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where he married. He died there in 1856, aged 75.
Meanwhile, Batman had made a historic purchase. Somehow he persuaded the local aboriginal
leaders to endorse and make their marks on a deed of so-called sale that gave his Association
600,000 acres of Australia, most of them north and west of Port Phillip Bay and including the
Bellarine Peninsula. This done, he returned to Van Diemen's Land with tales of a land of milk
and honey; and hundreds of settlers, keen to escape the cramped and criminal atmosphere of
the island, sold up and sailed north.
Among them were some members of the Port Phillip Association, who were soon in dispute
with squatters who also moved in on their lands. But by July 1836, some 30,000 sheep were
safely grazing on the Association's territory.
105
Before John Batman had left New South Wales for Van Diemen's Land with his deed of sale in
his pocket, he had chosen a site near the north shore of Port Phillip Bay for a township and
named a river there after himself. If he had not died in 1839, and if his position and exploits had
been more official, his name might have been much more widely commemorated in Australia, as
was Flinders' name, among many others. There would have been Batman Streets, Creeks,
Rivers, Mountains, Islands, and towns all over Australia. And the town he founded might have
become famous as Batmansville. As it is, that town became Melbourne: and his river was
renamed the Yarra.
His most notable memorial is a stone pillar in Batman Park, near his one-time depot at Indented
Head.
Nobody gave his name to Geelong. The farmers who in 1836 set up sheep-farms, or 'runs', in
the area, referred to it by the aboriginal name for the bay, Jillong. Corio (pronounced 'Cor-eye-
o) was actually the native name for the land around the bay. The white settlers somehow
reversed the names.
These were mainly exiled or emigrant Scotsmen and ex-Tasmanians. They came generally in
pairs, as partners or brothers: John Cowie and David Stead; George Russell and H Anderson;
the Sutherland brothers; the Austin brothers, the Manifolds, the Learmonths, the Murrays, the
Lloyds, the Yuiiles.
Dr Alexander Thomson, formerly catechist of the Port Phillip Association, set up a run on the
south bank of the Barwon River, covering present day Belmont and Highton. The son of an
Aberdeen ship-owner and born in 1800, Dr Thomson had previously been a surgeon on convict
ships before settling in Van Diemen's Land. Hemoved to Melbourne in 1835. His next move, to
the area of Geelong, is described in a letter he wrote in March 1354.
'In May 1836 I landed my sheep at Point Henry, and occupied the present township of Geelong
as a sheep station, and Indented Head as a cattle station for Captain Swanston. Messrs Cowie
and Stead and myself had the whole Western district to ourselves for eighteen months, parties
being all afraid of the blacks... In 1837 I buiit the present house of Kardinia, which I called after
the aboriginal word for "sunrise." I built also a house for the Derwent Company, occupied
afterwards by Mr Fisher. In 1838 Mr Strachan buiit the first store in Geelong; he was followed
by Messrs Rucker and Champion. On my first journeys into the country I was very much
surprised to find so few natives, and thought they were keeping out of the way. During our first
visit to Buninyong we did not see one, and on our first journey to the west, when we discovered
Colac and Korangamite, we saw about twenty.'
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