Port
Phillip Association - (en)
The Port Phillip Association (originally the "Geelong and
Dutigalla Association" was an early nineteenth century investment
and pastoral company. Some fifteen of the leading colonists of
Tasmania (formerly Van Diemens Land) formed a company in early 1835
with a view to purchasing a large tract of land from the aborigines on
the unsettled south coast of Australia, helping found Melbourne and
the future State of Victoria in the process.
The leading members of the association were John Batman, a farmer,
Joseph Gellibrand, a lawyer, Charles Swanston, banker, John Helder
Wedge, surveyor and farmer, Henry Arthur, nephew of Lieutenant
Governor George Arthur of Van Diemen’s Land, and various others
including William Sams, Anthony Cottrell, John Collicott, James
Simpson, John Sinclair, Michael Connolly, Thomas Bannister, and J. and
W. Robertson.
Gellibrand prepared legal deeds for the transfer of an interest in the
land for payment of an annual tribute, copies of which Batman took
with him in May 1835 to Port Phillip, accompanied by some white
servants and aborigines from New South Wales. Batman’s treaty with
the aborigines of Port Phillip is the only example of any settlers (official
or unofficial) giving recognition to the rights of the aborigines to
the land. While the annual tribute to be paid by the association seems
trifling in comparison to the ultimate value of the land after the
establishment of sheep stations in later years, the members of the
Port Phillip Association did not intend the treaty to be a fair
commercial transaction, but a means of obtaining permission from the
aborigines to avoid resentment (and subsequent violence) after
settlement.
For some time Batman's Treaty, as it came to be called, was assumed by
some historians to be a forgery, but the recollections of the
aboriginal elder Barak, who was present at the singing of the treaty
as a boy, established that Batman, with the aid of his New South Wales
aborigines, did in fact participate in a ceremony with the Port
Phillip Aborigines for permission to settle amongst them. In
aboriginal culture, this ceremony was called a tanderem.
Batman sailed from Launceston in the schooner Rebecca in April, 1835.
In June Batman went up the Yarra River and noted in his journal
“this is the place for a village”. After leaving some men to build
a hut and start a garden, Batman and the Rebecca returned to Van
Diemen’s Land. Here Batman showed Wedge where he had explored and,
from these details, Wedge prepared the first map of Melbourne, in June
1835, showing the location Batman had chosen as the site for the “village”.
The deeds which Batman took back to Van Diemen’s Land were intended
not for the aborigines, who had no need of title deeds. Existing
British policy (the Nineteen Counties Order) was designed to prevent
such settlement, and Batman hoped to convince the colonial and
imperial authorities that the association had entered into a scheme
for settling the district which would, it was hoped, avoid bloodshed
between whites and blacks. According to Batman’s petition to George
Arthur, he and Wedge would proceed immediately to the district with
stock, and only married servants (with their wives) would be allowed
to accompany them, reducing the chances of conflict arising from
interference with native women.
On 26 August the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Richard Bourke
issued a proclamation that effectively voided Batman's treaty,
whatever its merits, as the British government did not recognize
aboriginal title to the land. This in effect made any potential
settlers trespassers, although the governor recognized the need for
further action and recommended the establishment of a township and
land sales. Batman and the Rebecca had already sailed on the return
journey, but spent several weeks at a temporary site at Indented Head.
When they returned to the Yarra River site on 2 September, they found
the area already occupied by an independent expedition financed by a
Launceston businessman, John Pascoe Fawkner, which had landed on 30
August. The two groups eventually agreed to cooperate in distributing
the land in the area, but the sequence of events would provide room
for future debate over the credit for Melbourne's founding.
While the government in London was deciding what steps it should take
in relation to the unlawful occupation of this remote and unsettled
part of the existing colony of New South Wales, other settlers from
Van Diemen’s Land followed suit, and soon Port Phillip became
inundated with stock, squatters and servants, including escaped
convicts. Inevitably, conflict with the aborigines followed. Governor
Bourke was authorized to establish a settlement in April 1836, and the
town of Melbourne was surveyed and laid out in 1837.
The claims of the Port Phillip Association were only recognised to the
extent of £7,000, allowed as a reduction on the purchase price of
land bought by the association at public auction. Most of the members
sold out to Charles Swanston, and the name was changed to the Derwent
Company before being dissolved in 1842. The obligations under
Batman’s treaty to feed and clothe the aborigines were assumed by
the New South Wales colonial government, although proper protection
was not afforded, especially in the remote parts of the colony.
