1835
Batman’s contract for Melbourne
A handful of sand
John Batman’s contract to buy land from the tribes around Port Phillip was an extraordinary folly that led to the creation of Melbourne.
No one knows who ‘founded’ Melbourne. Obviously the Wurundjeri tribes had been there for several centuries before white people arrived. The first European settlement in Victoria was at Sullivan Bay, near Sorrento, in 1803, but it was abandoned due to a lack of fresh water. William Buckley, an escaped convict of this settlement who inspired the expression ‘Buckley’s chance’, lived among the local tribes of Melbourne for 33 years before Batman’s arrival.
Batman was the free son of a convict called William Bat(e)man and his wife, Mary. He drifted to Van Diemen’s Land, where he formed a family and had some success as a grazier. But the rugged island could only support so many cattle, and by 1827 land was scarce. Batman lobbied the authorities to open up pastures across Bass Strait but was turned down.
In May 1835, Batman and a small party crossed Bass Strait and surveyed the area, noting his notorious ‘spot for a village’. Apparently intending to legitimise his settlement, Batman had Joseph Gellibrand, a lawyer, draw up a deed by which Batman would acquire 600 000 acres (242 800 ha) of what is now Melbourne for the sum of 20 pairs of blankets, 30 tomahawks, 100 knives, 50 pairs of scissors, 30 looking glasses, 200 handkerchiefs, 100 pounds (45 kg) of flour and 6 shirts. Batman offered a further annual tribute of 100 pairs of blankets, 100 tomahawks, 50 suits of clothing, 50 looking glasses, 50 pairs of scissors and 5 tonnes of flour.
According to legend, the deed (which is variously known as the Batman Treaty, the Dutigullar Deed and the Dutigullar Treaty) was signed by eight Aboriginal elders of the Kulin nation (an alliance of five Aboriginal nations – Wurundjeri, Bunurong, Wathaurong, Taungurong and Dja Dja Wurrung). At the same time, Batman signed the Geelong Deed, giving him land in the Geelong area south-west of Melbourne. The signing of these deeds supposedly took place on the banks of the Merri Creek in what is now the Melbourne suburb of Northcote. The ceremony was, according to Batman, marked by the traditional owners giving him a handful of soil.
The Indigenous people were obviously not familiar with Batman’s language, nor he with theirs: Batman’s Aboriginal companions were from Sydney. The local people had no concept of contract law, and the contract would now be unenforceable in any court. In any case, the colonial government’s view was that all land belonged to the Crown.
Batman’s audacious move prompted the governor of New South Wales, Sir Richard Bourke, to issue a proclamation nullifying the treaty. That proclamation became the basis for the argument of terra nullius (which said that there had been no prior occupation of the land before British settlement), which was thereafter deployed as justification for the expansion of white rule of all of Australia and the Torres Strait.
It was not until 1992 that terra nullius was finally unwound, in the Mabo case. Batman may have thought he was doing the right thing, but in fact he set the reconciliation cause back by centuries. The notion that Batman had any great affection for Indigenous people is contradicted by his active participation in the Black War genocide in Tasmania, where 1000 Indigenous people were slaughtered. It seems more likely that his gesture was a means to get around the New South Wales government, which was blocking his purchase. He looked for non-government owners under the guise of moral righteousness but should have done what whalers and others had done – just squat. Nonetheless, he pursued his ‘contract’.
After signing his deed, Batman sailed to Launceston to collect his family. In August he returned to Port Phillip, where he was surprised to find that a rival, John Pascoe Fawkner, was already establishing a settlement, having promised that he would leave Batman’s territory alone.
The rivalry between the two ambitious landowners continued until Batman’s death a few years later. By the time he moved to Port Phillip, his health was in rapid decline: his nose was mostly eaten away by syphilis and he was an alcoholic. Abandoned by his wife, Batman died on 6 May 1839. Fawkner lived much longer, opening the first Port Phillip pub and becoming a pillar of the community. The present suburb of Pascoe Vale covers some of his holdings.
It was Batman’s and Fawkner’s determination to defy the colonial administration and move to the banks of the Yarra that forced the creation of Melbourne. Within a year of their settlement, 177 other settlers and more than 26 000 sheep had arrived. A commissioner reported to Governor Bourke on 25 May 1836 that the settlement amounted to 13 buildings: three weatherboard, two slate and eight turf huts, housing 142 males and 35 females.
The following year, on 4 March 1837, Bourke named the place Melbourne after the then prime minister of the United Kingdom, Lord Melbourne. He instructed the assistant surveyor-general, Robert Hoddle, to lay out the town. Hoddle envisaged a grid with very wide streets, and his vision has shaped Melbourne until the present day. Within 16 years of settlement, Victoria was proclaimed a state and Melbourne its capital.