Frontier History in Colonial Early Victoria
The First Colonisers in Melbourne and Wadawurrung Country: Foundation, Expansion, and Dispossession
The founding of Melbourne in 1835 marked the beginning of British colonisation in central and western Victoria, transforming the lands of the Kulin Nations—including the Wurundjeri, Boonwurrung, Taungurung, Dja Dja Wurrung, and Wadawurrung peoples—into the nucleus of the Port Phillip District. Long before official recognition by the Crown, private settlers and speculators from Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and New South Wales crossed Bass Strait to claim land for grazing and trade.
These first colonisers, including John Batman, John Pascoe Fawkner, and the Port Phillip Association, initiated a pattern of private occupation, conflict, and dispossession that spread rapidly across Wadawurrung and neighbouring territories. Their arrival represents one of the most significant moments in Victoria’s colonial history: the transformation of Country from a network of sovereign Indigenous estates into a frontier of the British Empire.
Melbourne Before Colonisation: Kulin Nations and Country
Before 1835, the region that became Melbourne was part of the Wurundjeri-willam estate, within the Kulin Confederacy—a sophisticated network of peoples who shared language groups, ceremonial responsibilities, and law (Barwick, 1984; Broome, 2005).
The Kulin Nations maintained interconnected territories stretching from the Yarra–Merri Creek basin, across Port Phillip Bay, and west into Wadawurrung Country—encompassing the Bellarine Peninsula, Geelong, the You Yangs, Ballarat, and the Moorabool-Barwon River system (Clark, 1990).
Each clan cared for its Country through cultural burning, fish weirs, eel traps, and seasonal movement between coastal and inland camps. The landscape that colonisers described as “empty” or “waste” was in fact a densely managed living system, shaped by thousands of years of Indigenous science and stewardship (Pascoe, 2014).
The First Colonial Expeditions to Port Phillip
British interest in southern Victoria began with maritime mapping and trade:
1802–1803: Surveyors such as Charles Grimes and James Meehan explored the Yarra estuary. Grimes’ journal recorded fertile soils and freshwater, but early attempts at settlement (Sullivan Bay, 1803) were abandoned.
1820s: Sealers, whalers, and escaped convicts intermittently occupied islands and coastal inlets of Bass Strait and Western Port, often clashing with Boonwurrung and Wadawurrung communities (Critchett, 1990).
1835: Organised settlement began when John Batman, representing the Port Phillip Association, sailed from Launceston aboard the Rebecca. His party landed on the Yarra River, meeting Woiwurrung elders and claiming to have negotiated a “treaty.”
Batman’s “purchase” of approximately 600,000 acres from Kulin leaders was later declared invalid by Governor Richard Bourke, who reaffirmed that all land in New South Wales—including Port Phillip—was Crown property under terra nullius (Reynolds, 1987).
The Port Phillip Association and the Spread to Wadawurrung Country
After Batman’s “treaty,” members of the Port Phillip Association began moving livestock across the bay to the western plains. Within months, squatters established stations around:
Geelong and the Barwon River—Wadawurrung Country;
Indented Head and the Bellarine Peninsula;
The Leigh and Moorabool Rivers, leading north to Ballarat;
and westward toward Mount Emu Creek and Port Fairy, entering Gunditjmara lands.
Early figures included Joseph Gellibrand, Henry Batman, Foster Fyans, and David Fisher, whose runs formed the nucleus of European Geelong (Cahir, 2012). Fyans, later appointed police magistrate, coordinated the first formal township survey while also ordering punitive expeditions against Wadawurrung groups accused of resistance.
Wadawurrung Response and the Early Frontier
The Wadawurrung response to invasion combined diplomacy and defence.
Early encounters at Indented Head (1835–36) saw negotiated exchanges of food and goods with Batman’s and Fawkner’s parties.
However, when settlers occupied key resource zones—such as Barwon wetlands, Wurdi Youang, and the Bellarine coastal fisheries—violence erupted.
By 1837–1839, settlers recorded several “reprisals” near the You Yangs and Lake Connewarre, resulting in large-scale loss of life (Clark, 1995; Broome, 2005).
The Native Police Corps, established soon after (1837), was used to track Wadawurrung groups accused of stock killings. This marked the beginning of state-sanctioned enforcement of colonial order on Wadawurrung Country.
The Founding of Melbourne
While Batman operated from the west, John Pascoe Fawkner’s party sailed from Launceston aboard the Enterprize and landed at the Yarra Falls (August 1835).
Fawkner’s settlement—initially a makeshift hut and garden—quickly expanded into a camp of merchants, carpenters, and herders. By 1836, the site was surveyed by Robert Hoddle, and the grid plan for Melbourne was laid out on Wurundjeri land.
Within a decade:
Melbourne’s population grew from fewer than 200 settlers to over 20,000;
The Yarra was lined with stores, wharves, and banks;
The Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung populations were reduced to a fraction, many relocated to early reserves such as Nerre Nerre Warren (1837) and later Coranderrk (1863).
From Melbourne to the Western District: Expansion Across Country
The early pastoral boom was driven by sheep runs supplying wool to British mills.
By 1840, squatters occupied nearly all arable plains between the Yarra and Glenelg Rivers, encompassing the lands of the Wadawurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, and Gunditjmara.
This expansion followed a recurring pattern:
Unauthorised occupation by squatters;
Retaliation and reprisals against Indigenous defence;
Government recognition of “de facto” occupation through licensing;
Mission and Protectorate establishment to manage surviving populations (Broome, 2005; Clark, 1995).
The Role of Foster Fyans and the Geelong Frontier
As Police Magistrate, Captain Foster Fyans wielded both military and civil power. He:
coordinated early township planning in Geelong;
enforced Crown property law across Wadawurrung lands;
led operations alongside settlers and troopers in response to Indigenous resistance;
supervised early convict labour used for road building and port construction.
By the early 1840s, Fyans’ reports describe a “settled” district—achieved through what historians now recognise as violent suppression and displacement (Clark, 1995).
Cultural and Environmental Transformation
The arrival of colonists brought profound environmental change to Kulin Country:
Pastoral grazing destroyed murnong (yam-daisy) fields—the staple food of Wadawurrung women;
Rivers and wetlands were fenced or polluted by livestock, collapsing traditional eel and fish systems;
Firestick farming was replaced by European land clearance, altering soil ecology and biodiversity (Pascoe, 2014; Gammage, 2011).
Cultural disruption followed environmental loss: songlines, language, and ceremonial gatherings were suppressed under colonial law, forcing survivors into missions such as Framlingham, Lake Condah, and Coranderrk.
Global Context: Empire, Capital, and Settlement
The foundation of Melbourne fits within the global expansion of the British Empire’s colonial capitalism. The Port Phillip settlement was financed by Tasmanian pastoralists seeking wool markets, using convict capital, and enforced by imperial law and military power.
Comparable settler invasions occurred simultaneously:
New Zealand (Aotearoa): Treaty of Waitangi (1840) and ensuing Māori land wars;
South Africa: Frontier wars in the Eastern Cape;
Canada: Settlement along the St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay corridors.
In each, Indigenous sovereignty was displaced by Crown title, and the pattern of “occupation first, law later” legitimised dispossession retroactively (Reynolds, 1987).
Legacy and Truth-Telling
By the time Victoria gained colonial separation from New South Wales in 1851, the Port Phillip region had undergone irreversible change.
The wealth of the squattocracy was built on lands seized from Kulin Nations, including the Wadawurrung, whose connection to Country survived only through oral history and resilience.
Today, truth-telling initiatives such as the Yoorrook Justice Commission and the Treaty process in Victoria are recognising the foundational violence of colonisation. The descendants of the first colonisers and the First Peoples of this land now share responsibility for truth, memory, and repair.
Conclusion
The first colonisers of Melbourne and Wadawurrung Country were agents of both ambition and dispossession. Their pursuit of land, wealth, and power founded a city that became the centre of colonial Victoria but also the site of profound cultural loss.
Understanding their actions within the broader context of the Kulin Nations’ sovereignty, the frontier conflicts, and the imperial system reveals that Melbourne’s origins were not a peaceful beginning but a contested transformation.
Through truth-telling and acknowledgment, Victoria continues to confront this legacy—recognising that the foundations of its capital were laid upon living, sovereign Country that was never ceded.
Reference List
Barwick, D. (1984). Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans, 1835–1904. Aboriginal History, 8(2), pp.100–131.
Boyce, J. (2011). 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia. Melbourne: Black Inc.
Broome, R. (2005). Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Cahir, F. (2012). Black Gold: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850–1870. Canberra: ANU E Press.
Clark, I. D. (1990). Aboriginal Languages and Clans: An Historical Atlas of Western and Central Victoria, 1800–1900. Clayton: Monash Publications in Geography.
Clark, I. D. (1995). Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria 1803–1859. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Critchett, J. (1990). A Distant Field of Murder: Western District Frontiers, 1834–1848. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Gammage, B. (2011). The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Pascoe, B. (2014). Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture. Broome: Magabala Books.
Reynolds, H. (1987). The Law of the Land. Ringwood: Penguin.
Written, Researched and Directed by James Vegter (22 October 2025)
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