Note: This page is a constant work-in-progress, with new information and corrections being made all the time. To search on the “1880-1849 Timeline” for any particular year, person, event, business, shop etc, simply press CTRL+F and type in the thing you are looking for in the small box that will appear on the screen.
1800
The Min-jan-buttu and Ya-itma-thang aboriginal tribes (the Pallanganmiddang nation) live and roam throughout the area they call Baarmutha – “land of many creeks” and often gather along the Jareelyallock (Reedy Creek). No known European has ever been into the area.
| Today in Beechworth, Baarmuth Park is a recreational reserve, the focus of many sporting activities, and the name Baarmutha is used in a number of locations around the area, including a popular winery. |
1820s
NSW Surveyor General and explorer John Oxley asserts that “no river could fall into the sea between Cape Otway and Spencer’s Gulf”, and that the country south of parallel of 34 degrees is “uninhabitable and useless for all purposes of civilised men” … resulting in the discouragement of exploration of the area.
1824
51-year-old Sir Thomas Brisbane – the newly appointed Governor of NSW – disbelieves Oxley’s statement (above) and suggests landing a party of convicts near Wilson’s Promontory and offering a pardon and a land grant to any of the convicts who successfully find their way overland from Wilson’s Promontory back to Sydney. However, his friend Alexander Berry recommends that instead of sending prisoners down south, the Governor should secure the services of 27-year-old explorer Hamilton Hume to lead the expedition party. Hume declines to undertake a trek from down south back up to Sydney but instead offers – if supplied with men and horses – to go from north to south – from Sydney down to Bass Strait. This is not carried out as Brisbane is unable to finance such a long and difficult expedition, but shortly afterwards Hume and his friend 38-year-old Royal Navy Captain William Hilton Hovell – a highly respected navigator living in Minto – agree together to undertake an expedition in the southerly direction at their own expense. They will find men, horses and bullocks, with Governor Brisbane agreeing to furnish them with pack saddles, tarpaulins, tent, arms, ammunition, and basic ‘skeleton’ charts.
| Scottish-born surgeon Alexander Berry first arrives in Australia in July 1819 as a 38-year-old, setting up as a successful merchant in George Street, Sydney with Edward Wollstonecraft, before sailing back to England to secure more merchandise. On the return journey in 1821 on the ship ‘Royal George’ Berry befriends fellow passenger Sir Thomas Brisbane who is on his way to Australia to take up the position of the new Governor. In January 1822 Berry, Hamilton Hume and Lieutenant Robert Johnson set out on a journey of exploration down the coast of New South Wales aboard the ‘Snapper’ where they will investigate the land in Shoalhaven area. After this Sir Thomas Brisbane arranges for Berry to receive a land grant of 10,000 acres (40 km2) and 100 convicts to establish the first European settlement on the south coast of NSW. This settlement becomes known as the Coolangatta Estate and develops into what is now the town of Berry, named in honour of Alexander and his brother David. |
1824 – Oct 2
27-year-old Hamilton Hume and 38-year-old William Hovell leave Sydney and meet at Hume’s property in Appin (74 km from Sydney) from where their newly formed group start out on the expedition. The party consists of eight people – Hume and his three men – his assigned servants Claude Bossowa (also known as Claude Barrois), Henry Angel, and James Fitzpatrick, along with Hovell and his three assigned servants – Thomas Boyd, William Bollard, and Thomas Smith. All six of their ‘assigned servants’ are former convicts. The group is travelling with “a pram, four bullocks, two horses and five hunting dogs”.
| Unlike many others at the time, Hamilton Hume is a ‘Currency Lad’ – that is, actually born in Australia – at Seven Hills near Parramatta in 1797 – moving with his family at the age of 15 to a large grant of land near Appin and, at age 17, begins exploring the uncharted land to the south, known as the Berrima region. He quickly gains a reputation for his bush skills and knowledge of the area and is asked by Governor Macquarie to take part in several inland journeys of discovery. In 1817, Hume heads off with Deputy Surveyor-General James Meehan and Charles Throsby, during which Lake Bathurst and the Goulburn Plains are sighted. In 1818, he travels to Jervis Bay with Surveyor General John Oxley and James Meehan to Jervis Bay. After his 1822 expedition with Alexander Berry (see previous post), Hume is given a grant of land at Appin (near his parents Andrew and Elizabeth Hume) where he establishes his own farm. He also acquires land near Lake George, where he sets up a second station –‘Wooloobidallah’. |
1824 – Oct 13
Hume and Hovell’s group of eight reach Hume’s station ‘Wooloobidallah’ (later called Collingwood Station) near ‘Lake George’ (close to the modern-day town of Gunning). The journey begins in earnest on October 17. The next day they reach a spot (near present-day Yass) that Hume is so impressed with that, some years later, he will build his new residence – ‘Cooma Cottage’ there (above) where he will die on April 19th, 1873, aged 75.
1824 – Nov 6
Hume and Hovell and their party come in sight of the snow-covered Australian Alps. They are impressed with the land they see – “a very rich country, abounding in kangaroos and other animals, with frequent tracks of aborigines”. Ten days later they arrive suddenly on the banks of a “fine river” which they name ‘Hume’s River’ (after Hume’s father Andrew Hamilton Hume). The point at which they camp by the ‘Hume’s River’ is about 50m in breadth and of considerable depth. The current is about three miles an hour, and the water is crystal clear.
1824 – Nov 16
Hamilton Hume and William Hovell cross the Hume [Murray] River just upstream of a bend in the river below what is now Hume Weir Village (the actual ‘crossing place’ is now under the water of Lake Hume), then pass through the hills south-east of Stanley, 9km from present day Beechworth. At the time, the area’s only inhabitants are the Min-jan-buttu and Ya-itma-thang aboriginal tribes, who nurture the rich porous soils in the area with its abundant bird and wildlife.
1824 – Nov 24
Near the site of present-day Wangaratta – where the King River joins the Ovens River – Hume and Hovell name the ‘Ovens River’ in honour of Irish-born soldier Major John Ovens (aide-de-camp and secretary to Thomas Brisbane, the Colonial Governor of New South Wales), and the ‘King River’ in honour of Captain Philip Gidley King, the third Governor of New South Wales (1800 to 1806). They also name the (constantly flooding) Reedy Creek, as well as the ‘Oxley Plains’ after the New South Wales Surveyor-General John Oxley.
| Aboriginal names: Torryong (Ovens River), Poodumbia (King River), Jareelyallock (Reedy Creek), Kiewa (Sweet Water). Wangaratta is derived from the aboriginal words Wanga (long neck) and Ratta (the cormorant). |
1828 – May
Upon the sudden death of 44-year-old John Oxley, 36-year-old Major Thomas Livingstone Mitchell becomes the new Surveyor-General of New South Wales.
| Governor Lachlan Macquarie criticises Oxley, calling him ‘factious and dissatisfied’. In 1812 John Macarthur will write warmly of Oxley’s ‘good nature’ upon his arrival in Sydney, but will later speak in a very different vein after ‘his unprincipled conduct made it necessary to drop his acquaintance’ and ‘no more fit to make his way in the midst of the sharks among whom it will be his fate to live than he is qualified to be a Lord Chancellor’. Despite his investments, his fees and his land grants, when Oxley dies at Kirkham on 26 May 1828, he is ‘much embarrassed in his pecuniary circumstances’. |
1829-30
Having explored the regions of the Macquarie River, the Bogan River and Castlereagh River – and discovering the Darling River in 1828 – Captain Charles Sturt now navigates down the Murrumbidgee River to its junction with the impressive wide river that the local indigenous people call the ‘Millewah’. In 1824 it had been named the ‘Hume’s River’ by Hamilton Hume in honour of his father Andrew Hamilton Hume. But now Captain Sturt ‘officially’ renames it the ‘Murray River’, after the then British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir George Murray.
| Perth in Western Australia is named in honour of Sir George Murray’s place of origin in Scotland and his House of Commons seat. |
1835 – May 29
34-year-old successful and influential Vandemonian (Tasmanian) farmer John Batman – motivated by positive reports of Hume and Hovell’s explorations of Corio and surrounds – sails the boat Rebecca across Bass Strait from Launceston to Port Phillip Bay on his mission to settle the Port Phillip District. Landing at Indented Head, he will begin to explore the area around Port Phillip Bay, from Corio (Geelong) to the Yarra Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers, writing that six miles up (the Yarra) “all good water and very deep. This will be the place for a village”. This will lead to the settlement of what will become the town, and later the city, of Melbourne. He initially proclaims the site ‘Batmania’.
1835 – Jun 6
John Batman meets with a group of Wurundjeri people – led by clan leader Billibellary – beside the Merri Creek (near present day Northcote) getting eight of the Wurundjeri men to sign an agreement – a “Treaty” – which will grant Batman the rights to 600,000 acres land around Port Phillip (present day Melbourne) in exchange for 40 pairs of blankets, 42 tomahawks, 130 knives, 62 pairs of scissors, 40 looking glasses, 250 handkerchiefs, 18 shirts, 4 flannel jackets, 4 suits of clothes and 150 lb. of flour. The “Treaty” acknowledges that the Wurundjeri will continue to receive these items, every year, in perpetuity. Despite the dubious nature of the “Treaty”, Batman is at least one of the very few white men in the 19th century to ‘acknowledge’ that aborigines own the land and that it should not be simply taken without any compensation.
| Billibellary learns to speak English and observes European ways to better understand them. He will die from respiritory disease in 1848 at the ‘Merri Creek Protectorate Station’. John Batman will be disappointed to learn that on August 26th his “Treaty” will be ruled invalid by the government in NSW, although it provides him with compensation. Today Batman’s “Treaty” is recognised by many in the Victorian Aboriginal Community as an attempt to disadvantage the people of the Kulin Nation. |
1830s
Following in the footsteps (and the maps) of Hume and Hovell, a number of white settlers begin to make tentative steps overland from New South Wales into the land south of the Hume [Murray] River to establish cattle and sheep runs. (see entries below)
1835 – Sep
24-year old William Wyse, employed as a stockman by wealthy Sydney merchant 24-year-old Charles Hotson Ebden, is instructed to gather a mob of cattle near Sydney and, with a party of drovers, follows the now established settlers track along the Murrumbidgee until he reaches the Tarcutta Creek, where he turns south-west and follows the track of the explorers Hume and Hovell (from 11 years before), until reaching the River Murray at the spot of Hume and Hovell’s discovery. Wyse discovers a better “Crossing Place” near the confluence of Bungambrawatha Creek and the River Murray straight across from the “Hovell Tree”. Here he establishes the “Mungabareena Run” (which includes the site of present day of Albury). Within a few weeks, following some straying cattle, Wyse crosses the River Murray and discovers splendid flat land at the junction of the Mitta Mitta River and the Little River (Kiewa River) with the Murray and, at that location, forms the “Bonegilla Run”.
| Wyse’s “Crossing Place” at the Murray remains in popular use for the next two decades until the ‘Union Bridge’ is completed in 1861 and the name ‘Albury’ comes into common usage. At times of low to moderate river levels, brave travellers with wagons and carts can still cross the Murray at the “Crossing Place”, although it is also the scene of many drownings and considerable stock losses. |
| In 1836, Charles Hotson Ebden will send 23-year-old Charles Bonney to search for a potential overland cattle route from Sydney to the new settlement of Batmania (Melbourne) on Port Phillip Bay. A wealthy man, Ebden will be one of the first men to purchase land at the first Melbourne land sales on June 1st 1837, buying three lots in Collins Street for £136. Two years later he sells the same blocks for a whopping £10,240, telling members of the newly formed Melbourne Club – in the mansion he has built at the top end of Collins Street – “I fear I am becoming disgustingly rich!”. Ebden becomes the Auditor-General in the first Victorian Government, and when he dies in Melbourne in 1867, he is one of the wealthiest men in Victoria, with an estate valued at over £100,000. Over 100 carriages follow his hearse to the Melbourne General Cemetery. |
1836
38-year-old Irishman, former banker John Gardiner – with his friends 23-year-old Joseph Hawdon and 33-year-old John Stuart Hepburn – departs Sydney with 400 head of cattle and leads them overland, passing through north-east Victoria, towards the new Port Phillip District of NSW, finally arriving at Kooyong Koot Creek (which he will rename ‘Gardiner’s Creek’) near the new Batmania settlement (Melbourne) on the Yarra. Because of the massive journey, the first with stock, Gardiner is often called ‘the Overlander’. Leaving his cattle and men at Gardiner’s Creek, he returns to Sydney where he arranges to send a further 200 cattle to Port Phillip. He returns (by ship) and builds a house at Gardiner’s Creek; makes a purchase at Melbourne’s first land sale (a corner lot at Elizabeth and Little Collins Streets for £22); and establishes a cattle station of 15,000 acres (6070 ha) at Mooroolbark. Joseph Hawdon also decides that he likes Melbourne and in August 1837 takes up land near the present site of Dandenong. He will later purchase a property at Heidelberg, and build a house he names ‘Banyule’ (which still stands today), and in August 1851 discovers a few grains of gold near the Yarra River.
| Joseph Hawdon and his elder brother 36-year-old John Hawdon will later return to North-East Victoria and settle on a property of 64,000 acres which they name ‘Howlong [Oolong] Station’. In 1838 Joseph Hawdon and 25-year-old Charles Bonney set off with 340 head of cattle in the first overland drive to South Australia, the longest journey of its kind to be attempted by Europeans in Australia. They will encounter many groups of aborigines during the journey but keep on good terms with them by Bonney using the unique and peaceful process of playing his flute for them! |
1836
16-year-old David Reid leaves the King’s School in Sydney so that he can deliver a mob of cattle purchased from John Gardiner (‘The Overlander’ who had just returned from his famous trip to the new settlement at Port Phillip) to David Reid Snr’s newly leased land in the Maneroo (Monaro) District in NSW. After completing the cattle drive, the teen-aged Reid is inspired by ‘The Overlander’ Gardiner to look for his own land south of the Murray River. After being generously equipped by his father with some 500 head of cattle, 2 bullock wagons and teams and 6 assigned servants, over the next year he will head for the area known as Wangaratta by the Ovens River.
| David Reid Jnr had arrived in Australia at the age of two in 1823 with his family from England. His father, retired naval officer Surgeon-Lieutenant David Reid Snr (who fought at Waterloo and had later been a naval surgeon on convict ships), is induced to settle in Australia by Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1823, granting Reid Snr 2,000 acres at Inverary (between Goulburn and the area where Canberra will later be established) for his services to Britain. David Reid Jnr will play a part in the origins of Beechworth and it’s goldrush. Read on … |
1836 – Oct
Surveyor General of NSW, Thomas Livingstone Mitchell passes through North-East Victoria, camping on the banks of the ‘Seven Creeks’ at present-day Euroa (the local word for ‘joyful’) and crosses many rivers including the Broken River (where one of his group, groom and ’bugler’ James “Tally-Ho” Taylor drowns during the river crossing) at a place local Aboriginal people call ‘Benalta’ (the local word for ‘musk duck’) and the Hume [Murray] River near present day Howlong. Upon his return to Sydney, he reports that he has found ‘Australia Felix’ (denoting the country south of the Hume [Murray] River as a ‘pleasant land’). Mitchell makes little of the fact that the lush pastureland is already occupied by indigenous people who have cultivated the land for thousands of years Aboriginal ‘fire-stick farming.’
| Major Mitchell departs Sydney in March 1836 on his third expedition into Australia’s interior to complete his survey of the Darling River. At the time, it is the largest and most costly expedition ever mounted in Australia. 11 horses, 52 bullocks, 100 sheep, 22 carts and a boat carriage accompanied Mitchell, his Assistant Surveyor Granville Stapylton, along with a Wiradjuri man named John Piper and 23 convicts and ticket of leave men. From Orange, he follows the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee Rivers to where they join the Hume [Murray] River then continues downstream to a major river junction, proving that this is part of the Darling River system which he had previously explored. Returning upstream along the Murray, he launches his boat at present day ‘Boundary Bend’ and enters what is now Victoria. The lush green landscapes of Victoria’s north-east are a pleasant contrast to some of the drought-stricken districts through which he and his team had initially journeyed. Mitchell names ‘The Grampians’, the ‘Lodden’ ‘Avoca’, ‘Campaspe’ and ‘Wimmera’ rivers; explores the Nangeela (Glenelg) River; visits the Henty family at their new ‘Portland’ settlement; and sights the infant village of ‘Batmania’ (Melbourne)’ from ‘Mount Macedon’ before returning to Sydney in November 1836. He names ‘Mount Macedon’ after Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. |
1836 – Nov
Yet a third name is given to ‘Hume’s River’ and the ‘Murray River’ when Major Mitchell, on his return journey to Sydney from his trek to Portland, crosses the river near Oolong (Howlong) and, rather than acknowledge the names given by his predecessors, chooses to recognise the vast river by its Aboriginal name Millewa (Milawa). Regardless of this, the name ‘Murray’ will continue to be officially used, though the river above Albury is referred to as ‘The Hume’ for some time.
1836
Joseph Slack becomes the first European to settle at nearby Barnawartha and establishes a pastoral run near Indigo Creek … which he abandons with his cattle after a short time and his ‘Barneywatha Run’ is purchased by George Hume Barber in 1838. Ten years later the lease will consist of over 155 square kilometres, with a carrying capacity for 8,000 sheep.
| The name ‘Barnawartha’ or ‘Barnawoodtha’ is given by an early history of the region as meaning ‘a deaf or dumb blackfellow’ or ‘long reeds.’ Another source indicates that the word may properly be pronounced as ‘Barra-na-tha.’ |
1836
Paul Huon (son of French nobleman Gabriel M Louis Huon De Kerillea) is the next white man to settle in (what is now) the Albury area, selecting the Wodonga Run which includes Huon Hill near the Wodonga Creek. The Wodonga Run covers a large stretch of country west and south of William Wyse’s Bonegilla Station, on the south bank of the Murray, opposite the site of Albury. Once he is settled, Huon will be officially granted a lease on February 7th, 1837. Paul Huon is closely followed to the area by his younger brothers Charles Huon (taking ‘Baranduda’) and Aimé Huon, who takes up a run at ‘Murramurangbong’. Charles Huon will later become the districts greatest advocate. Huon’s nephew Thomas Mitchell will join his uncle later and take up ‘Mungabareena’ when it is vacated by Charles Hotson Ebden.
| Word soon spreads that the area around and south of the Murray River is exceptional in grasslands and abundant permanent water and this quickly gains interest from other squatters desiring to set up stations. |
1836
Five young men travel overland from Goulburn in NSW with their stock and shepherds to settle the area around present day Yea, dividing the district into five large ‘Squatter’s Runs’. The settlement grows and a small township develops as a service centre for grazing, gold-mining and timber harvesting.
| The area is originally known as ‘Muddy Creek’ (named by Hume and Hovell when they passed through the area in December 1824). As the small settlement of ‘Muddy Creek’ expands, the township will be surveyed and laid out in 1855 and the name changed to Yea to honour British Lietenant Colonel Yea who had been killed in action just a few weeks earlier in the Crimean War (on June 18th 1855). |
1837
After hearing the glowing reports of fertile land and abundant water in the Port Phillip District, Australian-born brothers 31-year-old William Pitt Faithfull and 23-year-old George Faithfull leave their drought-stricken ‘Springfield Station‘ near Goulburn in New South Wales and travel south with a mob of long-horned cattle and a flock of sheep, eventually settling north of Euroa on 11,000 acres at an area that becomes known as Faithfull’s Creek. In February 1838 they move upstream to Oxley, settling the ‘Oxley Plains Run’ which covers 92,000 acres, including present-day Milawa. William eventually returns to the Faithfull’s ‘Springfield Station‘ near Goulburn, leaving his younger brother George at their ‘Oxley Plains Run’ and the homestead they have named ‘Wangaratta’. The Faithfull’s are the first European settlers specifically in the Wangaratta region and their cattle are possibly the first herd introduced onto the Oxley Plains.
| 41 years later, in December 1878, Ned Kelly and his gang will hold up the Faithfull’s Creek homestead, keeping 22 men prisoner at the station for nearly two days before travelling about 3 miles north to Euroa where the Kelly gang robs the National Bank. |
1837
William Bowman is the first white settler to take up permanent land – a ‘squatters run’ – in the North-East, just 10km south of present-day Beechworth. He names it the ‘Tarrawingee Run’ but will give it up for a time because of troubles with the local aborigines – including the proud warrior Merriman (see text box below) – before returning to the run in March 1838 with his wife Eliza, who becomes the first white woman to live east of the Ovens River and their house will be the first to have a wooden floor and glass windows. In 1844 Bowman will lease his 50,000 acre ‘Tarrawingee Run’ to Sir Francis Murphy (who will go on to be the speaker of Victoria’s first Legislative Assembly and become Sir Francis Murphy – above). The property lease will change hands a number of times – George Gray holds it in 1847 and the Reid Brothers in 1851 until 1862 when Dr. George Edward Mackay takes over the lease … but Murphy seems to continue his interest until 1862 when Dr. Mackay takes over the lease.
| William Bowman expresses hatred of Indigenous people and claims to have shot them wherever he saw them. His stockman, Benjamin Reed is also a known killer of Indigenous people. Tarrawingee is Merriman’s land and the arrival of Benjamin Reed leads to a feud between the two, culminating in the death of Merriman’s brother Harlequin and the loss of Benjamin Reed’s ticket of leave. |
1837 – Apr 10
Known briefly as ‘Batmania’ (by John Batman), the new settlement at Port Phillip by the Yarra River is officially named ‘Melbourne’ by NSW Governor Richard Bourke after the 55-year-old British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, whose seat is Melbourne Hall (Castle) in the market town of Melbourne in Derbyshire.
1837
Under the instruction of Governor Richard Bourke, government surveyor Robert Hoddle is sent to the fledgling (and initially unauthorised) settlement of Melbourne to create the first formal town plan. Hoddle lays out the streets and lanes of the growing township on the northern side of the Yarra Yarra River (Birrarung), creating what is now known as the ‘Hoddle Grid’.
| Between May 1836 and September 1839, Melbourne will become a thriving commercial centre and the chief port to the rich pastoral districts that surround it, and its population will grow from 177 people to over 3,000. |
1837
17 miles miles from present day Beechworth, overlander John Hillas arrives with a small mob of cattle on the banks of the ‘Myrtle Creek’, named after the myrtle trees (tea trees) which grow along its banks. Hillas builds huts and stockyards beside the creek and names his property the ‘Myrtle Creek Run’. A crossing place – a ford – over the ‘Myrtle Creek’ will eventually develop on the Buckland Road, which will lead to the small settlement at the spot being named Myrtleford in 1871. ‘Myrtle Creek’ – which flows into the Ovens River just outside Myrtleford – will later be renamed ‘Barwidgee Creek’.
1837
After arriving in Australia in 1836, 41-year-old Irishman James Osborne establishes a property – Yackandandah No. 1 Station – 4 miles from present day Yackandandah. He has travelled overland with his wife Isabella and his six children including James Osborne Jnr and Henry Osborne. James Snr will hold his ‘Yackandandah Run’ until 1859 and pass away in 1868. The area becomes known as Osbornes Flat and the name remains to this day.
| Osborne, a ‘squatter’, is the first white settler in the Yackandandah district and on one occasion – when a notorious gang of bushrangers led by Black Douglas (aka Charles Russell) holds up his Yackandandah run – Osborne throws all his money out of the window into the chook house to hide it! When gold is found near the Yackandandah Creek in 1852, Osborne refuses to allow anyone to dig on his land. However, after he leaves the property in 1859, mining commences on his property and alluvial gold is found in his vegetable garden! |
1837 – Aug
The winter of 1837 is one of the severest in the history of the colonisation of Australia, with heavy rain falling on 42 consecutive days in the north-east of Victoria!
1837 – Aug
During the wet weather, Joseph Hawdon – who had crossed the Murray River the year before with John Hepburn and John Gardiner – now returns with his brother, John Hawdon and a young Irish stockman, and convict, John Conway Bourke and they reach the flooded Murray River on their way to Melbourne. Determined to cross the swollen waterway, they remove the wheels from a dray and strap a tarpaulin under the body of the vehicle. They launch the rough punt into the stream in the hope of having it drift across by the aid of a tow rope. However, the rope breaks and, of the three men on the punt, only John Conway Bourke can swim. He bravely dives into the flood and succeeds in guiding the punt across the river. After congratulating Bourke on his rescue, Hawdon begs the young man to re-enter the raging river bearing a rope to help get the rest of their equipment across. After some discussion, Bourke agrees to brave it a second time and, a few hours later, the whole party and their gear are safe on the Victorian side. Hawdon will not forget this act of courage and will convince Governor Sir Richard Bourke to give the young man the job of the new regular mail run from Melbourne to Sydney – and give a JC Bourke a full pardon.
1837 – Dec 30
The first overland mail service begins between Sydney and the district of Port Phillip. A fortnight later the mail arrives in the settlement of Melbourne. Experienced horseman and cross-country traveller 24-year-old Joseph Hawdon initially wins the £1,200 yearly contract to run this mail service on a horse, followed later by 29-year-old Edward Bernard Green (below) who has purchased ‘Killawarra Station’ close to the Ovens River Crossing Place (now Wangaratta). Green will hold the ‘overland mail contract’ for the next 10 years by which time a large coach will be needed to carry the increasing amount of mail between the two towns. The Melbourne township (now suburb) of Greensborough is named after Edward Green who purchases over 250 hectares of land along the Plenty River in 1841 (for £1,600) where the suburb now stands.
| In 1838, a letter from Sydney to Melbourne – by land – cost fifteen pence and took 2 to 3 weeks, while a letter – transported by ship – cost just three pence, but could take up to 12 weeks. The overland mail run is made throughout the year, over mostly unexplored territory, in all weathers and conditions. It is usually carried by a rider leading a pack horse with the mail weighing up to 15 pounds. |
1838 – Jan 1
Brave 23-year-old Irish lad John Conway Bourke departs the ‘Melbourne Post Office’ – a wooden shanty erected on an allotment opposite St. James’ Cathedral – on the first Melbourne to Sydney mail run. The starting of the ‘first intercolonial postman’ from south to north is an important event to the inhabitants of the new town of Melbourne, and many of them gather outside Scott’s Hotel in Collins Street to bid farewell to the adventurous traveller. Bourke is accompanied by young Michael O’Brien, who is to ride with him as far as the Goulburn River. A retinue of 14 squatters, liberally charged with champagne, escort the pair as far as Mount Alexander Road at Flemington and by nightfall the two young men have reached Kilmore. This marks “the end of the known country” and from this point onwards Bourke rides on ahead with compass in hand, while O’Brien blazes the route on the tree trunks all the way to the Goulburn.
| Transported Australia as a convict in 1836, John Conway Bourke is under the offer of a pardon if he delivers the mail between Melbourne and over the Murray River for one year. He has a tight time schedule to adhere to if he wishes to be granted his pardon and faces many challenges crossing flooded rivers and navigating the wilderness of ‘The Sydney Road’. Joseph Hawdon had made a contract with Governor Bourke to carry the mail between Sydney and Melbourne for a fee of £1,200 a year and entrusts the undertaking to young Bourke to make the journey from Melbourne to Sydney. Hawdon had met Bourke when he engaged him as a stockman and assisted in taking a herd of cattle from Hawdon’s ‘Howlong Station’ to Port Phillip, and had observed Bourke’s bravery in crossing the flooded Murray River (see earlier entry). |
1838 – Mar
After working his passage to Australia as a ship’s surgeon, 27-year-old Dr. George Edward Mackay arrives in the district (on the eve of the Faithfull Massacre – see next entry) but on finding his servants are unwilling to stay for fear of an Aboriginal attack, retreats to the Hume [Murray] River, returning in the spring to squat on land at ‘Warrouley’ (Whorouly) 18 km from Beechworth.
| Dr George Mackay first meets Hamilton Hume beside the Murray River on 22nd June 1837. Accompanied by George Barber and Alexander Fullerton Mollison, Hamilton Hume shows them the tree where he had carved his name 13 years earlier and they all search the area for signs of the clover and peach trees which Hume said he’d planted during that visit, but no appearance of them having grown is found. Dr Mackay will become Hamilton Hume’s brother-in-law in 1842 when he marries Frances ‘Fanny’ Dight, sister of Hume’s wife Elizabeth Dight. |
1838 – Apr 11
On the banks of the Broken River at Benalta (Benalla), a band of around 20 Waywurru Aboriginal men alledgedly attack the 18 stockmen of squatter George Faithfull. Eight of the white men are speared to death, and in return, one Aboriginal man is killed by musket fire. This guerilla-attack, now known as the ‘Faithfull Massacre’ and the ‘Battle of Broken River’ has been launched as retribution against the stockmen who shot some of their people on the Ovens River seven days earlier or as “revenge for the illicit use of Aboriginal women by the same party several weeks before”. While carrying mail from Holbrook to Melbourne, Joseph Hawdon is the first on the scene at the ‘Faithfull Massacre’ – near the spot where the Benalla Botanic Gardens (designed by Alfred Sangwell in 1886) now stand.
| In June the same year, the Faithfull brothers and more than 80 other squatters with stations along the Port Phillip route (now the Hume Highway) petition Governor Gipps to launch a counterattack. Gipps refuses their request, stating he will not sanction a war on the Aboriginal population, let alone allow the squatters to take matters into their own hands as they have threatened. The squatters have “knowingly gone beyond the limits of location”, taken that risk, and now they must bear the cost. However, Governor Gipps agrees to establish a ‘Border Force’ along the Port Phillip route, setting up small police posts at several river and creek crossings between Port Phillip (Melbourne) and Sydney. The Faithfulls and some 18 stockmen, shepherds, and hutkeepers – mounted and armed – ignore Governor Gipps and seek their own vengeance. The group of 20 men arrive at a Waywurru camp on the banks of the King River above Oxley and massacre (an estimated) 100 on the spot, with many others pursued for miles up the river, until all, with one or two exceptions, are exterminated. According to young John Conway Bourke – the mailman who rides weekly between Melbourne and the Murray – “one hundred Indigenous people were surrounded and attacked on an open flat plain. As the Indigenous people tried to escape across the King River they were shot, their bodies becoming ‘fish food’”. |
1838
While droving his sheep from Manaroo in NSW to Laceby (near the present-day airport at Wangaratta) on the King River, Charles William Cropper camps by a stream (Reedy Creek) below a waterfall, as his sheep are in very poor condition and need shearing. Cropper erects a temporary wooden structure, a woolshed, which David Reid will rebuild and enlarge in 1843. The whole valley will later become known as ‘the Woolshed’, and the name remains to this day.
1838
Nearly all the overlanders heading south from New South Wales use Hume & Hovell’s 1824 “Crossing Place” on the Murray River as their access point to Victoria, and the growing settlement at the crossing is named Albury (from villages in Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire, the word deriving from the Old English words ‘eald’ [old] and ‘byrig’ or ‘burg’ [fort], together meaning ‘stronghold’).
1838 – Apr 28
Following his 1829-1830 Murray River expedition, Charles Sturt now departs Sydney on a new expedition, and by May 8 he has returned to the place where Hume and Hoyell had crossed ‘Hume’s River’ (near the present site of Albury) on their 1824 journey. Near this place is ‘Fowler’s Station’ where Sturt musters a mob of 300 cattle and a party of men and departs on May 22.
1838 – May 29
Charles Sturt reaches the junction of the Ovens and King Rivers, close to the spot where Wangaratta stands today. Sturts records, with some horror, that the native populations that he had noted in 1829, have now been significantly reduced by disease, and that the faces of many of the survivors are “pitted as if by smallpox”.
1838
44-year-old Oxford University-educated Reverend Joseph Docker – motivated by Major Mitchell’s positive reports on the land south of the Murray River – realises the new area may offer more congenial and profitable employment as a pastoralist than as a pastor, and resigns from his church in Windsor (near Sydney) and sets out with his wife Sarah, five children, servants, a flock of sheep, some cattle and a boat to the ‘promised land’. They travel in covered bullock-wagons and carts through Goulburn and Yass, cross the Murray at the ‘Crossing-Place’ (at Albury) and, on September 8th 1838, arrive at an area the local aborigines call ‘Bontharambocha’, where they set up camp beside the Ovens River. George Faithfull arrives and informs Docker that he and his brother William have been “obliged to abandon their ‘Bontharambo Plains’ run on account of the depredations of the blacks who had murdered eight of their men” (see previous entry). Joseph Docker rides out, looks at the country, and is so much pleased with it that he decides to take the risk and agrees to take the lease from the Faithfull brothers, taking possession of the hut and quickly obtaining the squatting rights.
| Docker had intended to send his wife and children to Port Phillip by a schooner then leaving Sydney, but at the last moment it is decided they should accompany him on the overland journey. This decision proved lucky as the vessel they had planned to take is wrecked on the voyage and all hands are lost. |
1838
Thomas Rattray becomes the first white settler at the Ovens River crossing site (at what is now Wangaratta). He establishes a sly grog shop and a punt service adjacent the southern riverbank to capitalise on the growing through-traffic. The following year he sells the enterprise to William Henry Clark who will become known as the ‘Father of Wangaratta’, building a slab-timber store with a bark roof and 4cm slits in the slabs instead of windows, to prevent ingress for attacking Aborigines and to enable the egress of gunfire. As others soon settle beside the Ovens River and a permanent settlement begins to grow, at the beginning of 1843 he will build a larger and better structure which will become known as the ‘Hope Inn’ (on the site where the Sydney Hotel / RSL Club stands today) with a Post Office added on the 1st of February. John Bond then builds a slab-and-bark store and Inn on the other side of the Ovens River, where noted Presbyterian clergyman John Dunmore Lang stays in 1846.
| The King River joins the Ovens River at Wangaratta. The Ovens River then meets the mighty Murray River at Bundalong on the Victorian border north-west of Wangaratta. |
1838 – Sep 8
David Reid reaches the Ovens River, on the exactly same day as Reverend Joseph Docker and his family (see entry above) with their sheep and cattle. Also there is William Bowman (see entry above) – a Scotsman like David’s father. The following day one of Bowman’s men rides out with young Reid to show him some unoccupied land – 60,000 acres known as ‘Carraragarmungee’ (or ‘Carrajarmongei’ or ‘Currargarmonge’) near Wangaratta. This is the sort of land he’d been looking for and he applies for the lease, soon settling there. Held at first in his father’s name, after 1840 it will become a family partnership. Soon 18-year-old Reid will be grazing over 6,000 sheep and is neighbours with William Bowman and his ‘Tarrawingee Run’. Despite an attempted attack by Aboriginals, Reid will harvest his first wheat crop in December 1839.
| Today, the Carraragarmungee Primary School (opened in 1876 on the Wangaratta-Eldorado Road) stills serves the small populations of Londrigan and the nearby township of Eldorado, 16km from Beechworth. |
1839 – Apr–May
48-year-old Lady Jane Franklin – wife of Sir John Franklin, the Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land – becomes the first European woman to travel overland from Port Phillip (Melbourne) to Sydney. In her diary she describes the first European dwelling at the Ovens Crossing (Wangaratta): “Saw Rattray’s unfinished hut … he was tipsy at Clark’s when we were there. Is said to sell grog here but has no licence. Two poles for milking cows.”
| Born Jane Griffin in London in 1791, Lady Jane is a very well educated, well-travelled (including Europe and, later, New Zealand) and well cultured woman, as well being appreciative of other cultures and takes a special interest in the wellbeing of female convicts. She is a ‘Renaissance woman’, extraordinary for the time. ‘Mount Lady Jane Franklin’ in Barnawartha is named after her, as she climbed it on her 1839 journey to view and better appreciate the countryside. After her husband’s disappearance in search of the Northwest Passage in 1845, she will sponsor or otherwise support several expeditions to determine his fate, but his remains are never found. Ballads such as “Lady Franklin’s Lament“, commemorating the searches for her lost husband, become popular in the late 1840s. |
1839 – May
David Reid explores more of the land on his vast run, focusing on the area upstream of (what will become known as) El Dorado Creek when he comes across the hills above present-day Beechworth. He is so impressed by the beauty of what he sees on this glorious day in May that he nicknames the picturesque spot ‘Mayday Hills’ and names the creek that runs through the area ‘Reid’s Creek’, downstream from the current township.
| Except for cattle and sheep grazing and the planting of some wheat crops, no other attempts are made to open up the area for the next 12 years. |
1839 – Aug
Henry Bingham, Commissioner for Crown Lands, visits the Ovens region, and finds the local Aboriginal people, for the most part, visibly afraid of white settlers. He states “the Natives appear to have a hostile feeling for the squatters from past transactions”.
1839 – Sep 9
Around 100km from present day Beechworth, the settlement of Violet Town is surveyed, becoming the first inland town to be surveyed in the entire Port Phillip District, although it will not be until the following year that the actual sale of land in Violet Town is held (in Sydney). Speculators pay huge amounts for the blocks of land, some of which are still not built on, well over 100 years later! The spot had been originally named ‘Violet Ponds’ by Major Mitchell and his party in 1836, after the native flowers that Mitchell noted “grow in profusion around the many ponds in the district”. Following the taking up of ‘Honeysuckle Station’ by Mitchell Forbes Scobie and his wife Flora in the 1840s, land selectors and developers arrive, the first Violet Town Post Office opens in 1852 and businesses open and the town grows through the 1860s as a hub from Melbourne connecting to Sydney and Bendigo. In 1873 the township will be split in half with the arrival of the railways, and the orientation of the town will turn from the old highway (now High Street) to Cowslip Street (below).
| Following the visit of the Governor of Tasmania, Sir John Franklin, and his wife Lady Jane Franklin whilst travelling from Melbourne to Sydney by coach, the name of the creek that runs through Violet Town is chosen as ‘Honeysuckle’ because of the native honeysuckles that grows along its banks, and Lady Jane is invited to name the streets that are soon to be surveyed, and all, with one exception, are named after flowers. |
1839 – Sep
As Melbourne grows, so does the demand for larger mail services to Sydney. Outgrowing a single rider on a horse with a packhorse carrying the mail, the first overland mail service – by coach – begins.
1839
Just south of present-day Beechworth, near what is now Tarrawingee on the Ovens River, David Reid takes up more grazing land (which he calls ‘Reidsdale’) and builds a hut, before taking control of a vast area of land which stretches almost from Wangaratta to Stanley. Five years later Reid will bring his mother Agnes (widowed in 1840) and younger siblings, including brothers 14-year-old Robert Dyce Reid and 1-year-old Curtis Alexander Reid from Inverary to live at a house he has built for them on the ‘Reidsdale’ property. (Curtis will grow up to make wine under the ‘Reidsdale’ label and become the first secretary of the Melboure Cricket Club in 1877.) The present ‘Reidsdale’ house that stands on the property is built in the late 1880s.
1840 – May
While Dr. George Edward Mackay is away from his ‘Warrouley’ property on business, 21 Aboriginal men, now armed with guns as well as their native weapons, attack his station, killing one of his servants, burning his huts and stores and all of his wheat. Mackay also claims that they slaughter his livestock and that only seven head of cattle, out of nearly 3,000, are left alive on the run. (This last claim seems difficult to fathom and is out of character with aboriginal behaviour.)
Dr Mackay’s ‘The Grange’ is believed to remain within the present residence
| Mackay’s ‘Warrouley’ station borders the Faithfull brother’s ‘Oxley Plains’ run. The small town of Whorouly now stands here, between Wangaratta and Myrtleford. |
1840
Retired Royal Navy Captain, William Fury Baker – an ‘overlander’ from New South Wales – purchases the ‘Barambogie’ run (near present day Chiltern) and successfully applies to re-name the run ‘El Dorado Park’. He soon befriends his neighbours to the south – the Reid brothers. Baker will rename his run to simply ‘Eldorado’ in 1848 (a fictitious South American ruler so wealthy he covered himself in gold dust from head to toe before submerging himself in Lake Guatavita. El Dorado’s lost kingdom abounded in gold, believed by the Spaniards to exist upon the upper reaches of the Amazon). Baker will divide ‘Eldorado’ into two blocks – ‘East Eldorado’ and ‘West Eldorado’ in 1849. ‘East Eldorado’ – east of Black Dog Creek and covering the site of (present day) Chiltern – will then be purchased by Dr John Gemmell of Wangaratta. Baker will sell ‘Eldorado West’ to Jason Withers of ‘Ulina’ around 1854.
| Gold will not be discovered in the region until 1852, so Captain Baker in naming his run ‘El Dorado’ is either a fortune teller or believed he had found his own pot of gold with his farm! |
1840 – Dec
Two Aboriginal men approach David Reid at ‘Reidsdale’ as representatives of their clan ‘without instruments of war’ and with a ‘green bough in each hand’ to make peace, so that they can camp nearby on the Ovens River. Three or four weeks later, by which time Reid’s first crop of wheat is being harvested, Reid and his men spot 15 or 20 Aboriginal men from the same group, now armed with spears and painted with ‘pipe clay’, approaching them from across the river. Assuming an imminent attack, Reid and his men retreat to their nearby hut to gather their double-barrelled guns and shoot at the armed Aborigines.
| ‘Reidsdale’ will later become the depot for local Aboriginal people to collect blankets, tomahawks, flour, tea and sugar issued by ‘The Protection Board’. The Reid’s will issue rations, liaise with the board and provide reports in a volunteer capacity. |
1841
The Wahgunyah cattle run is established by John Crisp and 22-year-old John Frederick Foord. Their pastoral run extends from the Murray River southwards to Black Dog Creek, occupying about 13,800 hectares. ‘Wahgunyah’ is thought to be an Aboriginal word for ‘big camp’. The area around ‘Black Dog Creek’ will later be known as Chiltern.
| In 1853 Foord purchases half a square mile of his holding, on the south-east bank of the Murray river, and three years later has it surveyed for a township. The ‘Wahgunyah Hotel’ opens in 1856. In 1857 Foord installs a punt across the river then replaces it in 1861 with a toll bridge (the first bridge over the Murray River) and he soon becomes known to the locals as the ‘Emperor of Wahgunyah’. He builds a flour mill at Wahgunyah in 1858, which will operate until 1941 and is burnt down in 1956. |
1843 – Jan
The Ovens region – previously regarded as an extension of the Murrumbidgee District – officially becomes part of the newly declared Murray District of Port Phillip, under the supervision of Crown Lands Commissioner 30-year-old Henry Wilson Hutchinson Smythe, known to all as ‘Long’ Smythe as he stands almost 6’ 5” tall (198 cm)!
| Stationed at Benalla, ‘Long’ Smythe deals with annual pasturing licences, stock tax returns, boundary disputes and other grievances, and the transfer of runs, which can change hands quite frequently. |
1843 – Feb 1
A Post Office opens at the ‘Ovens River Crossing’ (now known as Wangaratta). Based inside William Henry Clark’s Hope Inn, people in the area can now both send and receive mail at the Ovens Post Office from the mail coach service (established in 1839) that travels between Melbourne and Sydney. The Ovens Post Office, and a Post Office that opens on the same day in Kilmore, will become the 5th and 6th Post Offices to open in the entire Port Phillip District, and the only two inland Post Offices.
1844 – Feb 29
David Reid marries Mary Romaine Barber (daughter of Charles Barber and the niece of explorer Hamilton Hume), leaves the partnership with his brother John Reid, and moves with his new wife to live in the Yackandandah district, 41 kilometres upstream along the same creek, where he builds the district’s first water-driven flour mill in 1845. He takes possession of all the country above Reid’s Woolshed including what are now the townships of Beechworth and Stanley.
| When the water-race is being excavated for his flour mill by the Yackandandah Creek, one of the labourers, named Beaton, excitedly shows David Reid some glittering earth, suggesting it might be gold, which Reid quickly dismisses as mica. He later scoffs at a similar suggestion from his brick-master who finds glittering rocks on the opposite side of the creek. In his ignorance, he refuses to believe that gold can be found in Australia. |
1844
The depression and drought of the early 1840s do not affect Reverend Joseph Docker’s ‘Bontharambo Run’ as severely as they do some other stations in the district and by 1844 he has replaced the Faithfull’s original hut with a new, larger timber cottage that has chimneys at either end and a bark roof to provide more comfort for his growing family. Unlike some other white settlers and pastoralists, Docker’s kind and understanding attitude to the local Aborigines is rewarded by their friendship and help, and for many years they hold corroborees on an island in the lagoon not far from his expanding Bontharambo homestead by the Ovens River, 10km from Wangaratta.
| After new regulations are gazetted by the government in 1848 – allowing squatters to purchase ‘pre-emptive rights’ to their household blocks – Joseph Docker will finally apply for the ‘Bontharambo’ homestead block on October 16, 1852, and is granted a ‘pre-emptive right’ for it early the following year, by which time his property is flush with 3,000 head of cattle and over 33,000 sheep! |
1845
31-year-old Thomas Buckland, a European squatter, establishes his ‘Buckland Run’ 12 miles (20km) from (present day) Bright. The land he settles on is by a river – a tributary of the Ovens River – in a green and plentiful valley. The valley will become known as the Buckland Valley with the Buckland River flowing through it. Gold will be discovered on his land in 1853. (see entry in July 1853)
1845
A small wooden building – ‘Black Dog Inn’ – opens near Black Dog Creek where it crosses the ‘Melbourne-to-Sydney track’ on John Foord and John Crisp’s ‘Wahgunyah’ cattle run. The ‘Black Dog Inn’ will be rebuilt in stone by John Dillon in 1851 (above), opening for business in 1852. In 1853, a government surveyor maps out a township by the creek, with the ‘Black Dog Inn’ standing on Bridge Street. The ‘Black Dog Inn’ will also be used as a Police Barracks between 1854 and 1857, with a small ‘slab gaol’ erected between the creek and the hotel. It will remain is business until 1920 when its liquor licence is finally cancelled.
| By 1854 the little town is named Chiltern – after the Chiltern Hills in England – but not fully established until gold discoveries in 1858-59. Bridge Street in Chiltern will become a major thoroughfare and will be part of the Hume Highway until 1952. |
1846
Eight years after David Reid took the lease on his 60,000 acre ‘Carraragarmungee Run’, William Bowman (his nearest neighbour) offers to sell him the lease on his ‘Woorajay Run’ (also known as ‘Bowman’s Heifer Station’) of 41,000 acres. Reid agrees, giving him two massive runs totalling 101,100 acres – extending all the way from Wangaratta almost to Yackandandah, including Mt Pilot.
| David Reid is now aged 26 … and it is just six years before gold is discovered in the land that had been formally been the ‘Woorajay Run’ … now in the possession of Reid! |
1847
32-year-old English-born Jason Withers and his 30-year-old wife Hannah (nee Chandler) arrive in the district and take up land by Black Dog Creek that embraces present-day Chiltern and extends all the way towards Rutherglen, Wangaratta and Beechworth. They name their run ‘Ullina’ (sometimes spelt ‘Ulina’). Hannah will be the first white woman in the district and will give birth to 10 children, seven of which survive to adulthood.
| Jason and Hannah Withers had arrived in Australia in 1840 aboard the ship ‘The Himalaya’ and initially took up a 16,000 acre property adjoining Seven Creeks (near present-day Euroa) which they name ‘Bailey’s Hill’ after Jason’s home in Wiltshire. They bring with them 300 sheep, a couple of bullocks and carts, and some fox hounds as Jason is fond of hunting. A few years later they move to their vast new property – ‘Ullina’ – 6 miles from present-day Chiltern. Jason Withers – who is deaf – will die at ‘Ullina’ in 1881 aged 66, with Hannah passing away at ‘Ullina’ in 1910 aged 94. One of their sons, Jason Jnr, drowns in a creek on the ‘Ullina’ property in January 1899. Although he is 55-years-old, he is described as being “of weak intellect”. |
1847
The first brick building is erected at the ‘Ovens River Crossing’ – all the other structures are made of slab-and-bark – and the settlement of over 170 people will be surveyed and renamed ‘Wangaratta’ the following year, with 11 streets officially laid out (see entry below).
1848
After ten years of occupying his licensed area of 41,000 acres, situated south of the Murray River and extending west from the Little River (now the Kiewa River), Paul Huon officially applies for a lease of his “Woodonga Run”. Huon’s application is motivated by the knowledge that Crown Lands Commissioner Henry ‘Long’ Smythe has recommended the establishment of a “Township Reserve at Woodonga Creek” (or Wordonga Creek) with Huon’s station included in this proposed reserve.
1848
The first school is established at the ‘Ovens River Crossing’ (soon to be named Wangaratta – see next entry). Run by William Bendall from a simple slab hut close to the single bush track (later Chisholm Street) that runs through the settlement, it will have 16 pupils before Bendall drowns while attempting to cross the Ovens River. The school is soon replaced by an education facility established by William Peacock. Situated near the present Wangaratta Primary School #643 in Chisholm Street, it will have 74 pupils under Peacock’s instruction by 1849 although, once Wangaratta is gazetted and the first blocks of land are sold (see next entry). Peacock, who will also conduct Baptist worship services in his schoolhouse, will leave eventually the teaching profession to become one of the newly named town’s most important storekeepers.
| Education commenced in the district by the mid-1840s when the children of squatters begin to be tutored by privately engaged teachers. For instance at Joseph Docker’s ‘Bontharambo’ homestead, ten children are being educated by 1849. |
1848 – Jun
At the growing settlement where the Ovens and King Rivers meet – known simply as ‘Ovens River Crossing’ – the government’s Assistant Surveyor, 32-year-old Thomas Wedge officially names it ‘Wangaratta’. Wedge will also survey and name the settlement’s first eleven streets – Ovens Street after the river running through the settlement, along with Faithfull, Reid, Chisholm, Murphy, Baker, Gray, Templeton, Rowan, Ford and Docker after local pioneers. Within the next few years, the population will exceed 200 and the newly named settlement’s first land sale auctions will be held in Melbourne on 28 June 1849; the first permanent police officers arrive; and the first police magistrate, George Harper, is appointed.
| The name of the Faithfull brothers homestead – ‘Wangaratta’ on the largest cattle station in the district – is chosen by Wedge for the name of town. The original indigenous name is believed to mean either “nesting place of long necked cormorants” or “meeting of the waters”. |
1848
At Yackandandah, David Reid’s fine woolclip is one of the first to be handled by the respected Richard Goldsbrough and is claimed to come from sheep descended from stock imported in the 1820s from King George III’s flock.
1848
The Reids, Mackays, Bakers, Huons, Osbornes and other pastoralists send applications for long-term leases to Superintendent Charles La Trobe, motivated by the new March 1847 Order-in-Council rulings. high surrounding wall will be completed by 1864.
| Prior to 1847, it has been necessary to pay an annual £10 licence fee and a stock tax to legally run stock on Crown Land. But under the new 1847 rulings, squatters of the unsettled Ovens district may now be entitled to 14-year leases and the right to purchase part of their runs. This will potentially give the pastoralists a more dominant position in the Ovens district for many years to come. If they can control the local pastoral economy, they can also further exert their influence in other local areas of importance. |
THE STORY CONTINUES IN THE 1850-1859 TIMELINE