Charles Hotson Ebden was the second son of J. B. Ebden, senior, non-official member of the Cape of Good Hope Legislature. At an early age he directed his attention to Australia, and made several trips between the Cape and the New Continent, settling in 1832, to commercial pursuits in Sydney. In 1835 he abandoned the counting-house desk for the stock-breeders' vocation, and transferred whatever capital he possessed to pastoral operations. The occupation of Port Phillip, and the interest excited by its supposed boundless pasturages, acted like a magnet in attracting the attention of the neighbouring colonies, and amongst some of the earliest overlanders from Sydney was Ebden, who in September, 1836, took up a station on the Murray, and was the first to strike a crossing-place over the river at Albury. Coming further South in the beginning of 1837, in company with Mr. Charles Bonney, they discovered the splendid country so well-known as Carlsruhe, which Ebden named as a memento of his Germanic associations, and occupied it for several years. It was stocked with 9000 sheep, the first quadrupeds of the kind driven overland from Sydney. Ebden was a solemn-faced portly man, and judging from his cast of countenance one would not take him to be addicted to certain frivolities freely attributed to him. Becoming a land speculator in 1839, when a mania for that sort of investment set in, he realized large prices for allotments purchased at a low figure a couple of years before, and subsequently sub-divided and re-sold. He was a shining light of the Melbourne Club, and from an early period mingled freely in every political movement, and election struggle, sympathizing with the squatting element, but usually standing well and popular with the people. He represented Port Phillip more than once in the Legislature of New South Wales, and if it be admitted that he was a respectable mediocrity in the capacity nothing more can be fairly claimed for him. As a Separationist and Anti-transportationist he did his duty, and he was a liberal supporter of every charitable project initiated. When Port Phillip obtained its Independence in 1851, Ebden was appointed to the office of Auditor-General, and as such his friends asserted on his behalf the possession of special qualifications. No doubt he had picked up a general smattering of figures in the mercantile calling in which he had originally embarked in Sydney, but that he was anything of a thorough master of finance is fairly questionable. However, he played no unimportant part in the after political history of the colony, having held office in several Ministries, and sat for years in the Legislative Assembly, and at his death was very generally regretted. When Sir Thomas Mitchell made his memorable journey to Port Phillip in 1836, and was so enamoured of what he saw that in a fit of ecstacy he designated the country Australia Felix, he bestowed upon the since well-known northern range the name which it still takes for the somewhat inconsequential reason that (Port) Phillip should have its "Macedon." Some time after Ebden and two or three friends were riding through the country of which Mount Macedon was the southern terminus, and beholding another range towering in the distance, Ebden exclaimed that, as on one side they had a Macedon, it was only befitting that there should be an Alexander on the other, and so Mount Alexander as such was adopted in the topographical vernacular, destined in some fifteen years to become world-known as the natural depositary of the auriferous treasures, by which the Ballarat nuggets were eclipsed, and the fame of golden Victoria established.
Alexander Thomson was one of our earliest imported politicians, for he was an attaché of the Batman party, and arrived with his family from Van Diemen's Land in Melbourne during March, 1836. According to an ancient biographical notice of him, he was a born Scotchman, educated under Dr. Todd of Tichfield, thence passed to the University of Aberdeen, and finished under Sir Everard Home. He circumnavigated the globe five times, and in 1828 was instrumental in the introduction of the first English steamer to the Australian colonies. In 1828 he went to Van Diemen's Land, and was a good deal in the confidence of the members of the co-partnery for which Batman purchased Port Phillip from the eight Aboriginal chieftains. After all of life seen by Dr. Thomson it was dull enough for him to have to quamby with his wife in a wattle-and-daub hovel in the vicinage of the wharf, for this was where he was for a while domiciled. But he was a useful, good-natured, though near-sighted gentleman, and rendered many kind offices to the very limited community in which fate had cast him. He did not long remain in Melbourne, for he
