The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-03-18 00:00:00

PORT PHILIP.

(From the Hobart Town Courier.)

SINGULAR DISCOVERY.—The reader is already aware
of the pastoral expedition of Mr. Batman and others to
Port Philip. The tall and stately gait of the natives of
that region had already struck Mr. Batman as being pe-
culiar, as indeed it had done some years before Messrs.
Howell and Hume, who made the coast in that direction
across the country from Sydney. On a close investiga-
tion a few very handsome individuals were found to be of
a lighter colour, and some with countenances approach-
ing nearer the contour of European faces than the gene-
rality. Indications too of a higher state ofcivilizatien,
or rather of a less savage state than prevailed •among
post of the'other tribes of New Holland, werehere and
there conspicuous. Rude embankments with tolerable •
stone facings were found in parts constructed across
creeks and inlets, with convenient sluices for the purpose
of catching fish at thefall
.of the lido. Several of the
bark shelters or wigwams were forined in a superior .and
comfortable manner, tolerably well thatched with a nar,
row opening for the doorway, and fire-place in front.
Pieces of wood were hollowed or scooped out to serve as
calibashes or buckets to carry water„and,the dresses of
kino•aroo skins were neatly joined together with regular
stitches, and cut away so as to form a convenient ves-
ture. The settlers, however, had not domiciled them-
selves in their new position many days when these and
various other indications of ingenuity were satisfactorily
explained by the appearance of a white man, clothed in
a kangaroo-skin cloak. He was at first rather timid in
his approaches, but when spoken to kindly and offered a
piece of bread, he threw.off his reserve, and after eating
the bread with apparent relish, and looking at it as if
endeavouring to bring something •to his recollection, he
exclaimed, with symptoms of delight glowing in his face,
" Bread !" Other English words soon returned to his
memory, and he was at last enabled to communicate that
his name was William Bulkley—that lie had been one of
those who escaped from the encampment of the prison-
.ers by the ship Ocean, formed by the late Colonel Col-
lins, in attempting, agreeably to the instructions of the
British ?;overnment, to form -a settlement at Port Philip
in 1803—that he had lived ever since with the tribe of
the Aborigines, whom he then met with in the bush, and
over whom he had long exercised ttre rule of a chief. He
is a very tall man, having served as a grenadier in Hol-
land under the late Duke of York, and, according to the•
measure which has been sent over to procure garments
for him, he is six feet five inches high, and so stout and
portly as to measure three feet nine round the chest. The
long period of unsophisticated,. out-of-door, wan ring
life which lie has led seems to have agreed remarkably
with his health, of which, though from fifty-eight to sixty
years of age, he stands a perfect picture, and would cer-
tainly eclipse in the effect of his physical appearance, if'
not in his rhetorical, the celebrated Mr. Cubbett in the
House of Commons. Through the assistance of the new
settlers, he has forwarded a petition to the lieutenant go-
vernor, praying for • a pardon, mainly with a view, we
presume, to enable him to remain where lie is, and to
communicate the result of his intimacy with that interest-
ing country, and the many valuable discoveries which he
has made in it, which we are glad to learn his excellency
has been kindly pleased to grant, impressing at the same
time upon him the expectation that he will continue to do
all in his power to maintain an amicable intercourse be-
tween the Aborigines and the Whites; for he had al-
ready,been the means of preventing a sanguinary attack
of his tribe, through misapprehension, on the little party
already settled there. In a philosophical point of view
this discovery is truly interesting, and a narrative of his
various vicissitudes, during his long sojourn, well told,
would rival the classical work of Robinson Crusoe, and
as the means of promoting further discovery, and pre •
serving an amicable intercourse with the Whites, the
circumstance is both memorable and, if well directed, in-
valuable. Two other prisoners from the Ocean abscond-
ed with him, but he had never seen or heard of them since
the end of the first twelvemonth when he joined the
blacks.