Jurisdiction numbered about three thousand. The Protectorate existed for many years, and it was never a popular institution with either the settlers or public, for it was credited with the desire of promoting the personal interests of its members, rather than attending to the amelioration of the physical and moral comfort of the numerous State wards consigned to its care.
And so from small beginnings the new country continued to be explored, taken up, and occupied, as sheep and cattle stations, which were unrestingly pushed forward in every direction. Yet the township but little progressed, even up to the time when Captain Lonsdale arrived from Sydney as a nominal Government Agent or Administrator, for the population then did not exceed a couple of hundred.
I have now before me as I write, two curiously interesting relics, kindly placed at my service by Mr. Robert Russell, the chief officer of the first Survey party despatched from Sydney to operate in Port Phillip. They were prepared by himself, and their authenticity is undoubted. One is a pen and ink "sketch of the settlement of Port Phillip, in November, 1836;" a person inspecting it is supposed to stand off Collins Street, facing the Western Market, and, looking forward, what does he see? Half-a-dozen mud or wattle-and-daub huts, for they cannot by any stretch of courtesy be termed houses, some with mud-made chimnies, and others with no other outlet for the smoke than the door or "a hole in the wall." One of these is the "General Post Office," for there was only a single postal institution then in existence; another, the private residence of Mr. Henry Batman, the acting head of the police, the rest belonging to everybody or nobody. The whole hill-side is overgrown with long coarse grass; scrub and ti-tree abound everywhere, and there are broken logs strewn about to break the shins of any enterprising wayfarers out after dark. Fawkner's schooner, the "Enterprise," rides at anchor in the Yarra basin, and loafing about her are two or three shabby-looking dingies, and as many bark canoes, evidently waiting anxiously for "something to turn up."A couple of aborigines are strolling amongst the hovels, no doubt on the same tack as the boating fraternity, —whilst yonder is a bushman tramping to the "settlement," struggling under a clumsily made-up swag, and probably on his way to Fawkner's grog shanty further down, there to enjoy a little "life," and dissolve the "order" for his three or six months' wages in the throat-scorching rum, or execrable beer of the period. A huge gum tree stands posted like a towering sentinel, with an immense head-gear of foliage, at irregular intervals of every dozen yards, on the track eastward, now the "block," and Emerald Hill over the Yarra looks looming with verdure, and infinitely more blooming than now.
The other relic is a tracing from a lithograph survey made at the same time before the town was marked out, and upon the lines of which it was afterwards formed. It is a very skeleton production, for there was no possiblefillingin to put on it; yet it reveals a few small etchings of the draughtman's art, which present some almost incredibly queer contrasts when viewed from the stand-point of to-day. It was then sans streets, and the names of a few were afterwards added to identify certain localities. The only weatherboard residence is Batman's, on the side of his so-called hill—the Spencer Street Railway Station— near which, at the end of Little Collins Street, the Acting-Governor is "hutted." Fromm this quarter there runs a rough, sinuous bye-way, shaping its course in a wriggling, snakish style, through the scrubby bush country now forming the intervening space between Collins and Little Flinders Streets, and so continuing until lost amongst the stoney rises of the Eastern Hill. All the other tenements (some twenty-five in number) are formed of either turf-sods, bark, or what was known as "wattle-and-daub," covered either with bark or a sort of long reed, to be obtained in abundance on the banks of the river. As the phrase "wattleand-daub" will frequently occur in referring to the early structures of Melbourne, it may be not only convenient, but instructive, if I briefly describe this modus fabricandi. Imprimis—the size of the required "premises" was to be marked, and stakes or posts to be driven in the ground a few feet apart; these were then connected with interwoven twigs of gum, wattle, or ti-tree, like rough wickerwork. The next stage was to "daub" well on both sides with needed clay, and so puddled, when baked in the sun, the walls become weatherproof. After the roofing of bark, reeds, or shingle was attached, if there were the addenda of a brick chimney, and a dash of whitewash externally, the habitation or store, as the case may be, was considered complete; but the age of brick and lime had not yet arrived. The residents were scattered over the landscape, according to a "rule of thumb," by which every one "quambied" like a blackfellow wherever his fancy led him. What is now known as the Western Market appeared to be the centre of attraction for the traffic-masters, because it was the heart of "the settlement."
