A small band of experienced colonists, a succession of flocks and herds from the opposite coast, a magistrate, a few policemen and customs officers, then a sort of deputy-governor under the modest name of superintendent—these were found sufficient for building up the most flourishing dependency of the British crown, without calling on the home country for a single shilling.
The history of Port Phillip is singularly barren of incident, and may be comprised in a very few pages, while volumes might be filled with the moving accidents which have chequered the career of colonies which have not attained, and are not likely to attain, one-tenth of its wealth and importance as a field for British labour and capital.
In 1798, Bass, in the course of his whale-boat expedition, visited Western Port, one of the harbours of Victoria. In 1802 Flinders sailed into Port Phillip Bay, having been preceded ten weeks previously by Lieutenant John Murray, of the Lady Nelson.
In 1803 Lieutenant Governor Collins, who held the office of judge-advocate under Governor Phillip in the first colony, and on his return to England in 1796 had published an "Account of New South Wales," was sent out with H. M. ships Calcutta and Ocean with detachments of royal marines, a number of free settlers, and several hundred prisoners to found a settlement at Port Phillip, where, having sailed on April 27th, he arrived October 3rd. The expedition disembarked on the southern shore of the bay, where the beach was unfavourable for landing, and there was no fresh water. It is evident, from a narrative published by one of the party,[1] that from the first Colonel Collins[2] had no earnest desire to form a settlement at Port Phillip: he had heard glowing accounts of the beauty and fertility of the opposite shores of Van Diemen's Land, and, after a very cursory survey, he decided on removing thither. In the course of a walk round the bay, undertaken by the officers of the ship, they found "on the eastern shore, twenty-eight miles from the entrance, a stream of water emptying itself into the port." "The bed of the stream is covered with folicacious mica, which our people first conceived to be gold-dust." At the present day we cannot be so sure that it was mica. According to an account given in a Tasmanian almanack, which does not agree with that of Lieutenant
- ↑ Lieutenant Tuckey's Voyage in H. M. S. Calcutta, to found a Settlement in Bass's Straits. 1803-4."
- ↑ Colonel David Collins was the grandson of Arthur Collins, author of the Peerage of England, which was afterwards continued by Sir Egerton Brydges. He was a Lieutenant of Marines in the Southampton frigate in 1772, when Matilda, Queen of Denmark, took refuge on board. He afterwards fought at the battle of Bunker's Hill, under his father, General Collins; he died in Van Diemen's Land.
