Batman, who made all his preliminary preparations with care and prevision, brought a surveyor in his party by whom the country was mapped out, and apportioned amongst Batman and his co-partnery.
These primitive flock-masters proceeded forthwith to turn what was then known, in official phraseology, as "the territory of Doutta-galla" into a vast sheep-walk. No doubt when they beheld the "fresh fields and pastures new" unfolding before their delighted eyes, larger and larger the further they went, they began to realise the possibility of the Johnsonian phrase of "a potentiality of becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice;" but the spell was to be soon broken by the fiat of the Home Government, which disallowed the Batman compact. Subsequently the Batman "Association" obtained £1,000 compensation, in remission of land purchase-money, and, in 1839, they bought 9,416 acres of land to the westward of Geelong.
The famous "Flank March," effected by Sir Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales, in 1836, and its great results, soon spread the name and fame of "Australia Felix" (as he called it) far and wide. Travelling from Sydney, overland, he crossed the Murray, and following its course reached Swan Hill. Proceeding to the South Australian border, he turned back, making Portland, and visiting the "Henty" settlement; and thence by Mounts Sturgeon and Alexander, and the Rivers Goulburn and Ovens, got back to Sydney. In the course of his return journey, he was met at the Murrumbidgee by Messrs. John Gardiner and Joseph Hawdon, with cattle from Sydney to Port Phillip. On their arrival in Melbourne, Gardiner took up the south side of the Yarra to feed his stock, and for some time occupied both sides of the river for several miles. One day, whilst in quest of some strayed stock, he reached the Upper Yarra country, which so surprised him with its rich pasturage, that he speedily moved off there. South Yarra in itself was not held in much account for stock fattening; the plains on the Saltwater River, the Exe, and down about Indented Head being regarded as the "prime joints." Stations, were, however, rapidly taken up here, there, and everywhere. Batman's first sheep station was where St. James' Episcopalian Church, off William Street, is built, and a shepherd's hut was placed there: but he soon moved the "homestead" to Flemington Hill. Solomon sat down at the Saltwater River, and Wedge and Simpson on the Werribee. More settlers began gradually to come in; and, on the tidings of what had happened reaching England, moneyed men lost no time in turning their attention to the newly opened field for investment. Sheep and cattle poured in from Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales, and a brisk trade sprang up with the ports of Launceston and Hobartown.
In the way of government, the country was a kind of every man's land, and, accordingly, everyone seemed to do much as he liked; but the few people were industrious and law-abiding without law. Anything like a crime amongst the whites was almost unknown, and theft was quite at a discount—probably because there was little of convertible property that could be conveniently abstracted. The only quarrelling was between Batman and Fawkner, and it is a notable circumstance that Fawkner was the first person to show himself amenable to an equitable jurisdiction, by his agreeing to an arbitration to adjudicate upon some difference between himself and Batman's brother. This somewhat anomalous state of "society" obtained until near the middle of 1836, when, at the instance of the Governor in Sydney, Captain Stewart, the police magistrate at Goulburn, in New South Wales, and a territorial justice of the peace, proceeded to the new settlement to enquire into, and make report upon, the state of affairs there.
Arriving in the cutter, "Prince George," at the end of May, the Commissioner lost no time in setting to work. On the 1st June, 1835, a meeting of the principal residents (twenty-seven in number) was held in the "parlor" of Batman's residence. Harmony and good feeling prevailed, and the result of the deliberations was the adoption of a sort of Emergency Constitution, which, it was believed, would answer all public requirements until some legally governing power could be called into existence.
This was the first popular "Ordinance" passed in the colony, and, though not a Magna Charta, as a charter of "Home Rule," a short précis of it may not be uninteresting. There was no "preamble," but it contained eight clauses of the following purport:—
- 1. The appointment of Mr. James Simpson, J.P., as Arbitrator upon all disputes between individuals, excepting such as might relate to land, with power to name two assistants to help him, if necessary.
- 2. The Arbitrator to have power to inflict suchfinesas he might consider proportionate to any injury sustained.
