Richard Bourke, and the other against the occupation of Port Phillip, as recommended by Colonel Arthur, objecting to measures "the consequence of which would be to spread over a still further extent of country a population which it was the object of the land regulations to concentrate," and declining, on the ground of "expense to the mother country, and danger to the natives and settlers," to sanction the proceedings of Batman and his associates.
But before the despatches were unsealed the thing was done. Mother Partington's mop was not more powerful to stop the Atlantic than paper proclamations to arrest the march of Australian settlers with sheep and lambs in sight of "fresh fields and pastures new."
On the one hand, shepherds and stockmen were spreading overland, following their flock from pasture to pasture toward Port Phillip; on the other, a Port Phillip fever seized the Tasmanians, and they crowded across the straits like the patriarchs of old, with tents and all their woolly possessions.
"We went down," says a lady, who was then a little child, "to see the six adventurers embark for Port Phillip, with the same feeling as if it had been Cortez or Pizarro; but very soon there was the same universal rush for Port Phillip that there is now for the gold-diggings."
It was while one of these early parties was landing from boats near the future site of Melbourne that they saw, amid a tribe of natives sitting under a tree, with all the arms and tokens of a chief, a man of large limbs and gigantic stature, lighter-coloured than his companions, as well as could be distinguished through tan, paint, and dirt. He stared hard at the strangers, and seemed muttering to himself; then, rising, he approached, and addressed them in a strange jargon, in which a few words of English were distinguishable. It was Buckley, one of the convicts who had escaped from the party of Colonel Collins, and, after thirty-two years' sojourning with the aborigines, again found himself among his countrymen.
He had forgotten his native tongue, and had assumed all the habits of his savage companions, among whom he was a chief by virtue of his superior stature and strength.[1] He at once joined the colonists, gradually re-acquired the English tongue, and exercised very useful influence over his late subjects. Colonel Arthur, the Governor of Van Diemen's Land, granted him a free pardon, and, as it was disagreeable to him to remain in the scene of his savage life, he became a constable in Van Diemen's Land.
- ↑ Buckley was six feet seven inches in height.
