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reached and was accepted by the tribe who inhabited the Bellarine Peninsula, on the other side
of the Rip, and virtually opposite his first, fettered Australian home. For 30 years he existed
among the aborigines, sole white lord of the wild and knowing it like no other then or since.
Then in 1835 he saw an English ship, and heard English voices, and walked into an encampment
made in May at Indented Head. A generation had passed and now new settlers had arrived.
These were led by John Batman, aged 34, a Tasmanian grazier. Suitable land for sheep-farming
in Tasmania had become limited since the permanent settlement of Hobart and the establishment
of a penal colony. Displeased with all this, and despite opposition from the government of New
South Wales, Batman and others had decided to find and possess new acres elsewhere. They
formed the Port Phillip Association. Assisted in part by Buckley's knowledge of the land and the
aboriginal language, Batman and his party, after setting up a depot, explored the west and north
of Port Phillip Bay. Like Flinders, Batman also climbed hills and stood, like Flinders, on Station
Peak.
He also liked what he saw: 'I never could have imagined it possible that so fine a country existed
on the face of the globe: gentle hills, plains and downs, on which 5,000 sheep might have been
allowed to feed with little trouble to their shepherd.'
While Batman moved north, an associate, John Wedge, made a more thorough exploration of
the countryside around Corio Bay and as far south as Torquay. He discovered the confluence
of the Barwon and Moorabool Rivers west of Geelong and crossed the Barrabool Hills. He
named a waterfall after his guide: Buckley's Falls. The Wild White Man was given an official
pardon in due course, and in 1838 he returned to something like civilisation, retiring to Hobart,
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-
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