The Yarra, with its fresh water, was selected as the site for the town, then the Yarra become the port for the town.
Water is vital for life so for many years the river attracted aborigines then provided the wild life and food for their existence. The Wurundjeri tribe claimed the valley of the Yarra and its tributaries as their territory (Source: Garry Presland, Land of the Kulin page 32). Below the rocky ledge of the falls, at the future site of Melbourne, tides brought salt water up the river but above the falls the water remained fresh and fit to drink. The rocky ledge of the falls also made a handy platform for collecting water or spearing fish. Along the length of the river, there were places in the water or on the banks that made the stream more accessible. One of these was at the area they named Bolin, later to become Bulleen. Here the Yarra ran through river flats covered with lagoons and billabongs. In the summer, aborigines came to these peaceful sheltered river flats to relax with plenty of food on the cool shady banks of the river. They built simple huts with sheets of bark leaning against a low branch or sapling. During the day, the men fished for eels, feeling in the water with their feet until they found an eel, which they then speared. The women dug for roots along the riverbanks, and cooked food on small sheets of bark over their campfire.
Bolin was an important place in the lives of the aborigines for, not only was it a summer river resort, but they used it as a meeting place where associated tribes met for games and corroborees. The river at Bolin and its lagoons provided ample supplies of food for large gatherings and meetings of visiting tribes (Source: William Thomas Protector of Aborigines).
Living in the Yarra valley, the Aborigines often needed to cross the river but it was deep and could only be crossed in a few places, such as the Falls at Melbourne, Dights Falls and a ford at Heidelberg. So they constructed a canoe. They selected a large tree close to the bank of the river, one that had thick bark and a trunk slightly bent to give the final canoe a curve that would lift the bow out of the water. They marked out the shape of the canoe with an axe, and then cut the edges through, beginning at the bottom. As the men cut higher, they also cut toeholds and climbed the tree hanging onto the trunk with one hand while cutting with the other. The strip of bark was hammered with a blunt axe to loosen it from the tree; then they prised the bark free with a long pole and gently lowered it to the ground (Source: E. M. Currr Recollections of Squatting in Victoria page 50).
The aborigines laid the strip of bark upside down and lit a fire underneath it to dry and harden the wood. As the wood dried, it tended to curl into the right shape. When it was ready they turned it right side up and placed sticks across to hold the sides in place, then the bow was packed with clay to make it waterproof. After leaving a few days to dry the canoe was ready for use.
Aborigines also used bark, from river red gums, for many other purposes; curved pieces of bark made a cooking vessel, or a baby's cradle. Many trees that are scarred where bark had been removed many years ago, remain on the banks of the Yarra indicating to us that aborigines had lived and travelled here.
Bolin was an important place in the lives of the aborigines for, not only was it a summer river resort, but they used it as a meeting place where associated tribes met for games and corroborees. The river at Bolin and its lagoons provided ample supplies of food for large gatherings and meetings of visiting tribes (Source: William Thomas Protector of Aborigines).
Living in the Yarra valley, the Aborigines often needed to cross the river but it was deep and could only be crossed in a few places, such as the Falls at Melbourne, Dights Falls and a ford at Heidelberg. So they constructed a canoe. They selected a large tree close to the bank of the river, one that had thick bark and a trunk slightly bent to give the final canoe a curve that would lift the bow out of the water. They marked out the shape of the canoe with an axe, and then cut the edges through, beginning at the bottom. As the men cut higher, they also cut toeholds and climbed the tree hanging onto the trunk with one hand while cutting with the other. The strip of bark was hammered with a blunt axe to loosen it from the tree; then they prised the bark free with a long pole and gently lowered it to the ground (Source: E. M. Currr Recollections of Squatting in Victoria page 50).
The aborigines laid the strip of bark upside down and lit a fire underneath it to dry and harden the wood. As the wood dried, it tended to curl into the right shape. When it was ready they turned it right side up and placed sticks across to hold the sides in place, then the bow was packed with clay to make it waterproof. After leaving a few days to dry the canoe was ready for use.
Aborigines also used bark, from river red gums, for many other purposes; curved pieces of bark made a cooking vessel, or a baby's cradle. Many trees that are scarred where bark had been removed many years ago, remain on the banks of the Yarra indicating to us that aborigines had lived and travelled here.
In 1836 when Governor Bourke came to Port Phillip to inspect the settlement and named the town “Melbourne”, (after Lord Melbourne). Up till then settlers had been calling the village names such as “Bearbrass” or “Batmanville”. After viewing Melbourne, Bourke inspected the land to the north and east, then returned along the north bank of the Yarra and wrote a description of the country and the river (Source: Governor Bourke’s journal of his visit to Port Phillip 1-29 March 1837 Historic records of Victoria Volume 1).
“Proceeded early on a ride up the Yarra. Kept to the north bank. The land for the first five miles from Melbourne is not of the best quality. Very scrubby but better suited for cattle than sheep. Crossed a creek about two and a half miles from Melbourne and a second creek five miles from thence, the land improves in appearance and quality being thinly wooded with no scrub with occasional fine flats near the river bank for about eight miles, farther when having passed Mollisons and Woods Stations you reach Plenty Creek, a rivulet of fine water. From here in a N.E. direction the country becomes more broken with deep ravines and more thickly wooded but the Yarra continues a fine full stream of clear water in places, bubbling over ledges of rock, at others forming deep reaches.”
“Having proceeded about 16 miles from the settlement we returned. The river appeared to come through the opening of a range about 15 miles distant in the direction of N.E. ..... The Yarra abounds in fine fish and the water is of very good quality. ....”
Governor Bourke travelled in style, when the party camped overnight, Bourke dined, at a table in his tent, covered with a white cloth and lit by candles with white shades.
Robert Russell, who had come to Melbourne the previous year, saw the infant town with its unplanned collection of houses cluttering the area. He realised the need for a town plan. The river seemed an obvious place to start so he laid out a scheme based on the river frontage. Russell’s plan was unofficial, but when Hoddle, the senior surveyor from Sydney, arrived with Governor Bourke (Source: Governor Bourke’s Journal). He used Russell’s plan as the basis for the official layout of Melbourne. - - The Yarra had determined Melbourne’s future.
In the 1830’s some of the leaders in Australia expressed great concern for the welfare of the natives; as a result a government mission was planned for Port Phillip. George Langhorn, who had been teaching native prisoners at Sydney, was asked to open a mission at Melbourne. William Lonsdale selected an 895 acre site for the mission on the Yarra River just over a mile from the town, (later to become the Botanical Gardens), overlooking a swamp lush with bird and animal life. Early in 1837 Langhorne and his wife Mary, with another couple, Thomas Watson and his wife as overseers, moved onto the land (Source: Historic records of Victoria Vol2 A Page 156 - 173).
Langhorne considered that they should concentrate on the black children who would be more likely to learn than adults, for it would seem an impossibility to induce adults into habits of regular industry. They offered the aborigines food and clothing in return for work on the mission. There was no restraint on them staying, but food and clothing would be stopped if they left the mission and the children were refused one meal if they left without permission.
They issued the men duck frocks, trousers and worsted or woollen caps and in the winter, sailors worsted shirts; the women, coarse linen frocks, with sleeves to the elbow and in winter flannel dresses. The children wore stout onsaburgh dresses with a band to fasten around the waist. The boys had full sleeves, the girls had sleeves to reach the elbows.
The government provided tools to clear the land, cut timber, plough gardens and grow vegetables. By the end of the year they had planted an acre with vegetables and half an acre with potatoes. In 1837 Langhorne reported that there were twenty children and at times sixty to eighty adults. Among the children there were few girls as the men found it objectionable to have boys and girls together. The next year there were less children and the men often left the mission. In 1839 the Aboriginal Mission closed down, all the children had left and the men scorned the idea of being paid with only coarse flour. The aborigines had come to like white man’s food, they wanted money to buy bread.
Away from Melbourne between Kew and Templestowe, the Yarra meandered through a flood plain covered by grassy river flats dotted with spreading red gums. Along the river graceful river gums, their trunks leaning out from the river banks, threw patterned shadows on the water. Richard Howitt in his book “Impressions of Australia Felix” described the river as it flowed through Heidelberg and Bulleen (Source: Richard Howitt “Impressions of Australia Felix” Page 136)
“Having proceeded about 16 miles from the settlement we returned. The river appeared to come through the opening of a range about 15 miles distant in the direction of N.E. ..... The Yarra abounds in fine fish and the water is of very good quality. ....”
Governor Bourke travelled in style, when the party camped overnight, Bourke dined, at a table in his tent, covered with a white cloth and lit by candles with white shades.
Robert Russell, who had come to Melbourne the previous year, saw the infant town with its unplanned collection of houses cluttering the area. He realised the need for a town plan. The river seemed an obvious place to start so he laid out a scheme based on the river frontage. Russell’s plan was unofficial, but when Hoddle, the senior surveyor from Sydney, arrived with Governor Bourke (Source: Governor Bourke’s Journal). He used Russell’s plan as the basis for the official layout of Melbourne. - - The Yarra had determined Melbourne’s future.
In the 1830’s some of the leaders in Australia expressed great concern for the welfare of the natives; as a result a government mission was planned for Port Phillip. George Langhorn, who had been teaching native prisoners at Sydney, was asked to open a mission at Melbourne. William Lonsdale selected an 895 acre site for the mission on the Yarra River just over a mile from the town, (later to become the Botanical Gardens), overlooking a swamp lush with bird and animal life. Early in 1837 Langhorne and his wife Mary, with another couple, Thomas Watson and his wife as overseers, moved onto the land (Source: Historic records of Victoria Vol2 A Page 156 - 173).
Langhorne considered that they should concentrate on the black children who would be more likely to learn than adults, for it would seem an impossibility to induce adults into habits of regular industry. They offered the aborigines food and clothing in return for work on the mission. There was no restraint on them staying, but food and clothing would be stopped if they left the mission and the children were refused one meal if they left without permission.
They issued the men duck frocks, trousers and worsted or woollen caps and in the winter, sailors worsted shirts; the women, coarse linen frocks, with sleeves to the elbow and in winter flannel dresses. The children wore stout onsaburgh dresses with a band to fasten around the waist. The boys had full sleeves, the girls had sleeves to reach the elbows.
The government provided tools to clear the land, cut timber, plough gardens and grow vegetables. By the end of the year they had planted an acre with vegetables and half an acre with potatoes. In 1837 Langhorne reported that there were twenty children and at times sixty to eighty adults. Among the children there were few girls as the men found it objectionable to have boys and girls together. The next year there were less children and the men often left the mission. In 1839 the Aboriginal Mission closed down, all the children had left and the men scorned the idea of being paid with only coarse flour. The aborigines had come to like white man’s food, they wanted money to buy bread.
Away from Melbourne between Kew and Templestowe, the Yarra meandered through a flood plain covered by grassy river flats dotted with spreading red gums. Along the river graceful river gums, their trunks leaning out from the river banks, threw patterned shadows on the water. Richard Howitt in his book “Impressions of Australia Felix” described the river as it flowed through Heidelberg and Bulleen (Source: Richard Howitt “Impressions of Australia Felix” Page 136)
“The situation is delicious, the slope of the land most graceful. The windings of the Yarra in full prospect, both near and far off are beautiful. Some bell birds are ringing a merry peal, while white cockatoos are sitting on the old gum stumps and parrots are flittering about gorgeously numerous.”
In 1837, John Wood and David Mollison commenced grazing sheep on the north of the Yarra near the Plenty River (Source: Doncaster Templestowe Historical Society Newsletter Dec. 1984 Page 4). On these flat plains, silt from the river floods had enriched the soil, growing lush grass that fattened their flocks of sheep.
These pioneer men lived in simple huts. There was no comfort for cold wind blew through cracks in the walls and the roofs leaked. When Richard Bourke visited the Port Phillip District in 1836 he visited Mollison and wrote a description of his hut that gives an insight into the life these early squatters lived.
“There was a bench, a stool, a cracked cup or two, tin pannikins, a couple of knives and forks and a plate or two. All to eat is Irish salted pork, damper, tea and sugar. Light is produced by burning rags in pieces of fat pork.” (Source: Richard Bourke Journal of a Visit to Port Phillip)
The next year Mollison left the district but John Wood remained on the river flats. He moved across the river to Bulleen and two years later sold his run to Robert Laidlaw. (Source: Port Phillip Pioneers)
Up through the timbered hills of Warrandyte to the grass lands of Yarra Glen and Warburton the Yarra wound its way through lonely isolated country. Intrepid graziers overlanded cattle and sheep from New South Wales to the Yarra flats looking for the good pasture land they had heard about. Men such as Gardener, Anderson, Duncan and Ryrie. Anderson who had come from Van Diemens Land and Dawson a sturdy Scotsman both ran cattle stations in the Warrandyte Hills. Gardener settled on the Yarra at Hawthorn then leased a large run extending past the hills near Warrandyte. The Ryrie brothers took out a run past Lilydale (Source: Marion Averling “Lillydale” Page 14) where the Yarra lazily flowed through a grass covered plain, its curving course flanked by large gums and wattles.
The river flowed from thickly timbered mountainous country with high bluffs, unknown except to a few surveyors and adventurous men. In 1845 Robert Hoddle, Surveyor General, supported by a party of assistant chain men, with horses and bullocks, surveyed the length of the Yarra and explored its head-waters. Hoddle met great difficulties; he was often wet through after violent thunderstorms, several horses died, at one place the whole party was washed out of their tent, many nights were too hot to sleep and he had difficulties getting food for his bullocks. Leeches, mosquitoes and sand-flies attacked them all day and night.(Source: H. S. McComb “Surveying the Yarra Yarra River” The Australian Surveyor 1 Dec. 1938 Page 241) The steep grades and dense scrub in the thickly timbered foothills of Mount Baw Baw made exploration difficult. the party some times took a day to travel half a mile and spent two weeks exploring the last six miles to the source of the Yarra He found the ultimate source in the area where the river rises in “shallow water and springs.” surrounded by dense bush. (Source: Footnote Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society archives. Box 4-2)
The river flowed from thickly timbered mountainous country with high bluffs, unknown except to a few surveyors and adventurous men. In 1845 Robert Hoddle, Surveyor General, supported by a party of assistant chain men, with horses and bullocks, surveyed the length of the Yarra and explored its head-waters. Hoddle met great difficulties; he was often wet through after violent thunderstorms, several horses died, at one place the whole party was washed out of their tent, many nights were too hot to sleep and he had difficulties getting food for his bullocks. Leeches, mosquitoes and sand-flies attacked them all day and night.(Source: H. S. McComb “Surveying the Yarra Yarra River” The Australian Surveyor 1 Dec. 1938 Page 241) The steep grades and dense scrub in the thickly timbered foothills of Mount Baw Baw made exploration difficult. the party some times took a day to travel half a mile and spent two weeks exploring the last six miles to the source of the Yarra He found the ultimate source in the area where the river rises in “shallow water and springs.” surrounded by dense bush. (Source: Footnote Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society archives. Box 4-2)
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The Yarra was the reason for Melbourne but it also formed a barrier for the water was wide and deep. The only place to cross was at the falls, and then only at low tide. In the first year, settlers used a cumbersome method of crossing with goods and stock. They removed the wheels from a dray, stretched a canvas or tarpaulin underneath and hauled this improvised punt across the river with a rope. (Source: Edmund Finn “The Chronicles of Early Melbourne by Garryowen” Page 499)
Ocean going ships coming to Port Phillip could not negotiate the narrow and often shallow channel of the river, so they tied up at Port Melbourne. New arrivals walked along a well-beaten track from Port Melbourne to the Yarra at the Falls. Fording the river was difficult and inconvenient, a rocky ledge crossed part of the river but at low tide there was a gap of 106 feet with about three feet of water running over it. (Source: Footnote William Lonsdale to Col. Sec. 30 May 1938 PRO) At high tide the river rose another two and a half feet and salt water mixed with the fresh above the falls then making the town’s water supply unsuitable for drinking.
Both Robert Hoddle and William Lonsdale came up with the idea of building a dam over the Falls. The dam would leave a ford only one foot deep, giving a crossing at the same time as preventing salt water penetrating up stream. (Source: Footnote Governors minute 28 June 1838) The authorities agreed with the scheme but worried that raising the height of the river might cause flooding in the town, so Lonsdale was told to make enquiries and obtain information on the effect of a dam. (Source: Col. Sec to William Lonsdale 29 June 1838 PRO) The result of his enquiries was satisfactory and permission was given to use convict labour for the dam. (Source: Col. Sec. to William Lonsdale 30.March 1839 PRO) Unfortunately the work was nearly completed when an exceptionally high tide washed it away. During the depression of the 1840’s unemployed immigrants built a stronger stone dam that lasted for many years and was later removed when Queens Bridge was built. (Source: Historical Records of Victoria 228)
Across the river valuable land stretched away into the distance, desirable but difficult to reach with a cart or wagon. In March 1838 William Lonsdale wrote a letter to the Colonial Secretary saying: (Source: Historical Records of Victoria)
“I have the honour to enclose a copy of a letter from Mr. Hodgson, merchant of Melbourne, who wishes to know in the absence of an established ferry across the River Yarra, if he may be allowed to place a punt across the river, and receive the emoluments arising from it until other means of crossing are afforded.” Hodgson complained that boats, tied up on the banks of the Yarra, were frequently taken by strangers wanting to cross the river, and the owners had the annoyance of finding their boats on the other side. Hodgson said that his own boat had been taken from its moorings four times in the last week.
Shortly afterwards Lonsdale forwarded a petition from Thomas Watt, carpenter and builder, to Sir George Gipps, governor of N.S.W. signed by sixty residents of Melbourne,
“Your Excellency’s Petitioner came free into the Colony and has a wife and four children.
That from the great loss of time and property arising from the want of a bridge across the Yarra Yarra River, your Petitioner was induced to build a punt for the purposes of crossing horses, cattle, sheep, etc. at his own sole risk and expense.
That Your Excellency’s petitioner humbly trusts that you will be pleased to take his case into consideration and grant such answer as Your Excellency may seem fit?
We, the undersigned householders in Melbourne, Port Phillip, feeling much interested in the object of Thomas Watt’s petition to His Excellency the Governor, hereby beg leave most respectfully to recommend the same to His Excellency’s favourable consideration.”
Lonsdale, Melbourne’s Police Magistrate, now had two applications to run a punt. Watt had his punt already constructed so Londsdale was pleased to pass on permission to Thomas Watt to commence a ferry service across the Yarra. Watt installed it at a spot between the present Swanston and Russell Streets. Watt had built his punt of planks, from a wrecked ship, sealed with tar and large enough to hold a cart or stock. A rope attached to stout trees on both banks was hauled by the puntman and passengers to propel the punt across the river. Watt called his punt ‘The Melbourne’.
John Hodgson later received permission to operate a punt but rivalry soon developed between the two operators. Watt attempted to attract custom by providing free beer for passengers. Unfortunately, the free drinks attracted disorderly characters who caused rowdy scenes on the river bank. Lonsdale cancelled Thomas Watt’s permission to operate the punt replacing it with another applicant, John Welch.
The Colonial Secretary approved Lonsdale’s action and also requested him to establish a ferry boat across the Yarra. Paddy Byrne, whose house was on the south of the river near the falls, became the first ferry-man.. Passengers from the town would shout for Paddy and he would row across the river to collect them. Paddy’s quick wit and Irish brogue soon made him a favourite. However he suffered with asthma, and often his attractive daughter Polly, even more popular with passengers, had to take his place rowing the ferry across the river. (Source: Footnote Edmund Finn “The Chronicals of Early Melbourne” Page 500d)
Farther upstream the Yarra is deep and there were few places where the river could be crossed. At Dights Falls there was a shallow rocky ledge where carts and wagons could ford the river and at Heidelberg farmers used another ford at the end of Banksia Street. (Source: Footnote J.Leaney. Bulleen a Short History)
The Yarra, as it comes from the north, flowed through elevated land on the Kew and Hawthorn side and the low land between Collingwood and Richmond on the other. In the early years of settlement, the high land on the east offered an attractive place to live but as the river flowed south from Studley Park it formed a barrier across all the routes from Melbourne. The settlers needed more crossings but it was not until later that resourceful men provided punts and ferries, and the government built bridges.
The first crossing along the river beyond Melbourne was a punt installed by John Palmer, a doctor who also engaged in business activities, it connected Richmond to Hawthorn just north of the present Hawthorn bridge. Farther upstream on the west of the Yarra near Johnston Street, John Hodgson also installed a punt in 1846.
Around the bend north of Johnston Street the Merri Creek enters the Yarra. At this junction, a flour mill and an aboriginal school were built. Langhorne’s mission, at the Botanic Gardens site, had closed down but in 1846, Governor La Trobe offered a house on the Yarra to the Baptist Church for an aboriginal school. It was near the junction of the Merri Creek with its front on the Yarra and the creek at the rear. The Church ran the school with Mr. Peacock as head teacher. He commenced teaching in 1846 with 30 children, the boys wearing white shirts and the girls dressed in dark print frocks. They were attentive to the teacher, learnt well, and sang hymns in fine style.
The aim of the mission was to teach the children while still young and adaptable so that they would learn the benefits of civilisation but after a few years the parents took their children away. To the aborigines this learning was useless, they should have been having important training in skills such as hunting and gaining knowledge of plants and foods.
John Dight came to Melbourne in 1839, with his wife and three brothers, bringing plans to start a flour mill also bricks and machinery to construct the mill. At the place where 36 years ago a ledge of rocks stopped Grimes from going farther up the river Dight saw an ideal site for his mill. Dight built his flour mill and dammed the Yarra to give a flow of water for his mill wheel. He and his brother Charles constructed a building three stories high to house the flour mill with a water wheel at one end. They produced flour from wheat grown in the farms close to Melbourne. Dight’s Mill was reported to be a success but in the 1850’s, fire destroyed the building. (Source: Paul van der Sluys, “Dights Flour Mills”)
From Merri Creek the Yarra flowed past paddocks where cows grazed and farmers grew potatoes on the rich flood plains. In 1838, the Government Auctioned land in the Parish of Keelbundoora. All the sections with land on the Yarra were sold. During the next ten years many of the owners subdivided their land to wealthy merchants in Melbourne who built large homes. On the river bank, in the area later to become Ivanhoe, George Smythe purchased 531 acres in 1839. A portion of this land, Chelsworth, was bought by Patrick Stevenson who built a homestead, later to become part of the Ivanhoe Golf Links Club House. David Charteris McArthur built ‘Charterisville’, Thomas Walker, built ‘Leighton’ and Joseph Hawdon constructed the historic ‘Banyule’ homestead.
During the 1840s, a settlement formed south of the Yarra at Bulleen. Farmers ran sheep on the rich grass of the Yarra flats, or planted wheat and barley or grazed cattle on the hills. A group of men who came from Scotland on the first immigrant ship from Scotland, the, “Midlothian”, were among the settlers. They were Robert Laidlaw, John Kerr and Alexander Duncan. (Source: Port Phillip Pioneers) Laidlaw had taken over Woods grazing lease on the Yarra and worked in partnership with Kerr, Duncan ran a dairy farm on the river flat near the present Freeway. At Heidelberg the community of wealthy men from Melbourne had chosen the site for the glorious views of the Yarra flats. They aimed to create a life fit for the gentry. Some of these estates included a grazing lease on the land across the river.
In 1842, the community of Scotsmen on both sides of the river held the first church service in the area in Duncans barn. The congregation sat on planks laid across barley sacks and a butter churn became the communion table. (Source: From a Barn in Bulleen to Scots Church)
A young man, Thomas Brown, who became known as the author Rolf Boldrewood, lived with his father at Heidelberg. He used to wade across the river and wander through the Bulleen swamps and lagoons. Brown wrote a description of the Yarra flats at Bulleen in his book “Old Melbourne Memories”.
“We forded the river opposite the old aboriginal stepped-tree and crossed a heavily timbered river flat with deep reed fringed lagoons. Owing to the prevalence and sinuous shape of the lagoons, coupled with the dense nature of the thickets, it was not an easy matter for a stranger to find his way through the maze. The deepest of the lagoons was fringed with a wide border of reeds growing in deep water. It had in the centre a clear lakelet or mere, upon which disported the black duck, the wood duck, the magpie goose, the mountain duck, the greater and lesser diver, while among the reeds waded or flew the heron, the sultana hen-billed variety of the coot, the bittern, the land rail and in season, an occasional snipe.” (Source: Old Melbourne Memories Bolrwood page 162)
On Sylvester Brown’s run a big black bull broke out of the compound. They thought it was lost but the bull was attracted by the cows among the herds grazing in the area and kept returning, but they were never able to catch it.
One day, when Kerr was rounding up his stock, Browns young son John with an old servant carrying a rifle, walked into the round up and told Kerr that he had come to collect their bull. Kerr looked at him and said, “How do you expect to catch it when all our stockmen can’t manage it.” Brown answered that he intended to shoot the bull and take back the meat. Kerr said, “Alright but don’t hit any of our stock.”
Brown walked into the centre of the herd till he was about twenty paces from the big black bull. The bull turned towards him, lowered its head and started to paw the ground. Brown took the rifle, slowly raising it to his shoulder, then made a soft mooing sound. The bull looked up and Brown fired. He felled the bull with one shot. (Source: Boldrwood “Old Melbourne Memories”)
The small community looked to Heidelberg as their township and needed a river crossing. There were places where the Yarra could be forded but only if the river was not running too fast. So it was welcome news in 1842 that Mr. Levien, the owner of a punt on the Maribynong River, was constructing a punt for Heidelberg. (Source: Port Phillip Gazette. 10 December 1842)
Levien hauled his punt all the way up the river from Melbourne, a distance of forty miles. It took him a tedious three weeks; dragging ropes along the river banks to tie on trees then winching the punt up the river till the ropes had to be untied and moved along to another tree. The punt was ready in January the next year, a remarkable asset for Heidelberg, for at this early date, there were still no bridges over the Yarra.
In these first years, farmers grew crops of wheat and barley. Acres of verdant crops covered the river banks of Bulleen with a sea of green growth. In Autumn wheat and barley turned to golden brown, and as the wind blew, ripples of gold flowed across the flats. At harvest time rows of men moved across the land swinging scythes while behind them women gathered the sheaths stacking them in neat rows.
Creeks and small rivers flowed into the Yarra. North of Bulleen there was the Plenty River and beyond Templestowe, Deep Creek. Along here one day in 1839 a rowing boat with a sail attached came up the Yarra sailing past Bulleen and on past Templestowe. Thomas Sweeney an Irishman from Van Diemens Land had improvised this sailing boat to go looking for land, with a river frontage, where he could run a farm. He found land opposite the mouth of Deep Creek and sailed into the history of Eltham. (Source: Alan Marshall “Pioneers and Painters” p12)
Across the river from Eltham another settler, Major Charles Newman, found a site for a homestead, Newman had retired from the Indian Army in the early 1830s and instead of returning to England came to Australia where he settled in Van Diemans Land near a town called Pontville. Newman found that all the good land had been taken up, so in 1837 on hearing glowing tales of the rich pasture land in Port Phillip, he decided to cross Bass Straight. Newman walked along the north bank of the Yarra and found ideal land past Heidelberg, opposite the site where Sweeney was later to settle, he saw rolling grassland on the south bank. During the next two years Newman made several trips across to his new home moving his stock, racehorses and family from van Diemans Land. (Source: Hazel Poulter, from family members, personal communication) On one trip a storm blew the ship on to rocks and was sunk with a prefabricated house and some of Newmans valuable horses.
On the river bank, where Deep Creek enters the Yarra, Newman built a large turf and sod hut. At one end of the hut the Major had built a large bush fireplace that almost filled the end wall and was large enough to have accommodated the whole family. At the other end of the hut stood a four poster bed for the the Major and his wife and two rough beds for the family. Behind here a rough slab hut, where the wind blew through the slabs housed the kitchen and bunks for the men and the staff.
Major Newman was a fine man, bronzed by the tropical sun, aged but still strong with all a soldier's manly bearing; his wife, Catherine was short and dark with the black eyes and tawney appearance of an Indian woman. Catherine took her place on the station, ready and with the strength to tackle any work such as killing and cutting up a sheep for the family meal. (Source: Bolrwood - Glimpses of Life in Victoria. page 38-40)
Charles Newman, a brusque retired army officer, applied for a grant of land but had left it too late after resigning from the army to eligable for a land grant. In 1843 he was allowed to buy three sections on the the river. With a secure title Newman built a homestead in the style of an Indian Bungalow. Wide verandahs surrounded a central core of three rooms, with thick walls three bricks wide, and a high roof covered the whole house. (Source: Conservation Analysis Pontville Homestead. Context Pty Ltd. 1995) Newman called his homestead Pontville after the area where he had lived in Tasmania. Pontville homestead was the first real house to be built on the Yarra beyond Heidelberg. (Source: Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society Records)
Newman dominated the local community helping many settlers struggling to make a living but at the same time quarrelled with his neighbours and often obtained leases by bribing officials. During his years at Pontville he and his wife Catherine experienced an attack by aborigines and were robbed by bushrangers. In both these events Catherine showed herself to be both brave and resourceful. A group of bushrangers who were raiding isolated homesteads east of Melbourne held up Major Newman stealing silver cups he had won with his racehorses. Being a proud army officer Newman felt it beneath his dignity to be held up and threatened to see them hanged. The bushrangers, who had suffered at the hands of Newman in Tasmania while he was in charge of convict labour, decided to kill him but while they were dragging him outside Catherine held on to him saying; “If you shoot him you will have to shoot me first.” faced with her determination they gave up and rode off. The bushrangers were later caught and hung, and Newman had his cups returned.
With white settlers now occupying the area many native animals were driven away depriving aborigines of their source of food. They often worked for settlers being paid with provisions. Major Newman had been accustomed to treat natives harshly while in India so treated aborigines the same way when he employed them, or fired a rifle to send them away. He soon made an enemy of the aborigines. On one occasion they were so incensed that they determined to kill him. Catherine heard what the aborigines intended to do and so when she saw them approaching all daubed with war paint, looked for somewhere to hide her husband. She saw the fireplace with its wide chimney. She hastily gathered green grass and wood to damp down the flames in the fire and pushed the Major up the chimney. The aborigines came in looked around and since Newman wasn’t there, left. Catherine quickly rescued her husband. He was half suffocated and his whiskers were badly singed.
At Warrandyte, where the Yarra tumbles over black rocks throwing white foam in the air, James Anderson built stockyards and huts on the river flat where a creek, named after him, enters the Yarra. Anderson, with aboriginal and “ticket of leave” drovers, had driven a flock of sheep from New South Wales. At first he had a grazing lease of eight square miles for his sheep. When Major Newman took out grazing leases alongside Anderson faced angry complaints from the arrogant Major when his cattle strayed onto land the Major considered to be his. In 1841 the Parish of Warrandyte was surveyed. The town reserve further restricted Anderson’s available land, so James Anderson left for other open land with more grass for his sheep. (Source: Doncaster, Templestowe and Warrandyte since 1837 - Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society)
The name Warrandyte came from two Aborigines words, Warran meaning to throw and Dyte the object thrown at. (Source: Text of Footnote same) In the area near Wonga Park games such a boomerang and spear throwing were held.
In 1839 James Dawson and his wife formed Warrandyte Station on a bend of the Yarra, now known as Selby. Two other Scotchmen, Selby and Mitchell who came on the same ship also settled at Warrandyte. (Source: Billis and Kenyon) The Dawsons had enjoyed the comfort of a cabin on the ship while Penelope and George Selby travelled in crowded conditions as steerage passengers. Penelope made friends with the open and generous Mrs Dawson. She was delighted to be able to make a farm on the same land, but not with the Dawsons. Selby ran dairy cattle on a bend beyond Dawson. He used the land enclosed by a sharp bend of the Yarra to make a horse paddock. A short fence across the bend enclosed the paddock.
Life on these stations along the Yarra was hard work with little comfort. In her letters home Penelope Selby described their conditions.
“This is generally called a very fine climate but give me `home’ as yet. You have a great deal of bad weather that we are spared, but it is very hot and changeable, the thermometer at this time is 104 in the shade. As for insects they are more numerous than you can imagine, the flies bite terribly and have feasted on me.
Would you like to know my dress just now, 4 o’clock pm. It consists of shoes, stockings, shift and cotton gown - Mrs. Dawson leaves out the stockings but the flies bite my legs. Three hours from this time I shall be glad to put on all my petticoats and make a good fire. Thanks to Mrs. Dawson I have become a first rate dairy woman and can cure meat, make butter, cheese, fatten calves or pigs equal to Aunt Goddard herself.” (Source: No Place for a Nervous Lady)
Many settlers’ wives shared the settlers life. They lived in primitive conditions and were thankful for neighbouring women even if nine miles away. Penelope helped with the birth of Mrs. Dawson’s first child and other women helped her during childbirth. She had seven babies in Australia. Six were stillborn and the other only lived long enough to be nursed.
When Samuel Furphy came to Port Phillip, he obtained work on James Anderson’s station bringing with him his wife Judith. Judith Furphy became pregnant and when the time for her birthing drew near they went to Melbourne. This cattle run with its rough conditions was not a fit place to bear and raise a baby. After the baby was born Mrs, Dawson obtained a position for Samuel at Ryries Station. The next son Joseph was born. Their children grew up on the banks of the Yarra and later both made names for themselves. Joseph wrote an Australian classic “Such is Life” under the name Tom Collins. The eldest boy John ran an engieering works and built water carts. These with the name Furphy painted on the side in large letters gave a new word to the Australian language during the great war when soldiers met at the water cart to hear the latest rumours. (Source: ? Furphy)
In 1837, the Ryrie Brothers took out a squatter’s license for 16,000 acres from Lilydale almost to Healesville. They had come from Monaro in New South Wales driving a large herd of cattle and found rich grazing land watered by the Yarra. They built their main homestead south of the Yarra at Yering and established outstations Tarrawarra and Dalry north of the river. (Source: ? Sally Healsville )
Two of the brothers, William and James left to buy land in New South Wales but not before William Ryrie quarrelled with the hot-headed Peter Snodgrass during a drinking bout at the Melbourne Club. Ryrie was challenged to a duel but the affair ended with an anti-climax. Snodgrass shot himself in the foot.
Donald Ryrie ran the station on his own looking after 43,000 acres. He planted an acre of vines at the home station with idea of producing wine.
During their first years in Port Phillip, the settlers found it very disconcerting when the Yarra overflowed its banks. Water covered the low land and turned the stockyards to mud. The aborigines would say, “This one piccaninny, (No Place for a nervous Lady) big one coming.” In October 1842 a big one came.
During the ten years from 1839 to 1849, a series of floods on the Yarra devastated Melbourne. Towards the end of the year heavy rains came, adding to the water pouring into the Yarra from snow melting on the mountains. The people of Melbourne were not prepared for the deluge when the peaceful Yarra rose up and spilled over the town in December 1839. From Collingwood through Richmond to the bay the land resembled an immense lake. Water tumbled along Elizabeth Street and at South Melbourne the brickworks were under six feet of water.
In July 1842, the river rose once more. At Footscray a group of men, in a hotel, were cut off when it was surrounded by deep water. They were rescueded by David Cashmore, a Melbourne draper, who rowed across country to the Royal Highland Hotel in Flinders Street. Cashmore tied up the boat at the bar of the hotel.
Each flood started when continuous rain poured down, often all night and all day. In October 1842, a southerly gale and an unusual high tide backed up the flood. The waters, held back by the tide and wind, rose to 50 feet at Heidelberg.
Two years later in October 1844, the flood was higher than Melbourne had known. Heavy rain lasted for three days, ending with a night when the rain fell in torrents. Business almost ceased and in the houses along the river the inhabitants watched in a state of terrible uncertainty as water rose around their homes, some were covered up to the roof. (Source: Edmund Finn “Chronicals of Early Melbourne by Garrowen” p211) At Dights Mill, the Yarra rose 36 feet. In the bush land and farming area alongside the river, flood water swept away branches and whole trees, some houses, built too close to the river, were caught up in the swirling water and washed away and vegetable gardens on the river flats vanished in the deluge. At Melbourne all work stopped as the lower parts of Flinders and William Streets were inundated and Elizabeth Street was under water at the Post Office and the brickmakers on the flats alongside St.Kilda Road lost their equipment. (Source: Port Phillip Herald 5 Oct 1844)
On two more occasions the Yarra rose in flood during the 1840s. Again, these were at the end of the year. In October 1848, after two days of incessant rain, and in November 1849 after a tremendous hurricane smashed trees, blew down chimneys and wrecked houses. Then furious rain poured down till the river rose in flood.
Ocean going ships coming to Port Phillip could not negotiate the narrow and often shallow channel of the river, so they tied up at Port Melbourne. New arrivals walked along a well-beaten track from Port Melbourne to the Yarra at the Falls. Fording the river was difficult and inconvenient, a rocky ledge crossed part of the river but at low tide there was a gap of 106 feet with about three feet of water running over it. (Source: Footnote William Lonsdale to Col. Sec. 30 May 1938 PRO) At high tide the river rose another two and a half feet and salt water mixed with the fresh above the falls then making the town’s water supply unsuitable for drinking.
Both Robert Hoddle and William Lonsdale came up with the idea of building a dam over the Falls. The dam would leave a ford only one foot deep, giving a crossing at the same time as preventing salt water penetrating up stream. (Source: Footnote Governors minute 28 June 1838) The authorities agreed with the scheme but worried that raising the height of the river might cause flooding in the town, so Lonsdale was told to make enquiries and obtain information on the effect of a dam. (Source: Col. Sec to William Lonsdale 29 June 1838 PRO) The result of his enquiries was satisfactory and permission was given to use convict labour for the dam. (Source: Col. Sec. to William Lonsdale 30.March 1839 PRO) Unfortunately the work was nearly completed when an exceptionally high tide washed it away. During the depression of the 1840’s unemployed immigrants built a stronger stone dam that lasted for many years and was later removed when Queens Bridge was built. (Source: Historical Records of Victoria 228)
Across the river valuable land stretched away into the distance, desirable but difficult to reach with a cart or wagon. In March 1838 William Lonsdale wrote a letter to the Colonial Secretary saying: (Source: Historical Records of Victoria)
“I have the honour to enclose a copy of a letter from Mr. Hodgson, merchant of Melbourne, who wishes to know in the absence of an established ferry across the River Yarra, if he may be allowed to place a punt across the river, and receive the emoluments arising from it until other means of crossing are afforded.” Hodgson complained that boats, tied up on the banks of the Yarra, were frequently taken by strangers wanting to cross the river, and the owners had the annoyance of finding their boats on the other side. Hodgson said that his own boat had been taken from its moorings four times in the last week.
Shortly afterwards Lonsdale forwarded a petition from Thomas Watt, carpenter and builder, to Sir George Gipps, governor of N.S.W. signed by sixty residents of Melbourne,
“Your Excellency’s Petitioner came free into the Colony and has a wife and four children.
That from the great loss of time and property arising from the want of a bridge across the Yarra Yarra River, your Petitioner was induced to build a punt for the purposes of crossing horses, cattle, sheep, etc. at his own sole risk and expense.
That Your Excellency’s petitioner humbly trusts that you will be pleased to take his case into consideration and grant such answer as Your Excellency may seem fit?
We, the undersigned householders in Melbourne, Port Phillip, feeling much interested in the object of Thomas Watt’s petition to His Excellency the Governor, hereby beg leave most respectfully to recommend the same to His Excellency’s favourable consideration.”
Lonsdale, Melbourne’s Police Magistrate, now had two applications to run a punt. Watt had his punt already constructed so Londsdale was pleased to pass on permission to Thomas Watt to commence a ferry service across the Yarra. Watt installed it at a spot between the present Swanston and Russell Streets. Watt had built his punt of planks, from a wrecked ship, sealed with tar and large enough to hold a cart or stock. A rope attached to stout trees on both banks was hauled by the puntman and passengers to propel the punt across the river. Watt called his punt ‘The Melbourne’.
John Hodgson later received permission to operate a punt but rivalry soon developed between the two operators. Watt attempted to attract custom by providing free beer for passengers. Unfortunately, the free drinks attracted disorderly characters who caused rowdy scenes on the river bank. Lonsdale cancelled Thomas Watt’s permission to operate the punt replacing it with another applicant, John Welch.
The Colonial Secretary approved Lonsdale’s action and also requested him to establish a ferry boat across the Yarra. Paddy Byrne, whose house was on the south of the river near the falls, became the first ferry-man.. Passengers from the town would shout for Paddy and he would row across the river to collect them. Paddy’s quick wit and Irish brogue soon made him a favourite. However he suffered with asthma, and often his attractive daughter Polly, even more popular with passengers, had to take his place rowing the ferry across the river. (Source: Footnote Edmund Finn “The Chronicals of Early Melbourne” Page 500d)
Farther upstream the Yarra is deep and there were few places where the river could be crossed. At Dights Falls there was a shallow rocky ledge where carts and wagons could ford the river and at Heidelberg farmers used another ford at the end of Banksia Street. (Source: Footnote J.Leaney. Bulleen a Short History)
The Yarra, as it comes from the north, flowed through elevated land on the Kew and Hawthorn side and the low land between Collingwood and Richmond on the other. In the early years of settlement, the high land on the east offered an attractive place to live but as the river flowed south from Studley Park it formed a barrier across all the routes from Melbourne. The settlers needed more crossings but it was not until later that resourceful men provided punts and ferries, and the government built bridges.
The first crossing along the river beyond Melbourne was a punt installed by John Palmer, a doctor who also engaged in business activities, it connected Richmond to Hawthorn just north of the present Hawthorn bridge. Farther upstream on the west of the Yarra near Johnston Street, John Hodgson also installed a punt in 1846.
Around the bend north of Johnston Street the Merri Creek enters the Yarra. At this junction, a flour mill and an aboriginal school were built. Langhorne’s mission, at the Botanic Gardens site, had closed down but in 1846, Governor La Trobe offered a house on the Yarra to the Baptist Church for an aboriginal school. It was near the junction of the Merri Creek with its front on the Yarra and the creek at the rear. The Church ran the school with Mr. Peacock as head teacher. He commenced teaching in 1846 with 30 children, the boys wearing white shirts and the girls dressed in dark print frocks. They were attentive to the teacher, learnt well, and sang hymns in fine style.
The aim of the mission was to teach the children while still young and adaptable so that they would learn the benefits of civilisation but after a few years the parents took their children away. To the aborigines this learning was useless, they should have been having important training in skills such as hunting and gaining knowledge of plants and foods.
John Dight came to Melbourne in 1839, with his wife and three brothers, bringing plans to start a flour mill also bricks and machinery to construct the mill. At the place where 36 years ago a ledge of rocks stopped Grimes from going farther up the river Dight saw an ideal site for his mill. Dight built his flour mill and dammed the Yarra to give a flow of water for his mill wheel. He and his brother Charles constructed a building three stories high to house the flour mill with a water wheel at one end. They produced flour from wheat grown in the farms close to Melbourne. Dight’s Mill was reported to be a success but in the 1850’s, fire destroyed the building. (Source: Paul van der Sluys, “Dights Flour Mills”)
From Merri Creek the Yarra flowed past paddocks where cows grazed and farmers grew potatoes on the rich flood plains. In 1838, the Government Auctioned land in the Parish of Keelbundoora. All the sections with land on the Yarra were sold. During the next ten years many of the owners subdivided their land to wealthy merchants in Melbourne who built large homes. On the river bank, in the area later to become Ivanhoe, George Smythe purchased 531 acres in 1839. A portion of this land, Chelsworth, was bought by Patrick Stevenson who built a homestead, later to become part of the Ivanhoe Golf Links Club House. David Charteris McArthur built ‘Charterisville’, Thomas Walker, built ‘Leighton’ and Joseph Hawdon constructed the historic ‘Banyule’ homestead.
During the 1840s, a settlement formed south of the Yarra at Bulleen. Farmers ran sheep on the rich grass of the Yarra flats, or planted wheat and barley or grazed cattle on the hills. A group of men who came from Scotland on the first immigrant ship from Scotland, the, “Midlothian”, were among the settlers. They were Robert Laidlaw, John Kerr and Alexander Duncan. (Source: Port Phillip Pioneers) Laidlaw had taken over Woods grazing lease on the Yarra and worked in partnership with Kerr, Duncan ran a dairy farm on the river flat near the present Freeway. At Heidelberg the community of wealthy men from Melbourne had chosen the site for the glorious views of the Yarra flats. They aimed to create a life fit for the gentry. Some of these estates included a grazing lease on the land across the river.
In 1842, the community of Scotsmen on both sides of the river held the first church service in the area in Duncans barn. The congregation sat on planks laid across barley sacks and a butter churn became the communion table. (Source: From a Barn in Bulleen to Scots Church)
A young man, Thomas Brown, who became known as the author Rolf Boldrewood, lived with his father at Heidelberg. He used to wade across the river and wander through the Bulleen swamps and lagoons. Brown wrote a description of the Yarra flats at Bulleen in his book “Old Melbourne Memories”.
“We forded the river opposite the old aboriginal stepped-tree and crossed a heavily timbered river flat with deep reed fringed lagoons. Owing to the prevalence and sinuous shape of the lagoons, coupled with the dense nature of the thickets, it was not an easy matter for a stranger to find his way through the maze. The deepest of the lagoons was fringed with a wide border of reeds growing in deep water. It had in the centre a clear lakelet or mere, upon which disported the black duck, the wood duck, the magpie goose, the mountain duck, the greater and lesser diver, while among the reeds waded or flew the heron, the sultana hen-billed variety of the coot, the bittern, the land rail and in season, an occasional snipe.” (Source: Old Melbourne Memories Bolrwood page 162)
On Sylvester Brown’s run a big black bull broke out of the compound. They thought it was lost but the bull was attracted by the cows among the herds grazing in the area and kept returning, but they were never able to catch it.
One day, when Kerr was rounding up his stock, Browns young son John with an old servant carrying a rifle, walked into the round up and told Kerr that he had come to collect their bull. Kerr looked at him and said, “How do you expect to catch it when all our stockmen can’t manage it.” Brown answered that he intended to shoot the bull and take back the meat. Kerr said, “Alright but don’t hit any of our stock.”
Brown walked into the centre of the herd till he was about twenty paces from the big black bull. The bull turned towards him, lowered its head and started to paw the ground. Brown took the rifle, slowly raising it to his shoulder, then made a soft mooing sound. The bull looked up and Brown fired. He felled the bull with one shot. (Source: Boldrwood “Old Melbourne Memories”)
The small community looked to Heidelberg as their township and needed a river crossing. There were places where the Yarra could be forded but only if the river was not running too fast. So it was welcome news in 1842 that Mr. Levien, the owner of a punt on the Maribynong River, was constructing a punt for Heidelberg. (Source: Port Phillip Gazette. 10 December 1842)
Levien hauled his punt all the way up the river from Melbourne, a distance of forty miles. It took him a tedious three weeks; dragging ropes along the river banks to tie on trees then winching the punt up the river till the ropes had to be untied and moved along to another tree. The punt was ready in January the next year, a remarkable asset for Heidelberg, for at this early date, there were still no bridges over the Yarra.
In these first years, farmers grew crops of wheat and barley. Acres of verdant crops covered the river banks of Bulleen with a sea of green growth. In Autumn wheat and barley turned to golden brown, and as the wind blew, ripples of gold flowed across the flats. At harvest time rows of men moved across the land swinging scythes while behind them women gathered the sheaths stacking them in neat rows.
Creeks and small rivers flowed into the Yarra. North of Bulleen there was the Plenty River and beyond Templestowe, Deep Creek. Along here one day in 1839 a rowing boat with a sail attached came up the Yarra sailing past Bulleen and on past Templestowe. Thomas Sweeney an Irishman from Van Diemens Land had improvised this sailing boat to go looking for land, with a river frontage, where he could run a farm. He found land opposite the mouth of Deep Creek and sailed into the history of Eltham. (Source: Alan Marshall “Pioneers and Painters” p12)
Across the river from Eltham another settler, Major Charles Newman, found a site for a homestead, Newman had retired from the Indian Army in the early 1830s and instead of returning to England came to Australia where he settled in Van Diemans Land near a town called Pontville. Newman found that all the good land had been taken up, so in 1837 on hearing glowing tales of the rich pasture land in Port Phillip, he decided to cross Bass Straight. Newman walked along the north bank of the Yarra and found ideal land past Heidelberg, opposite the site where Sweeney was later to settle, he saw rolling grassland on the south bank. During the next two years Newman made several trips across to his new home moving his stock, racehorses and family from van Diemans Land. (Source: Hazel Poulter, from family members, personal communication) On one trip a storm blew the ship on to rocks and was sunk with a prefabricated house and some of Newmans valuable horses.
On the river bank, where Deep Creek enters the Yarra, Newman built a large turf and sod hut. At one end of the hut the Major had built a large bush fireplace that almost filled the end wall and was large enough to have accommodated the whole family. At the other end of the hut stood a four poster bed for the the Major and his wife and two rough beds for the family. Behind here a rough slab hut, where the wind blew through the slabs housed the kitchen and bunks for the men and the staff.
Major Newman was a fine man, bronzed by the tropical sun, aged but still strong with all a soldier's manly bearing; his wife, Catherine was short and dark with the black eyes and tawney appearance of an Indian woman. Catherine took her place on the station, ready and with the strength to tackle any work such as killing and cutting up a sheep for the family meal. (Source: Bolrwood - Glimpses of Life in Victoria. page 38-40)
Charles Newman, a brusque retired army officer, applied for a grant of land but had left it too late after resigning from the army to eligable for a land grant. In 1843 he was allowed to buy three sections on the the river. With a secure title Newman built a homestead in the style of an Indian Bungalow. Wide verandahs surrounded a central core of three rooms, with thick walls three bricks wide, and a high roof covered the whole house. (Source: Conservation Analysis Pontville Homestead. Context Pty Ltd. 1995) Newman called his homestead Pontville after the area where he had lived in Tasmania. Pontville homestead was the first real house to be built on the Yarra beyond Heidelberg. (Source: Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society Records)
Newman dominated the local community helping many settlers struggling to make a living but at the same time quarrelled with his neighbours and often obtained leases by bribing officials. During his years at Pontville he and his wife Catherine experienced an attack by aborigines and were robbed by bushrangers. In both these events Catherine showed herself to be both brave and resourceful. A group of bushrangers who were raiding isolated homesteads east of Melbourne held up Major Newman stealing silver cups he had won with his racehorses. Being a proud army officer Newman felt it beneath his dignity to be held up and threatened to see them hanged. The bushrangers, who had suffered at the hands of Newman in Tasmania while he was in charge of convict labour, decided to kill him but while they were dragging him outside Catherine held on to him saying; “If you shoot him you will have to shoot me first.” faced with her determination they gave up and rode off. The bushrangers were later caught and hung, and Newman had his cups returned.
With white settlers now occupying the area many native animals were driven away depriving aborigines of their source of food. They often worked for settlers being paid with provisions. Major Newman had been accustomed to treat natives harshly while in India so treated aborigines the same way when he employed them, or fired a rifle to send them away. He soon made an enemy of the aborigines. On one occasion they were so incensed that they determined to kill him. Catherine heard what the aborigines intended to do and so when she saw them approaching all daubed with war paint, looked for somewhere to hide her husband. She saw the fireplace with its wide chimney. She hastily gathered green grass and wood to damp down the flames in the fire and pushed the Major up the chimney. The aborigines came in looked around and since Newman wasn’t there, left. Catherine quickly rescued her husband. He was half suffocated and his whiskers were badly singed.
At Warrandyte, where the Yarra tumbles over black rocks throwing white foam in the air, James Anderson built stockyards and huts on the river flat where a creek, named after him, enters the Yarra. Anderson, with aboriginal and “ticket of leave” drovers, had driven a flock of sheep from New South Wales. At first he had a grazing lease of eight square miles for his sheep. When Major Newman took out grazing leases alongside Anderson faced angry complaints from the arrogant Major when his cattle strayed onto land the Major considered to be his. In 1841 the Parish of Warrandyte was surveyed. The town reserve further restricted Anderson’s available land, so James Anderson left for other open land with more grass for his sheep. (Source: Doncaster, Templestowe and Warrandyte since 1837 - Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society)
The name Warrandyte came from two Aborigines words, Warran meaning to throw and Dyte the object thrown at. (Source: Text of Footnote same) In the area near Wonga Park games such a boomerang and spear throwing were held.
In 1839 James Dawson and his wife formed Warrandyte Station on a bend of the Yarra, now known as Selby. Two other Scotchmen, Selby and Mitchell who came on the same ship also settled at Warrandyte. (Source: Billis and Kenyon) The Dawsons had enjoyed the comfort of a cabin on the ship while Penelope and George Selby travelled in crowded conditions as steerage passengers. Penelope made friends with the open and generous Mrs Dawson. She was delighted to be able to make a farm on the same land, but not with the Dawsons. Selby ran dairy cattle on a bend beyond Dawson. He used the land enclosed by a sharp bend of the Yarra to make a horse paddock. A short fence across the bend enclosed the paddock.
Life on these stations along the Yarra was hard work with little comfort. In her letters home Penelope Selby described their conditions.
“This is generally called a very fine climate but give me `home’ as yet. You have a great deal of bad weather that we are spared, but it is very hot and changeable, the thermometer at this time is 104 in the shade. As for insects they are more numerous than you can imagine, the flies bite terribly and have feasted on me.
Would you like to know my dress just now, 4 o’clock pm. It consists of shoes, stockings, shift and cotton gown - Mrs. Dawson leaves out the stockings but the flies bite my legs. Three hours from this time I shall be glad to put on all my petticoats and make a good fire. Thanks to Mrs. Dawson I have become a first rate dairy woman and can cure meat, make butter, cheese, fatten calves or pigs equal to Aunt Goddard herself.” (Source: No Place for a Nervous Lady)
Many settlers’ wives shared the settlers life. They lived in primitive conditions and were thankful for neighbouring women even if nine miles away. Penelope helped with the birth of Mrs. Dawson’s first child and other women helped her during childbirth. She had seven babies in Australia. Six were stillborn and the other only lived long enough to be nursed.
When Samuel Furphy came to Port Phillip, he obtained work on James Anderson’s station bringing with him his wife Judith. Judith Furphy became pregnant and when the time for her birthing drew near they went to Melbourne. This cattle run with its rough conditions was not a fit place to bear and raise a baby. After the baby was born Mrs, Dawson obtained a position for Samuel at Ryries Station. The next son Joseph was born. Their children grew up on the banks of the Yarra and later both made names for themselves. Joseph wrote an Australian classic “Such is Life” under the name Tom Collins. The eldest boy John ran an engieering works and built water carts. These with the name Furphy painted on the side in large letters gave a new word to the Australian language during the great war when soldiers met at the water cart to hear the latest rumours. (Source: ? Furphy)
In 1837, the Ryrie Brothers took out a squatter’s license for 16,000 acres from Lilydale almost to Healesville. They had come from Monaro in New South Wales driving a large herd of cattle and found rich grazing land watered by the Yarra. They built their main homestead south of the Yarra at Yering and established outstations Tarrawarra and Dalry north of the river. (Source: ? Sally Healsville )
Two of the brothers, William and James left to buy land in New South Wales but not before William Ryrie quarrelled with the hot-headed Peter Snodgrass during a drinking bout at the Melbourne Club. Ryrie was challenged to a duel but the affair ended with an anti-climax. Snodgrass shot himself in the foot.
Donald Ryrie ran the station on his own looking after 43,000 acres. He planted an acre of vines at the home station with idea of producing wine.
During their first years in Port Phillip, the settlers found it very disconcerting when the Yarra overflowed its banks. Water covered the low land and turned the stockyards to mud. The aborigines would say, “This one piccaninny, (No Place for a nervous Lady) big one coming.” In October 1842 a big one came.
During the ten years from 1839 to 1849, a series of floods on the Yarra devastated Melbourne. Towards the end of the year heavy rains came, adding to the water pouring into the Yarra from snow melting on the mountains. The people of Melbourne were not prepared for the deluge when the peaceful Yarra rose up and spilled over the town in December 1839. From Collingwood through Richmond to the bay the land resembled an immense lake. Water tumbled along Elizabeth Street and at South Melbourne the brickworks were under six feet of water.
In July 1842, the river rose once more. At Footscray a group of men, in a hotel, were cut off when it was surrounded by deep water. They were rescueded by David Cashmore, a Melbourne draper, who rowed across country to the Royal Highland Hotel in Flinders Street. Cashmore tied up the boat at the bar of the hotel.
Each flood started when continuous rain poured down, often all night and all day. In October 1842, a southerly gale and an unusual high tide backed up the flood. The waters, held back by the tide and wind, rose to 50 feet at Heidelberg.
Two years later in October 1844, the flood was higher than Melbourne had known. Heavy rain lasted for three days, ending with a night when the rain fell in torrents. Business almost ceased and in the houses along the river the inhabitants watched in a state of terrible uncertainty as water rose around their homes, some were covered up to the roof. (Source: Edmund Finn “Chronicals of Early Melbourne by Garrowen” p211) At Dights Mill, the Yarra rose 36 feet. In the bush land and farming area alongside the river, flood water swept away branches and whole trees, some houses, built too close to the river, were caught up in the swirling water and washed away and vegetable gardens on the river flats vanished in the deluge. At Melbourne all work stopped as the lower parts of Flinders and William Streets were inundated and Elizabeth Street was under water at the Post Office and the brickmakers on the flats alongside St.Kilda Road lost their equipment. (Source: Port Phillip Herald 5 Oct 1844)
On two more occasions the Yarra rose in flood during the 1840s. Again, these were at the end of the year. In October 1848, after two days of incessant rain, and in November 1849 after a tremendous hurricane smashed trees, blew down chimneys and wrecked houses. Then furious rain poured down till the river rose in flood.
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The Yarra brought ships right up to the town, but only small vessels were able to navigate the river. A bar of mud extended across the channel with about seven feet of water. (Source: Robert Murray - A Summer At Port Phillip p8) Along the river there were four fathoms right across the river allowing safe passage for small boats to pass each other. When the ships reached the town, the basin below the falls was deep right up to the bank. (Source: R. D. Murray - A Summer At Port Phillip p7) Here was an ideal place for a port, for a ship could be moored to the bank and unload its goods straight onto the land. In the early forties there was always a line of vessels along the bank their masts and yards interlocked with tree branches. Lighters and coastal vessels were arriving or leaving on every tide. (Source: R. D. Murray - A Summer At Port Phillip p8) At first ships were tied up to trees but within a few years all the trees were cut down either for building, firewood or because they were merely in the way, in their place the harbour officials sunk hawser posts on the bank of the river at the site of the future Queen’s Wharf. Behind the river bank there was not a vestige of made road, only mud.
In October 1839, a small rude wharf of piles and slabs was constructed opposite the Customs House but the river bank remained bare earth trodden hard, dusty in the summer and a quagmire in wet weather. (Source: A Summer at Port Phillip p9) It was the only official contribution to the port till Wharfage dues were collected but the revenue only went to New South Wales. In 1841, three allotments, on the river frontage, were auctioned. Two of these were purchased to build wharves, one went to Captain George Ward Cole, the other to Dobson. Cole was allowed to build a bond store as Melbourne had been declared a Free Port and a Free Warehousing Port the previous year.
Captain Cole, a naval officer and an enterprising man, was the first person to see the possibilities of providing a dock with store houses. He was born at Lumley Castle England and joined the navy as a midshipman. He was 49 when he arrived in Melbourne and set up as a merchant. Two years later, he bought this land and built Coles Wharf, 120 feet along the river by 42 feet deep. This was Melbourne’s first real dock. He added to the area a collection of harbour facilities, a gate at the east from Flinders Street led into a group of buildings, a bond store, offices for his managers and a building for the custom officials. Coles Wharf soon became a busy place, in fact the commercial centre of Melbourne.
George Cole married Anne the daughter on one of the Melbourne’s social leaders, William Gordon McCrea, and sister of Geogianna McCrea. (Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography ?)
In March 1841 Georgiana McCrea arrived in Melbourne. In her diary, she wrote a description of her trip up the Yarra to the township.
“March 1st. About 2pm, we anchored in Hobsons Bay off Williamstown. We lay alongside the `Eagle’, and the `York’; with seven other ships in the bay. Captain Gatenby gave us desert and champagne to celebrate our arrival in Australa, with appropriate toasts.”
March 2nd All kinds of people came on board.
“March 4th. Jane Shanks (the maid), the boys, and I went aboard the Governor Arthur, a scrubbishy grinding little steamer without any cabin. Half-way up the river the rain began to fall, whereupon I extended the folds of my plaid so as to take in the children and keep them out of the wet. The boat landed us opposite the Yarra Hotel, Flinders Street and we had to wade through mud and clay, up the hill to Dr. McCrae’s in Great Bourke Street West. My good London boots, abimes!
March 5th. I went off in a boat from near Cole’s Wharf to the ship to pack up the remainder of our cabin gear, and stayed on board to wait for the morning steamer.
March 6th. Went with our heavy luggage by the lighter, then returned to Melbourne in the “Governor Arthur” with Jenny.”
In the early 1840s, activity on the Yarra increased. A small paddle steamer “Firefly”, traded along the Yarra in 1841. The same year Manto Brothers engineers, near Queens Wharf assembled an iron vessel, “Vester”, that had been built in England and sent out in sections. Painted blue with a figurehead of burnt gold she was a maid of all work on the Yarra. The “Vester” towed sailing ships up the Yarra to unload at Melbourne and the Aphrasia ran a regular service from the wharf opposite Queens Street to Geelong. George Cole built a timber steam ship “City of Melbourne” for river trade. It was the first screw steamship south of the equator. (Source: Georgina’s Journal - Edited by Hugh McCrea)
A pleasant way to travel to the horse races at Flemington was on the river by steam boats such as “Vester” and “Aphrasia”. On one of the early race days the “Aphrasia”, that normaly traded to Geelong, steamed down the Yarra in a festive mood, decorated with bunting, crowded with racegoers, while the town band played on the deck. At Flemington the steamer tied up on the south bank of the river. There was very little betting at that time although there was plenty of drinking. At the end of the races the visitors returned to the steamer, happy and contented with the day's pleasure. During the return trip the band played and the passengers sang popular songs of the time. “The Lass of Richmond Hill”, “Rory O’More” and “The Light of other Days is Faded”. The festive mood ended abruptly when a fight broke out among some of the drunken passengers and a man was killed. (Source: Edmund Finn - The Chronicles of Early Melbourne by Garryowen” p981)
Above the “Falls” the settlers collected fresh drinking water. As the village grew water carriers installed pumps along the river bank, they filled casks that were mounted on carts and sold water to the townspeople although it was described as a “bitter draught to imbibe”. (Source: A Summer at Port Phillip) Soon the line of pumps on the river bank made a continuous racket as they busily pumped water all day, supplying the people of Melbourne with water. Householders bought their domestic water from vendors who carted the water in tanks on carts. Each house had a receiving barrel at the front fence that the watermen used to fill by pumping water through a hole cut in the fence. The cost varied from two shillings to ten shillings a load. The fresh water of the Yarra was the main reasons the site was selected for the village but unfortunately by the 1850’s the Yarra had become badly polluted because many people used the river as a convenient drain and waste disposal system while fellmongers tipped their waste into the river. During hot weather people said that Yarra water tasted like Glauber’s salts and some said they improved the taste with a dash of rum or brandy. (Source: Edmund Finn - The Chronicals of Early Melbourne by Garryowen p559)
In 1840, the two punts were busy carrying carts and stock to the other side of the Yarra but the ambitious business men of the town wanted better communication with the land so close to the town on the far bank. In April that year Donald Gordon Macarthur called his business friends to a meeting and formed the “Melbourne Bridge Company”. They issued 500 shares of ten pounds each. Their first action was to purchase the two punts and as these were returning a steady profit only one pound of the shares needed to be paid up. (Source: R. D. Boys First Years at Port Phillip p108)
The directors of the bridge company decided to build an iron suspension bridge over the river at Elizabeth Street. The cost was estimated at 4,000 pounds. They applied for permission to construct the bridge and requested a twentyone year monopoly of bridges over the Yarra. Sir George Gipps refused the monopoly intimating that the government proposed to build a bridge. The company were obtaining profits from the punts and then with the serious financial depression of the following year they gave up the idea of a bridge. In 1845 Alexander Sutherland constructed a simple timber trestle bridge across the river close to the present Princes Bridge. The company leased the bridge to Robert Balbirne. (Source: R. D. Boys - First Years at Port Phillip p109)
Later the same year David Lennox, the new superintendent of bridges for Port Phillip, stood on the bank of the Yarra. He looked around and saw a growing city divided by a river crossed only by a temporary wooden toll bridge. He looked at the flowing water, estimated the width, and looked at the height of the banks. Plans began to form in his mind. Others had drawn plans for the government bridge but he dismissed these as unsuitable. Melbourne needed a large solid bridge to cater for a growing community giving it access to the desirable land south of the Yarra and Governor Gipps had already said that it must be a stone bridge. On 17 November 1845 Governor Gipps Wrote to Superintendent La Trobe giving him permission to build the bridge over the Yarra.
Lennox had earned a reputation as a bridge builder in New South Wales. Two of his bridges had been named after him but he had been poorly paid. Even though Lennox was a skilled engineer, having been in charge of important construction projects in England, Governor Bourke had only offered him two hundred pounds a year with the promise of an increase when he had proved himself. A promise that Bourke forgot and which Lennox, being a quiet retiring man, did not remind him. (Source: Australian Encyclopaedia Vol 2 Page 112)
David Lennox had left England ten years earlier, after a happy life of growing success. Starting as a stone mason his increasing skill and ability enabled him to become a foreman in charge of large stone constructions. His wife died in 1828 and a few years later Lennox left his two young girls in the care of his sister and sailed for Australia. (Source: Australian Encyclopaedia Vol 5 Page 288)
In 1846, Superintendent La Trobe laid the foundation stone of Melbourne’s new bridge. (Source: Port Phillip Patriot - 20 Mar 1846) It was to be a double occasion for afterwards he was to lay the foundation stone for the Melbourne Hospital. It turned into the biggest celebration that the people of Melbourne had experienced up to then. On March 20th it seemed that all Melbourne turned out full of enthusiasm and excitement. In the morning a procession began to line up in Collins Street. At eleven o’clock Latrobe arrived dressed in his bright uniform and the colourful procession moved off led by the stirring music of the town band. School children marched six abreast followed by every organisation and national group in the infant town with their elaborate banners and costumes. There were the emerald banners of Ireland, the splendid costumes of the Oddfellows and Freemasons and the gorgeous paraphernalia and verdant decorations of the St. Patricks Society. Then came carriages, carts, men on horseback and the town‘s people walking. A remarkable display for a small town with only a scattering of houses and sheep grazing on the long grass in the main streets.
There were speeches and prayers, then La Trobe laid some mortar with a silver trowel, a bottle containing gold sovereigns was placed in a cavity and the stone laid in place. While psalms were sung, corn was scattered over the stone and oil and wine poured onto it. They named the bridge “Prince’s Bridge” after the four year old Prince of Wales. The ceremony over, the procession moved off to open the new Melbourne Hospital. After the crowd had left masons lifted the stone and the bottle with its gold coins was moved to a safe place till the next morning when it was replaced and the stone securely fixed in position.
Lennox planned a stone structure with large bluestone blocks, some weighing over one and a half tons. The span was only two feet shorter than London Bridge, which was then the largest stone span in the world. Lennox lived in a hut at the end of the bridge and became a familiar figure as he walked around, supervising the work in a grey top hat.
The town council planned to open Princes Bridge on Friday November 20th 1850. Then news arrived that Port Phillip was at last to be given separation from New South Wales and become a colony of its own. In all the excitement the opening took second place. Again the proud young town took delight in the opportunity for a ceremony. Melbourne’s organisations came out with their colourful costumes and elaborate banners. Nearly every shop was closed, the weather was perfect.
The procession gathered at Flagstaff Hill. The flagstaff was decked with bunting and at twelve o’clock a flag signalled the ships in the bay to fire a salute. The procession was more spectacular than at the opening and the speeches just as enthusiastic. (Source: Port Philip Patriot - 21 Nov 1850) In contrast La Trobe was brief and to the point. He stood up in his carriage in the centre of the bridge and said, ”I declare this bridge open.”
The crowds watching the opening saw La Trobe in his carriage with Madame La Trobe sitting alongside him. But they were wrong, it was not Madame LaTrobe for that morning she had a migraine headache and Georgiana McCrea took her place wearing Madam’s cloak and a veil covering her face. (Source: Footnote - Georgiana Journal - 22 Nov 1850. Edited by Hugh McCrea )
Princes Bridge was the climax of David Lennox’s life. Following the opening his salary was at last raised and on his retirement, two years later, he was adequately compensated with a payment of three thousand pounds. Lennox returned to Sydney where he built his last work. A stone house for himself and his family, for after a separation of ten years, his two girls and his sister finally came to live with him. (Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography)
Now that Princes Bridge was opened, areas south of the river, that had been mainly cattle runs, became easily accessible. From then on the gentlemen of Melbourne found the most desirable places to live lay south of the river. These included areas that later became the fashionable suburbs of South Yarra and Toorak and the bayside suburbs of St.Kilda and Brighton.
Source: Tales of the Yarra River - Irvine Heber Green. Unpublished Manuscript.
In October 1839, a small rude wharf of piles and slabs was constructed opposite the Customs House but the river bank remained bare earth trodden hard, dusty in the summer and a quagmire in wet weather. (Source: A Summer at Port Phillip p9) It was the only official contribution to the port till Wharfage dues were collected but the revenue only went to New South Wales. In 1841, three allotments, on the river frontage, were auctioned. Two of these were purchased to build wharves, one went to Captain George Ward Cole, the other to Dobson. Cole was allowed to build a bond store as Melbourne had been declared a Free Port and a Free Warehousing Port the previous year.
Captain Cole, a naval officer and an enterprising man, was the first person to see the possibilities of providing a dock with store houses. He was born at Lumley Castle England and joined the navy as a midshipman. He was 49 when he arrived in Melbourne and set up as a merchant. Two years later, he bought this land and built Coles Wharf, 120 feet along the river by 42 feet deep. This was Melbourne’s first real dock. He added to the area a collection of harbour facilities, a gate at the east from Flinders Street led into a group of buildings, a bond store, offices for his managers and a building for the custom officials. Coles Wharf soon became a busy place, in fact the commercial centre of Melbourne.
George Cole married Anne the daughter on one of the Melbourne’s social leaders, William Gordon McCrea, and sister of Geogianna McCrea. (Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography ?)
In March 1841 Georgiana McCrea arrived in Melbourne. In her diary, she wrote a description of her trip up the Yarra to the township.
“March 1st. About 2pm, we anchored in Hobsons Bay off Williamstown. We lay alongside the `Eagle’, and the `York’; with seven other ships in the bay. Captain Gatenby gave us desert and champagne to celebrate our arrival in Australa, with appropriate toasts.”
March 2nd All kinds of people came on board.
“March 4th. Jane Shanks (the maid), the boys, and I went aboard the Governor Arthur, a scrubbishy grinding little steamer without any cabin. Half-way up the river the rain began to fall, whereupon I extended the folds of my plaid so as to take in the children and keep them out of the wet. The boat landed us opposite the Yarra Hotel, Flinders Street and we had to wade through mud and clay, up the hill to Dr. McCrae’s in Great Bourke Street West. My good London boots, abimes!
March 5th. I went off in a boat from near Cole’s Wharf to the ship to pack up the remainder of our cabin gear, and stayed on board to wait for the morning steamer.
March 6th. Went with our heavy luggage by the lighter, then returned to Melbourne in the “Governor Arthur” with Jenny.”
In the early 1840s, activity on the Yarra increased. A small paddle steamer “Firefly”, traded along the Yarra in 1841. The same year Manto Brothers engineers, near Queens Wharf assembled an iron vessel, “Vester”, that had been built in England and sent out in sections. Painted blue with a figurehead of burnt gold she was a maid of all work on the Yarra. The “Vester” towed sailing ships up the Yarra to unload at Melbourne and the Aphrasia ran a regular service from the wharf opposite Queens Street to Geelong. George Cole built a timber steam ship “City of Melbourne” for river trade. It was the first screw steamship south of the equator. (Source: Georgina’s Journal - Edited by Hugh McCrea)
A pleasant way to travel to the horse races at Flemington was on the river by steam boats such as “Vester” and “Aphrasia”. On one of the early race days the “Aphrasia”, that normaly traded to Geelong, steamed down the Yarra in a festive mood, decorated with bunting, crowded with racegoers, while the town band played on the deck. At Flemington the steamer tied up on the south bank of the river. There was very little betting at that time although there was plenty of drinking. At the end of the races the visitors returned to the steamer, happy and contented with the day's pleasure. During the return trip the band played and the passengers sang popular songs of the time. “The Lass of Richmond Hill”, “Rory O’More” and “The Light of other Days is Faded”. The festive mood ended abruptly when a fight broke out among some of the drunken passengers and a man was killed. (Source: Edmund Finn - The Chronicles of Early Melbourne by Garryowen” p981)
Above the “Falls” the settlers collected fresh drinking water. As the village grew water carriers installed pumps along the river bank, they filled casks that were mounted on carts and sold water to the townspeople although it was described as a “bitter draught to imbibe”. (Source: A Summer at Port Phillip) Soon the line of pumps on the river bank made a continuous racket as they busily pumped water all day, supplying the people of Melbourne with water. Householders bought their domestic water from vendors who carted the water in tanks on carts. Each house had a receiving barrel at the front fence that the watermen used to fill by pumping water through a hole cut in the fence. The cost varied from two shillings to ten shillings a load. The fresh water of the Yarra was the main reasons the site was selected for the village but unfortunately by the 1850’s the Yarra had become badly polluted because many people used the river as a convenient drain and waste disposal system while fellmongers tipped their waste into the river. During hot weather people said that Yarra water tasted like Glauber’s salts and some said they improved the taste with a dash of rum or brandy. (Source: Edmund Finn - The Chronicals of Early Melbourne by Garryowen p559)
In 1840, the two punts were busy carrying carts and stock to the other side of the Yarra but the ambitious business men of the town wanted better communication with the land so close to the town on the far bank. In April that year Donald Gordon Macarthur called his business friends to a meeting and formed the “Melbourne Bridge Company”. They issued 500 shares of ten pounds each. Their first action was to purchase the two punts and as these were returning a steady profit only one pound of the shares needed to be paid up. (Source: R. D. Boys First Years at Port Phillip p108)
The directors of the bridge company decided to build an iron suspension bridge over the river at Elizabeth Street. The cost was estimated at 4,000 pounds. They applied for permission to construct the bridge and requested a twentyone year monopoly of bridges over the Yarra. Sir George Gipps refused the monopoly intimating that the government proposed to build a bridge. The company were obtaining profits from the punts and then with the serious financial depression of the following year they gave up the idea of a bridge. In 1845 Alexander Sutherland constructed a simple timber trestle bridge across the river close to the present Princes Bridge. The company leased the bridge to Robert Balbirne. (Source: R. D. Boys - First Years at Port Phillip p109)
Later the same year David Lennox, the new superintendent of bridges for Port Phillip, stood on the bank of the Yarra. He looked around and saw a growing city divided by a river crossed only by a temporary wooden toll bridge. He looked at the flowing water, estimated the width, and looked at the height of the banks. Plans began to form in his mind. Others had drawn plans for the government bridge but he dismissed these as unsuitable. Melbourne needed a large solid bridge to cater for a growing community giving it access to the desirable land south of the Yarra and Governor Gipps had already said that it must be a stone bridge. On 17 November 1845 Governor Gipps Wrote to Superintendent La Trobe giving him permission to build the bridge over the Yarra.
Lennox had earned a reputation as a bridge builder in New South Wales. Two of his bridges had been named after him but he had been poorly paid. Even though Lennox was a skilled engineer, having been in charge of important construction projects in England, Governor Bourke had only offered him two hundred pounds a year with the promise of an increase when he had proved himself. A promise that Bourke forgot and which Lennox, being a quiet retiring man, did not remind him. (Source: Australian Encyclopaedia Vol 2 Page 112)
David Lennox had left England ten years earlier, after a happy life of growing success. Starting as a stone mason his increasing skill and ability enabled him to become a foreman in charge of large stone constructions. His wife died in 1828 and a few years later Lennox left his two young girls in the care of his sister and sailed for Australia. (Source: Australian Encyclopaedia Vol 5 Page 288)
In 1846, Superintendent La Trobe laid the foundation stone of Melbourne’s new bridge. (Source: Port Phillip Patriot - 20 Mar 1846) It was to be a double occasion for afterwards he was to lay the foundation stone for the Melbourne Hospital. It turned into the biggest celebration that the people of Melbourne had experienced up to then. On March 20th it seemed that all Melbourne turned out full of enthusiasm and excitement. In the morning a procession began to line up in Collins Street. At eleven o’clock Latrobe arrived dressed in his bright uniform and the colourful procession moved off led by the stirring music of the town band. School children marched six abreast followed by every organisation and national group in the infant town with their elaborate banners and costumes. There were the emerald banners of Ireland, the splendid costumes of the Oddfellows and Freemasons and the gorgeous paraphernalia and verdant decorations of the St. Patricks Society. Then came carriages, carts, men on horseback and the town‘s people walking. A remarkable display for a small town with only a scattering of houses and sheep grazing on the long grass in the main streets.
There were speeches and prayers, then La Trobe laid some mortar with a silver trowel, a bottle containing gold sovereigns was placed in a cavity and the stone laid in place. While psalms were sung, corn was scattered over the stone and oil and wine poured onto it. They named the bridge “Prince’s Bridge” after the four year old Prince of Wales. The ceremony over, the procession moved off to open the new Melbourne Hospital. After the crowd had left masons lifted the stone and the bottle with its gold coins was moved to a safe place till the next morning when it was replaced and the stone securely fixed in position.
Lennox planned a stone structure with large bluestone blocks, some weighing over one and a half tons. The span was only two feet shorter than London Bridge, which was then the largest stone span in the world. Lennox lived in a hut at the end of the bridge and became a familiar figure as he walked around, supervising the work in a grey top hat.
The town council planned to open Princes Bridge on Friday November 20th 1850. Then news arrived that Port Phillip was at last to be given separation from New South Wales and become a colony of its own. In all the excitement the opening took second place. Again the proud young town took delight in the opportunity for a ceremony. Melbourne’s organisations came out with their colourful costumes and elaborate banners. Nearly every shop was closed, the weather was perfect.
The procession gathered at Flagstaff Hill. The flagstaff was decked with bunting and at twelve o’clock a flag signalled the ships in the bay to fire a salute. The procession was more spectacular than at the opening and the speeches just as enthusiastic. (Source: Port Philip Patriot - 21 Nov 1850) In contrast La Trobe was brief and to the point. He stood up in his carriage in the centre of the bridge and said, ”I declare this bridge open.”
The crowds watching the opening saw La Trobe in his carriage with Madame La Trobe sitting alongside him. But they were wrong, it was not Madame LaTrobe for that morning she had a migraine headache and Georgiana McCrea took her place wearing Madam’s cloak and a veil covering her face. (Source: Footnote - Georgiana Journal - 22 Nov 1850. Edited by Hugh McCrea )
Princes Bridge was the climax of David Lennox’s life. Following the opening his salary was at last raised and on his retirement, two years later, he was adequately compensated with a payment of three thousand pounds. Lennox returned to Sydney where he built his last work. A stone house for himself and his family, for after a separation of ten years, his two girls and his sister finally came to live with him. (Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography)
Now that Princes Bridge was opened, areas south of the river, that had been mainly cattle runs, became easily accessible. From then on the gentlemen of Melbourne found the most desirable places to live lay south of the river. These included areas that later became the fashionable suburbs of South Yarra and Toorak and the bayside suburbs of St.Kilda and Brighton.
Source: Tales of the Yarra River - Irvine Heber Green. Unpublished Manuscript.
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