Armytage received sizable grants of land at Bagdad, and later obtained larger areas in Western Victoria as a pastoral squatter. As a result of much of this land being forcibly taken from Aboriginals by the Armytages and their colonial property managers, they were involved in several instances of frontier conflict. For example, when taking ownership of an area near Geelong in 1836, Charles Franks (a business partner of the Armytages) was speared to death by Wathaurung. A subsequent punitive expedition against local Aboriginals apparently served as "a warning to the natives not in the future to commit wanton excesses" against the British occupiers.