutton led a party of mounted police and came upon a party of local Djadja Wurrung clanspeople whom Hutton had previously forced off his run, even though these people had been friendly to him since his arrival and evidently had nothing to do with the earlier violence. Without warning, under Hutton’s command, the mounted police attacked the Aboriginal camp. Six Djadja Wurrung clansmen were shot in the back and killed as they tried to flee, and others were wounded.
Charles Parker, the Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the region, described the massacre as “a deliberately planned illegal reprisal on the aborigines, conducted on the principle advocated by many persons in this colony, that when any offence is committed by unknown individuals, the tribe to which they belong should be made to suffer for it.”
George Augustus Robinson, the Chief Protector of Aborigines, described Charles Hutton and his attitude to “the natives” in his journal of 24 January 1840 as follows: “Mr H. avowed [his approach to the natives] to be terror; to keep the natives in subjection by fear, and to punish them wholesale, that is, by tribes and communities. If a member of a tribe offend, destroy the whole. He believed they must be exterminated.”
No official action was ever taken against Captain Hutton, which says something of colonial sentiment at this time. In subsequent years, Hutton established a station on the King Parrot Creek and in 1841 he acquired a property on the Merri Creek in Melbourne where he lived with his wife and children. He became a prominent landowner in the new suburb of Collingwood and built a substantial mansion fronting Victoria Parade on a large piece of land.
Another officer of the East India Company who took up remote country well to the west of Geelong was the Scottish officer Captain James Webster. Arriving from Van Diemen’s Land, Webster took up the Mount Shadwell pastoral run in 1839 and established his home station below the mount, close to where the town of Mortlake is today. This country had also previously been scouted by the men of the Derwent Company. The Mount Shadwell run was initially a vast expanse of 78,000 acres. It contained within its boundaries numerous Aboriginal peoples.
From 1839, Captain Webster, partnered with Captain William Adam, another former officer of the East India Company, worked effectively to establish several sheep runs in the heart of the Western District. Details of what happened, so far from “civilization,” are very sparse. Once in the field, the officers were a long way from any meaningful supervision. Most of the men in their employ were illiterate and not inclined to talk to authorities, who would have discounted their accounts in any case. In this location there was no designated official of the Aboriginal Protectorate or any Christian missionaries to make adverse reports, as was the case in a few other places.
In 1848, Webster subdivided the Mount Shadwell run, creating Hexham Park station of 35,300 acres, a run which Captain Adam immediately took over for a time. Captain Webster retained control of the remaining portion of the Mount Shadwell station for himself, which by then ran 25,000 head of sheep and cattle. By the mid-1850s, at the time when the town of Mortlake was first established, the Indigenous people of the Mount Shadwell and Hexham Park runs were very few in number, although their original population must have been well into the several hundreds of people.
As in other places, losses can only be guessed at through absence since no convincing evidence as to the cause of the sudden precipitous drop in population has come to light. Nevertheless, the author can recall that in the mid-1960s local people were of the view that massacres of Aboriginal people were widespread at the time runs were taken up and were instigated by the squatters. That this had occurred was not in doubt, the only question was whether this mattered. Some thought it did and others thought it did not, but all agreed that nothing was or could be done about it.
When taking up runs, Captain Webster, Captain Adam, Captain Hutton, Captain Swanston, Captain Fyans Captain Lonsdale, Captain Dana and all the other Captains of their kind can be considered the spearheads of the British state. They were Company men operating in a frontier situation at a time of dispersal and occupation. These military affiliated officers, some of whom had served in the Peninsular Wars and in British India, were the commanders in the field. Out there with them was a workforce of servants and shepherds, as well as their managers and overseers. In this “distant field of murder,” they operated largely with impunity, although not entirely so, sometimes using tactics of private filibuster to secure pastoral land, often acting as agents for well-funded commercial ventures linked to high ranking British individuals.
The British East India Company ruled over hundreds of millions of Indian people on the Indian sub-continent. Though backed by Crown charter, it was legally a private corporation. In his book “The Handover,” published in 2023, the British academic and hereditary peer David Runciman describes the East India Company as follows, “At the end of the eighteenth century, the East India Company oversaw its empire of hundreds of millions of people with a permanent staff of 160 in its London offices, and another 3,000 employees at its warehouse facilities around the world. At the same time, it ran a mercenary army of nearly 200,000, which was bigger than the British army of the same period. These soldiers were not its employees – none of them got a pension. They were originally hired hands, doing the company’s dirty work for it, though over time they were built up into a semi-permanent system of regiments with British officers overseeing them. Meanwhile, the many millions who were subject to the company’s rule were excluded from any say in how it was run.”
Service in the East India Company was very suited to preparing young British men for the challenges of colonial life in frontier Australia. Perhaps inevitably, this corporate mechanism of imperial expansion had a role to play in the conquest of the Western District. Finance generated from the Company’s enterprise bankrolled some of the squatters. It is clear that several military officers who had served in the army of the East India Company were the leading men on the frontier at the time of the killings.
Despite the appointment of several government salaried officials as “Aboriginal Protectors,” squatters generally enjoyed considerable impunity to act as they pleased in remote areas. The country was vast and the protectors were few and far between. Squatters operated with little oversight or accountability and there were few observers inclined to publicly challenge their actions. Most squatters chafed against the institutional constraints of the Aboriginal Protectorate and sought to subvert its effectiveness where they could.
The term “savages” was always used in reference to Aboriginal people rather than used in relation to “respectable” Europeans. Nevertheless, lessons learned in Tasmania significantly influenced the “pioneering settlement” of the Port Phillip District. The gentlemen involved at Port Phillip were experienced in colonial life, and were fully aware of the consequences of their occupation for the Aboriginal people, but this did not deter them. They and their backers were determined to profit from pastoralism, and speculation in land, come what may.
It was the prospect of economic gain that won the day, spurred by human greed and ambition. When the gentlemen staked out their claims over great areas of Western Victoria, they were acting in compliance with British government policy, such as that elucidated so clearly at Geelong in 1837 by Governor Bourke. The sheep that spread across Port Phillip came from flocks established in the Tasmanian Midlands over the previous decade, on land that had already been usurped.
Imperial logic ensured that land west of Port Phillip would also be usurped for wool production. It was ideal for this purpose, and free for the taking, so long as a chap was willing to “go outside [the limits of what had already been taken] and take up a new run, provided the conscience of the party is sufficiently seared to enable him without remorse to slaughter natives right and left. It is universally and distinctly understood that the chances are very small indeed of a person taking up a new run being able to maintain possession of his place and property without having recourse to such means.” This observation was recorded in 1839 by Neil Black, the well-known Western District squatter of the Terang district. According to the logic of colonial expansion, one event led inexorably to another.
Not just anyone could expect to take up land in this manner. A squatter was from the start of 1837 a licensed agent. A gentleman needed to demonstrate he had sufficient capital and livestock to effectively take up a run. He needed to be deemed a person of tolerable character, and loyalty to the Crown was deemed a given in order to proceed.
The Police Magistrates and Commissioners of Crown Lands controlled the process of issuing licenses. In theory, the annual license might not be renewed, however in practice the threat of withholding a license was rarely carried out, unless the land in question was shortly to be surveyed and was thus to be alienated in that way. Nevertheless, the possibility of non-renewal served as a useful tool to enforce compliance.
From 1837 till changes were made in 1847, the squatters did not have any claim to permanent property rights over the land which comprised their runs. The license fee only granted them the right to graze sheep on a loosely specified area. It did not provide leasehold rights beyond that. When it came to license renewal, the size of a run was delimited by the number of sheep available for stocking, as well as the capacity for investment in infrastructure improvements.
Disputes among squatters about boundaries were common, as the exact location of boundaries was often unclear. Initially, boundaries were marked by notching trees, hammering pegs into the ground, or ploughing furrows. The Commissioners of Crown Lands were responsible for arbitrating boundary disputes, which sometimes made them unpopular with particular squatters who did not get their way. Because licenses needed to be renewed annually, the Commissioners could threaten a complaining squatter with the loss of his license if he did not accept the decision. On occasion, an aggrieved squatter would appeal over the head of a Commissioner directly to the Governor’s office.
By investing in sheep, which essentially functioned as a form of currency, a squatter could control vast areas of land and exclude others. The backing of a pastoral company such as the Derwent Company, or its great rival, the Clyde Company, provided additional security in that men could take up a run almost as if they were members of a franchising operation.
There was a rush to be the first authorised man to claim a lease over a portion of unsecured frontier country, on land over which no other squatter had previously staked a claim. Alternatively, a leasehold could be claimed over land where an earlier lease had lapsed, or on which an earlier claimant had not actually taken control of the leasehold with sufficient force or stock to hold it. Sometimes the clanspeople succeeded in forcing squatters from their country, at least for a time. Other squatters always followed those who had succumbed to the resistors.
During the early 1840s depression, the Derwent Company and other commercial squatting ventures experienced severe financial difficulties. The economic downturn led to a significant reduction in the finance available to invest in the pastoral industry. There was a steep decline in land values, a drop in wool prices, and increased difficulty for debtors to meet their interest payments. Consequently, many of the original leaseholds were sold to other members of the squatter class, often connected to the original investors through family, military, and professional ties.
In the far west of the Port Phillip District, the Henty family moved inland from Portland in 1836 to take up runs on the Wannon River. Portland was a whaling and trading outpost established by the Henty brothers in 1834. Pushing north from Portland, the Hentys were accompanied by the Winter brothers and a few others from Van Diemen’s Land. From 1837, the squatters in the remote far west could claim to be also acting in compliance with British regulations.
In response to squatters’ requests for protection from Aboriginal attacks, and in response to reports of violence against Aboriginal people, in 1839 Governor Gipps established the Border Police, contingents of which were deployed to several districts on the Australian frontier. Gipps had succeeded Bourke as New South Wales governor. The legislation that created the force was the Crown Lands Unauthorised Occupation Act, and a livestock tax was imposed on squatters to fund the force. The Border Police worked under the authority of the Commissioners of Crown Lands.
Border Police troopers supported the British regime in enforcing law and order on the frontier. They could be deployed to back the squatters when there were instances of conflict with Aboriginal clanspeople beyond which the squatters could manage on their own. This was perhaps a tacit admission that something akin to warfare was occurring in remote parts of the frontier.
A detachment of this border police force patrolled the length and breadth of the Portland Bay District for years, most often under the personal operational command of Captain Foster Fyans. As a former military man with years of experience in challenging colonial commands, Fyans was well placed to manage this security force. Most of the mounted troopers under Foster Fyans’ charge were former convicts who had been in previous military service.
For better or worse, Foster Fyans is a notable figure in Western District history. In 1840, the Western District was designated as the District of Portland Bay, with Fyans appointed as Commissioner of Crown Lands for the District, a role he held throughout the 1840s. To obtain a license to run sheep on a particular piece of country, a squatter had to go through him. He needed to demonstrate to Fyans that he had sufficient stock, character, and fortitude to sustain his pastoral activities.
Squatters relied heavily on the availability of vast tracts of unsurveyed Crown Land. This requirement for extensive acreage made it financially unfeasible to purchase the land outright. Nevertheless, it was essential for them to enjoy some form of exclusive property right that might be enforced. The Border Police Corps, as well as the Native Police Corps, were government paramilitary units mobilized to support the squatters where needed and to impose British rule by force.
On the frontier, or on the “outside” as it was referred to at the time, the taking up of a run by an ambitious man was essentially an act of usurpation, the planting of oneself and ones flag on previously foreign territory, perversely on land that was considered “unoccupied.” In many instances, squatters subdued the clanspeople and took over the country before the government’s forces became involved.
The squatters did not have everything their own way. There was mounting social and political pressure from London that was put on the authorities in Sydney and Melbourne to implement measures designed to ensure the protection of Aboriginal people. The British government set up the Port Phillip Protectorate in 1838, expecting the local colonial authorities to support its efforts and implement a protection program. The legislation to establish the Protectorate was guided through the British House of Commons by Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. The legislation stipulated that a number of Protectors of Aborigines be recruited with specific powers to ensure the protection of Aboriginal people.
The three primary objectives of the Protectors of Aborigines were to safeguard the Aboriginal population of their designated districts, to reduce conflicts between Europeans and Aboriginal people, and to encourage Aboriginal people to adopt a European way of life. However, these conflicting aims soon proved impossible to reconcile.
In 1839 George Augustus Robinson became the Chief Protector of Aborigines. Four Assistant Protectors were appointed to particular regions to assist Robinson. William Thomas was assigned to the Melbourne and Westernport regions, James Dredge to the Goulburn region, Edward Stone Parker to the Loddon and Northwest District and Charles Sievwright to the Western District.
Assistant Protector Sievwright initially set up his operational base on a reserve at Fyansford but was urged by Robertson to go further afield. In 1840 he established a protectorate reserve near Terang, deep in the Southwest of the Western District. The following year he moved the protectorate reserve to Mount Rouse, near present day Penshurst.
As far as the squatters of the Southwest were concerned, Charles Sievwright was a cause of resentment, a fly in their ointment. They were of the view that he was interfering in their legitimate affairs and they deemed his program as constituting an unwelcome intrusion. They felt constrained by the fact that the Aboriginal Protectorate had supporters in high places and they knew they were being monitored to some extent. The squatters, as well as Commissioner Fyans, increasingly came to detest Sievwright and often denigrated his work. Like other squatters, Fyans begrudged the intrusion of Charles Sievwright and the Protectorate in general. He considered the security of the Portland Bay District as his patch. By 1840, Foster Fyans was fully aligned with the interests of other squatters, including in their generally unsympathetic attitudes towards Aboriginal people.
Squatters undermined the Protectorate’s mission from the start, arguing that its role provided cover for Aboriginal people to commit murder and theft. There was a rule of leniency and latitude for them and a concomitant rule of censure and condemnation for us, a viewpoint which of course has a long legacy. The Protectorate faced convoluted legal disputes over the legal admissibility of testimony from Aboriginal people, who were not recognized as British subjects. Instead they were considered childlike in their supposed simplicity, on the one hand, and as irredeemable savages on the other.
Competent adults were treated like naive children, even when they were fully capable of making their own decisions, ultimately resulting in learned helplessness, or they were shunned and consigned to the margins of European settlements. It is clear that the Protectorate’s objectives frequently conflicted with the actual needs and desires of the Aboriginal groups they aimed to serve. The clanspeople were not interested in becoming farmers or Christian converts, and nor were they well-disposed to stay in one place confined with people from clans who might be rivals.
In the late 1830s and early 1840s the hinterlands surrounding Melbourne and Geelong were surveyed, subdivided and sold at government auction as freehold property. Over a relatively brief time following settlement at Melbourne and Geelong, much of the Crown Land immediately around the towns was divvied up into allotments and sold. This was not conducive to squatting operations which required extensive acreage to be viable. Initially, most squatters had nowhere near the required capital to actually buy the land on which they operated, although some men recognised freehold title as being a long term aspiration for them.
In the short term, to avoid the expense of this form of alienation of Crown Land, many squatters on runs near Geelong decided by 1838 to move to larger runs further out into the interior of the Western District. It was known that tracts of excellent grazing country lay to the west of Geelong all the way to Portland. The grassland plains of the Western District were mostly flat, had sufficient sources of water, and rainfall was generally dependable, although draughts might be a problem in some years. From 1838 parties of squatters were pushing west from the established runs on the Leigh and Barwon Rivers across to the Hopkins and down its tributaries.
The Squatters Act of 1847, formally known as the “Pastoral Leases Act of 1847”, introduced long-term leases with a duration of up to fourteen years. Prior to 1847, licenses had to be applied for annually, which was deemed to be unsatisfactory as far as the squatters were concerned. The greater stability brought about by the Squatters Act of 1847 eventually allowed squatters to build impressive homesteads and expansive shearing sheds on the prime freehold portions of their runs, even though the majority of the land remained leasehold Crown land on the fourteen-year leases.
The allowance for longer leases after 1847 was a provision gained after intense lobbying. A key provision of the 1847 Act was the “pre-emptive right” allowing squatters to purchase a portion of their run at a regulated price. This meant they could secure the most strategic part of their run, such as where the homestead was located on the water sources, and gave the squatters much more security of tenure.
Vast areas of the countryside fell under the control of a small number of families and pastoral companies. The squatter class acted cohesively through various social cliques and intricate networks of family and business interests, in addition to their well organised political lobbying. The men gathered in clubs and societies and many squatters held seats in Parliament and this access to the corridors of power was used to further their cause.
Despite the political and economic tilt in their favor, many challenges remained. The seasons could be unreliable, markets could fluctuate wildly, and diseases had to be controlled. Rivals from their own set had to be seen off, and seasonal subaltern labor had to be sourced and managed. Many of the servants and laborers were ungrateful and would not work hard enough, and were prone to drink and riotous behavior. One could hardly understand some of them. The advent of “Preemptive Rights” in 1847 meant that squatters now had secure title to a home station at least. Generally, a home-block of 640 acres was made available at the minimum price of one pound per acre, a reasonable price that most of the better gentlemen were able to afford.
For the British, the evolution of the squatter system had the benefit of limiting control of former frontier land to a restricted number of men who could be relied upon. They were the backbone of good society in the countryside. When runs were first taken up, relations between government officials and squatters were sometimes prickly. However, quite quickly the interests of government officials and squatters became very intertwined.
Many prominent officials were also squatters, and in turn, many squatters became politicians and were involved in local and state government. The ranks of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly were replete with squatters, especially evident in the less than democratic Victorian Legislative Council, the aptly named Upper House. The squatter class were generally fervent defenders of their so-called property rights, and resisted encroachment on their turf from any quarter. When local government Roads Boards and Municipal Councils were established in rural districts from the early 1850s, the squatters and proprietors dominated them.
Legacy of Genocide
The 1835 Port Phillip Association’s venture to the mainland from Van Diemen’s Land marked the start of an invasion of a vast region of southern Australia, with all its devastating impacts on First Nations peoples. Aboriginal clans fought valiantly to defend and maintain their lands, engaging in numerous small battles spread over vast areas. Although First Nations sovereignty was never ceded to the Crown, one could argue that it was effectively taken through superior force of arms This has occurred many times through human history when incoming pastoralists meet hunter gatherers.
The British were backed by the greatest empire of the nineteenth century, so this outcome is hardly surprising given the asymmetry of the forces. From a moral standpoint, this does not make the takeover which occurred right or justified in any way. It was done to pre-empt other imperial powers, and to take direct advantage of economic opportunities in a globalized world.
In the decade immediately prior to the Lowndes family’s arrival to the Western District, the clanspeople who had cared for country for millennia were overwhelmed. Genocide has its own logic. The doctrine of Terra Nullius is a legal fiction. A gun in the hands of a mounted usurper is a means through which sovereignty can be seized. Ethnic cleansing has been employed for millennia due to its effectiveness.
Genocidal violence in the Western District occurred most intensely from 1837 to 1846, and so the records of pastoral license holders in this period are the most pertinent evidence we have as to who was responsible, alongside the names of the government officials also involved. The archives contain the names of individuals who were granted the annual “Licenses to Depasture Stock” during these years.
It was a relatively widespread practice for leases to be transferred from one person to another, often involving the transfer of finance in one form or another. In some cases, a lease would expire and then be subsequently taken up by a different party. In the archive are records for many of these transactions. Many squatters overextended themselves and were forced to sell up at a loss in the depression years that began in early 1842. This just led to more canny men waiting in the wings to take over. Some men who survived the depression took advantage of the situation to expand their holdings. There are records of many of the financial and business transactions from the period, certainly adequate to gain a clear idea of who was involved if we follow the money.
By 1846, when the James Lowndes family arrived at Geelong from Tasmania, the economic situation in the Port Phillip District had largely recovered. That year, the population of Geelong had increased to over two thousand people, and it was entering a phase of rapid growth that continued with the discovery of gold. The Lowndes family lived near Fyansford throughout the 1850s. Named after Foster Fyans, Fyansford is one of the earliest European settlements in the Geelong district. It started life in 1837 as a police camp founded at a time when much of the Western District was still a frontier.
The Shadows of the Gentlemen 