# The Chronicles of Early Melbourne/Volume 1/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.
PRIMARY POPULATION: ITS EXTENSION AND PROGRESS.
SYNOPSIS:— Mrs. Gilbert's Baby and Her Cat. —Convicts from Sydney. —First Official Census. —First Marriage in the Colony. —First White Marriage in Melbourne. —First White Child Baptised. —Melbourne 1838-1888. —Fawkner's Original Groggery. —The Wants of Melbourne. —Arden, Author of the First Pamphlet. —Brichnaking as an Industry. —A Protracted Drought. —General Fast and Humiliation. —An Amusing Prayer Difficulty. —Labour Famine. —Memorial to Home Government for Immigrants. —First Fire in Melbourne. —First Gunpowder Explosion. —Mrs. Clarke's Soirees. —"Servantgalism." —Collins Street "Block." —"Lady's Letter to the 'Lords of Creation.'" —First Private Brick Building. —"Hodgson's Folly." —Population and Property Value in 1839. —"Deaf Adamson's" Sketch.
WHEN Fawkner's schooner, the "Enterprise," sailed from Melbourne, on her return to Launceston, she left behind as the first white population the following individuals, viz.:— Captain Lancey, George Evans, his servant (Evan Evans), James Gilbert (a blacksmith) with his wife (Mary) and Charles Wise (a ploughman), five men and one woman. Except Lancey and the two Evans, the others were engaged by Fawkner, who considerately allowed the blacksmith, as the hardest worker, the solace of his "better half," and for the lady herself, he generously provided a cat, as a pet or familiar; but Mrs. Gilbert in due time (19th December, 1835), supplied herself with a more agreeable companion, under the acceptable semblance of a baby, the first white child born in Melbourne. Lancey and the two Evanses struck out for themselves, and the Fawkner party settled down sedulously to work until joined by their master soon after. They worked for six days in the week and prayed and "kangarooed" on Sunday. They enclosed and planted with wheat some five acres of land, near the Spencer Street Railway Station, where they put up a sort of half-tent, half-hut, wherein to find lodgings for themselves and their belongings. Whether the future fared well or ill for all of them, I know not, but George Evans afterwards became a very wealthy man, by sheep-keeping, farming, and public-house speculations. He died some years ago, at a very advanced age, in Queen Street, and his children were well provided for.
By degrees this half dozen of inhabitants swelled into the round dozen, and on to the score, the hundred, and the thousand. Additional new-comers appeared by every vessel arriving from Van Diemen's Land—owners of, and persons in charge of, sheep and cattle, and others looking out for employment as shepherds or stockmen. Few of them remained in the township, as the chief, and for a time the only demand, was for bush hands; but very soon rough carpenters, builders, and handy and generally useful men grew into request. Wages for shepherds were at first about £20 a year with rations; but the rate soon went up to £40, and such was the desire to submit to no reduction that the following elegant Lynchlaw proclamation was placarded in more than one prominent place —"He wot hires to any settler under forty pounds a year will get summot for his pains;" what the "summot" meant deponent sayeth not. Possibly it might be translated as "something hot;" but whether so or not it terminated as harmlessly as most of the hoarding literature of later days. Shortly after the arrival of Captain Lonsdale, as Commandant in 1836, a gang of thirty convicts was shipped from Sydney, for employment in Government works and private assignment; but the place being so distant from head-quarters, the Executive evinced a disinclination to encourage to any large extent a distribution of the prisoner element through the province. Settlers who desired to procure cheap labour from this source were deterred from so doing by the imposition of special restrictions upon convict employment. It so continued until 1838 when a Sydney Government Gazette notification was issued, directly discouraging persons in Port Phillip from applying for assigned servants; on 1st January, 1839, convict assignment in towns was discontinued and in August all male domestic prisoner-servants were disallowed in town and country. And so the incipient plague was ​stopped before it came to a head; subsequent attempts to revive it in different forms failed, and the colony was preserved from the direct convict taint. The first official census of Port Phillip, was taken in November, 1836, when the population numbered 186 males and 38 females; and, towards the close of the year, the first death of a child, the son of one Goodman, occurred. There is no record of the date of the first Melbourne marriage, though the first marriage celebrated in the colony was on the 27th November, 1803, by the Rev. Robert Knopwood, chaplain of the Collins' Expedition—and the happy pair were Richard Garrett and Hannah Harvey. The interesting event happened at Sorrento, a fact which ought to tell favourably for that popular watering place, as an auspicious retreat for the proverbial Hymeneal pastime of honeymooning. It is remarkable that Sorrento was the locale of the first mortuary and of the first Lucinean rites, for the first man who died in the colony was cook of the "Calcutta" (one of the Collins' ships), and he was buried there on the 16th November, 1803, whilst on the 25th of the same month the wife of Sergeant Thorne (also a member of the Expedition) presented her husband with a son, and the little stranger was christened, with all the honours, at Sorrento, on Christmas Day following.
In 1836, one birth (a son of Batman's, on the 5th November, some years after drowned in the Yarra) and three deaths occurred in Melbourne, whilst in 1837 the births went up to seven and the deaths down to one. The first white marriage ceremony was performed in Melbourne, in 1837; and on the 30th April of the same year the first white child was baptised in the name of John Melbourne Gilbert. This was the first-born of Melbourne before referred to, and the little stranger that "put the cat's nose out of joint."
Reference has been already made to the journals kept by Captain King and Mr. Hoddle, and the following extracts will give some idea of Melbourne in the March of 1837. T h e former writes:— "I was very much pleased with the settlement. After pulling for eight miles through a ti-tree scrub, which impenetrably clothes the low banks of the river, the settlement suddenly burst upon our view. It is scattered, of course, at present, but consists, perhaps, of 50 or 60 huts. Some are of sods, others framed and weather-boarded, others wattled and plastered. The framed houses have all been sent from Sydney or Launceston. Were it not for the burnt-up appearance of the place, the scenery about the town would be beautiful; the ground undulates, and between the houses and the river is an alluvial flat of good soil, in which good gardens may be formed, and very productive too. We called upon the ladies of the place, and found them enduring great discomfort, some living in mud hovels, others in tents, and others just entering their new abodes formed of 'wattle-and-daub.' Among them is an old acquaintance of ours, Mrs. D'Arcy; her husband is surveying the country here preparatory to its being sold." Mr. Hoddle remarks:— "The weather-boarded building under Batman's Hill, was erected by Batman, and Captain Lonsdale stayed there until the two road parties' huts were joined together, and formed his dwelling. A tent at the rear of the huts was the dwelling of his cook, a fire in front his cook-house. The huts afterwards had a roof built over them which improved their appearance. Near this was Mason's weather-boarded hut, used as an ironmonger's and other goods' store. This became the property of Allison and Knight. The next weather-boarded hut was erected on the site of the present Custom House, and was used as an inn by one Smith. A few wood and mud huts and tents formed the township in 1837. The site of my house (western end of Bourke Street) was the ground where the tents were erected for Sir Richard Bourke and his party. The Governor's tent was in Great, and mine in Little Bourke Streets, both of which were so named as soon as I had marked out the first blocks and streets."
Sir Richard Bourke, in opening the Legislative Council in Sydney on the 30th May, 1837, refers in the following terms to the newly-proclaimed settlement:— "After I had last the honour of addressing you, I received Her Majesty's gracious permission to open for location the country adjacent to the waters of Port Phillip, and in the vicinity of Twofold Bay. The former of these districts already contains a population of above 500 souls, whilst more than 100,000 sheep may be found grazing on its ample pastures. The expenses attending this occupation have been hitherto defrayed from the revenues of Crown lands, to which the sale of such lands within the district will hereafter largely contribute." ​During the same Session an abstract of the revenue of New South Wales, with its appropriation for 1836, was presented, and under the head of "Port Phillip" appears a schedule of items as expended, which I transcribe because it virtually forms the first "Estimates" of Victoria, and, consequently, must possess some historical interest:—
Salaries and allowances, £445 1s. 5¾d.; Outfit and passage-money to officers and men, £327; Horses and harness, £361 2s. 6d.; Tents, articles of equipment, tools, stores, and other supplies, £335 16s. 10d.; Clothing and bedding, £156 10s.; Timber, bricks, lime, iron, and other materials, £102 14s. 10¼d.; Wages to military labourers, £11 19s. 2d.; Stationery and printing, £93 13s.; a whale-boat and oars, £32 17s. 6d. ; Presents of clothing, blankets, and badges to Aborigines, ^160 3s. 4d.; Freight from Sydney of the frame for a house, horses, and stores, £132 18s.; Conveyance of stores, £5. Total, £2164 16s. 8d.
The "frame for a house" indicated, in the second last item, is evidently the made-up materials for the first Customs-shed used as such in Melbourne.
No one now amongst us, unless then in the Province, even in the wildest freak of imagination, can well comprehend the extraordinary difference in the Melbourne of 1888 and the nondescript here and there settlement which passed under that name in the early part of 1838. In it there dwelt some thousand persons—a third of the whole population; and it was estimated that there were some one hundred buildings, graduating from the two-storied brick to the mud-made "bothie;" and, though some of the highways dedicated to the public were marked out, the street intersections, gullies, or quagmires were almost inextricable for man or beast once glued into them, whilst the principal thoroughfares were so incommoded with tree stumps that it took years, even after the incorporation of the town, to thoroughly eradicate them. The Yarra, too, was very different from that river to-day; the surrounding country was picturesque and umbrageous, and the ti-tree scrub, which has long since disappeared to give way to wharves and docks and lines of railway, was then in most places almost impenetrable. Melbourne possessed some five or six public-houses, and the only other one in the whole district was on the River Goulburn, near (now) Seymour. To Williamstown was a toilsome trip by land, and a journey to Geelong was quite a hazardous expedition. But there was an active vitality in the very circumscribed public life of the young colony, and the eaters of the bread of idleness were comparatively few. Everyone was not only alive, but wide-awake. Stores were doing a fair business, bill discounters making large profits, ministers of religion putting in an appearance, and branches of the Australasian and Union Banks were in the near future. "Johnny Fawkner" was the proprietor of the Original Groggery, and, to add zest to his tipple, had annexed a reading-room to its bar, whilst his foolscap M.S. newspaper, the Melbourne Advertiser, was fattening on a circulation of twelve copies, sold at one shilling each, barring one specially reserved for the enlightenment of those who patronised the editor's doubtful drinkables. A chief constable and a handful of tip-taking policemen were the supposed guardians of the public weal—for, though there was a detachment of Military stationed in the township, their principal duty seemed to be to keep watch and ward over a rascally gang of convicts, set to work on the streets and elsewhere, whose attempts at up and down levelling only made what was originally bad enough infinitely worse. One sentiment, however, animated the inhabitants, high and low—and that was an absolute belief in a wonderful future for their embryo city, their great expectations regarding which were never abated in the smallest degree. The Melbourne Advertiser of the 8th April, 1838, thus observes on the building condition of the place:— "The town of Melbourne is rapidly increasing in population and in building. There are at this present time not less than ten brick houses in hand, some of them roofed in, and others, the walls partly built. Some of these houses are large, and six are of two stones, with underground cellars. The wood buildings are more numerous, but generally of less size. In fact, persons who have been absent only a few days, on their return express pleased feelings of surprise at the very evident advancement of this flourishing, but newly settled, town. About 180 allotments have been sold here and the first hundred in June, 1837—the eighty lots in November last—and already more than two hundred buildings are ready (or nearly so) for dwelling in."
The wants of Melbourne are declared in the Advertiser, 23rd of April, to be:—
"That it presented more the appearance of the villages he had seen in the interior of India—a nucleus of huts embosomed in forest foliage, and peering at itself in the river stream that laved the thresholds of its tenements—than any collection of buildings formed by European hands. It was at the time possessed of two wooden houses, serving the purposes of hotels or inns to the settlers who frequented the little town upon the occasion of their bringing their wool produce to the port, or new arrivals before they committed themselves to the trials and privations of the bush. A small square wooden building, with an old ship's bell suspended from a most defamatory looking, gallows-like structure, fulfilled the duty of church or chapel to the various religious denominations, whence, however, the solemn voice of prayer and praise, sounding through the yet wild country, had an effect the most interesting and impressive... Two or three shops, forming a general emporium for every description of immediately useful articles, although exceedingly inferior, opened their wares to the public; whilst a branch establishment of a Van Diemen's bank flourished on its monetary exchanges, discounts, and circulation." Visiting Sydney, and returning after a six months' absence, Arden expressed surprise at the general improvement and rapid progress of Melbourne, its numerous buildings, some even two and three stories, the hotels transformed into handsome and convenient inns, and the line of streets cleared, marked, and in some parts under a process of partial Macadamization. He must have much exaggerated, or erred unconsciously, for, when I first saw Melbourne, three years after, there was not a single three-storied house in the town; and, though the streets were marked, and several of them cleared, but not of stumps, the "process of Macadamization" was even then of the most rudimentary kind. The first three-storied houses erected in Melbourne were, one on the east side of Queen Street, between Collins and Little Flinders Streets, long occupied by Dr. O'Mullane, a well-known physician, and the other occupied by Mr. George James, wine and spirit merchant on the south side of Collins Street, between Elizabeth and Swanston Streets.
As the erection of a more substantial class of houses commenced, bricks grew into demand, and first supplies were procured from Launceston; but brickmaking in Melbourne was started on the swampy flat, between the river and Emerald Hill, though our first local industry obtained the reverse of protection from the Government. This was in 1838, and a tax of £10 per annum was levied for the occupation of the land, £5 for the right to erect a hut, and, worse still, a further sum of £2 10s. was charged for the use of the clay! Lime-burning followed, for which payment in tithe kind was insisted upon, the Government taking unto itself one bushel for every ten produced. Such excessive charges necessarily caused much dissatisfaction, and led to a small stampede of the working hands to Adelaide and Valparaiso. There were greater extremes of weather in the old than in the modern times—more sudden transitions from heat to cold, and from wet to dry, more baking hot winds, and swamping floods. In the beginning of the summer of 1838, there was such a drought as has not been since equalled, and apprehensions were entertained, encouraged by the predictions of the Aborigines, that the whitefellow's cattle and the whitefellow himself would be exterminated through dearth of feed and water. The people were then, with the exception of meat, mainly dependent for provisions upon the coasting trade established between Port Phillip, Sydney, and Van Diemen's Land. Large stocks were not kept in the shanty-stores of Melbourne, the coasting voyages were often protracted, and an anticipated shortening of rations was a cause of general alarm. But out of this drought an amusing prayer difficulty arose, and the colonists were placed in a curiousfix, from which their piety had some difficulty in extricating them. Hot and dry weather prevailed to such an alarming degree throughout the northern portion of New South Wales, that the Government issued a proclamation directing that the 2nd November should be observed as a day of general fast and humiliation in all parts of the colony, and the clergy were requested to offer divine worship in their respective churches. When the time arrived for the general abstinence and devotion, though it was as dry as ever in Sydney, there was such a superabundance of rain in Port Phillip that the sheep-shearing was considerably retarded, and individual prayers were strong and urgent that theflood-gatesof the heavens might be for a time closed. The official proclamation was of course pro forma obeyed by the Ministers of some of the denominations, but the public were unanimous on one point, that wet or dry they should have a holiday; and such it was observed, religiously or irreligiously, the latter preponderating, for the half-dozen tavern ​taps were in great demand, and so far as a desire for stimulants went, there was individually a very general "spiritual" drought, or thirstiness, perceptible about the township. In January, 1839, however, the heat gave the province its "turn" in a most unmistakable manner, for bush fires raged everywhere along the coast and through the interior, inflicting no small losses upon the settlers scattered through the County of Bourke, Geelong, and other parts of the western and north-western country. One great want pressed heavily on the settlement, viz., something approaching a labour famine, and it was complained, with a degree of justice that could not be gainsaid, that the province was very unfairly treated in the appropriation of the money realised by the sale of Crown lands. Accordingly, in the month of September, a memorial was transmitted from the stockholders to the Governor, begging him to recommend the Home Government to despatch a vessel with immigrants direct to Melbourne; but no response was madde until July, 1840, when advices were received that not only one, but several shiploads, were to be deported to Port Phillip by J. Marshall, the then well-known emigration agent. Certainly, in January, 1840, a barque, appropriately named the "Hope," brought from Sydney 130 immigrants, with 30 women and fifty children; but this was, so to speak, only a drop in the bucket. The total revenue for 1838 was £43,524 2s. 9d., made up of the following items, viz.:— Postage, £150; squatters' licenses, £530; publicans' licenses, £200; auctioneers', £100; fees, £400; Customs, £6734 19s. 9d.; and land sales, £35,359 3s.
In the beginning of 1839 Melbourne could not boast of having a single one of those extremes of handicraftism, a watchmaker or a tinker—though there were half-a-dozen shoemakers, two saddlers, three bakers, four butchers, and three tailors—and oh—happy land, Australia Felix in reality! only one blessed limb of the law, bearing the unprofessional name of Meek. But though there was no other legal practitioner, Fawkner and a butcher named M'Nall were allowed to act as advocates before the Police Magistrate; and considering the surroundings of the place, it was no misnomer to put them down as "bush lawyers," for they were literally so. M'Nall kept a large butcher's shop, where now is Rocke & Co.'s furnishing mart, in Collins Street; and here he followed his dual calling, but the people preferred his mutton to his law, and affected his sirloins more than his equity. He did a very large business in the victualling line, but what he made in one way was lost in other more risky transactions. He died a good many years ago, and there is now nothing remaining of him except an almost forgotten memory, unless it be a poor bantling of a street in Richmond which is named after him. The first town fire occured in 1838, in a hut, used as a watch-house, near Spencer Street, but no fire bell rang, or brigade mustered to put it out. The place was burned down, and it is unnecessary to say that neither stock nor premises were covered by insurance. The next year the first Fire and Marine Insurance Company was started, but it collapsed after a brief reign. The first gunpowder explosion occurred in 1839, in a not very fire-proof locality, the now Market Street, where there was a row of weather-board shops, and in one of these a Mr. Blanche, the first of our gun and powder sellers, was located with his firearms and combustibles, all of which, with his wife and some customers, were blown up, and five persons killed. Our present numerous and respectable fraternity of barbers, and hairdressers, will be interested by the announcement that their earliest business predecessor was a shaver, rejoicing in the unrazorly cognomen of Lamb: and an accommodating modiste of the very appropriate name of Lily, was the first in the field to tender her services in supplying baby-linen to such as might require so interesting a commodity, which was then very slowly becoming an article of necessity; and, as if to assist the Lily patronage, a lady under the rugged appellation of Bear, stationed herself in Elizabeth Street, whence she informed married ladies that she would "be happy to attend those requiring her services during their accouchements." Next, there turned up an undertaker who promised "to attend to funerals on the shortest notice." As the representative of the icy King of Terrors, he was not unfittingly named Frost. He was a well-to-do butcher over the water, where he sought variety by passing from the trade of cutting up carcasses, to that of burying corpses' not much of a transition, though in the latter there was no killing or "cutting up" indulged in. He also started the business of carpenter and joiner, and to the time of his death was an industrious and well-deserving colonist. There was not a regular retail tobacconist in the town until September 1839, when a fancy snuff and cigar shop was opened in Market Street, yet there was a professor of music, a dancing master, and a Mrs. Clarke, "one of the lights of the Sydney stage," who gave occasional soirées at 10s. per head. But the poor fancy tobacconist did not keep his pipe long alight, for both it and his life were put out together in the Blanche ​calamity, when he was unfortunately present, and was one of those who perished in the burst-up. There was a great disparity of the sexes, and "servantgalism" was at a high premium. Though Collins Street had not yet inaugurated its "block," marriageable young ladies were rapidly picked up, yet not so rapidly as they expected. One of the fair sex, who had evidently been left "wall-flowering" longer than she expected, thus vents her virtuous displeasure upon the presumed selfishness of the lords of creation in a letter to the newspapers. She writes:— "If the gentlemen will leave off for a time counting their pounds, shillings, and pence, and mingle a little among the ladies, they would find themselves well rewarded."
Nevertheless we find advertisements from bachelors languishing to get married; and in the same newspaper columns there is a Thomas Coombes "cautioning the public against allowing his wife, Mary Anne, to go 'on tick,' as he will not be responsible," and a Mr. John Connell crying down the credit of his wife "because she left her home without any just cause or provocation." To the late Hon. James F. Strachan, afterwards of Geelong, is to be accorded the honour of having had erected the firstbusiness brick building in Melbourne—a store at the south-east corner of Collins and Queen Streets. Mr. John Hodgson had a house built where the Port Phillip Club Hotel now stands, in Flinders Street, and it was so big for the times that it was known as "Hodgson's folly." Its date was 1838, and there was nothing at all to approach it as a private residence. When Mr. Latrobe arrived, as Superintendent, in 1839, there were in Melbourne, three breweries, two fellmongeries, one tan-yard, some 70 shops, and 500 houses, about half of which had stone foundations. The population was about 3000, and the property was roughly estimated at £112,000: yet, singular to say, in the commencement of this same year, the police protection of Melbourne consisted of only four constables! This is a strong indication of the people's respect for law and order, which one would scarcely expect in a community where such a large proportion of the settlers were expirees from Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales.
In January 1839, the minimum price of country Crown lands was raised from 5s. to 12s. per acre, and during 1838 and 1839, some seventy-seven thousand acres were sold, realising nearly £105,000. A portion of this amount was applied by the Home Government in promoting what was termed a system of "Bounty Emigration," and the immigrants so "assisted" began to pour into the country. There was a large admixture of great and small capitalists amongst the general mass of the new-comers; and, at the close of 1839, the population numbered 5822, which doubled the next year, and quadrupled the year after. Hotels and other places of entertainment had now sprung up, newspapers were established, and clergymen, doctors, and stray sheep from other learned professions (a rather mixed black and white flock taken in globo) were daily coming to the front. Commercial enterprise began to quicken, and considerable intercolonial and home trade was at work. On the last day of the year, Melbourne could boast of possessing a military band consisting of a drum only. There was also a Temperance Society, a Benefit Society, an Insurance Company, three Banks, Racing and Cricket Associations, one Steam-boat, two Newspapers, a "Melbourne" Club, a Wharf Preacher, and five Religious Denominations. Through the courtesy of Mr. Skene (Surveyor-General) I have received a sketch of Melbourne at this period; and its history is a peculiar one. It was made by a Mr. J. Adamson, familiarly known amongst his friends as "Deaf Adamson." He was a squatter in a small way, as most squatters were in those pristine days, in the immediate neighbourhood of Melbourne. The sketch was engraved in copper and published by Mr. R. Clint, of Sydney. The original copper-plate had disappeared, and was for many years lost and utterly forgotten, until it was found recently in the Melbourne Lands office, stowed away in old boxes. A copy was then taken from the old plate, a photograph obtained from that copy and transferred to the lithograph stone. Though I did not arrive in the colony until the middle of 1841, notwithstanding the material interim changes which had taken place, I can vouch from personal recollection for the general accuracy of this remanent of "Deaf Adamson." In some points of perspective it is defective, for it makes Batman's Hill too small, blocks it up too much to the