Frontier History in Colonial Early Victoria
The First Colonisers on Wadawurrung Country: Geelong, Ballarat and the Western Plains
The first European colonisers to settle on Wadawurrung Country—stretching from the Bellarine Peninsula and Geelong to Ballarat and the Western Plains—arrived in the mid-1830s, only months after the foundation of Melbourne. Drawn by fertile grasslands, abundant water, and strategic access to Port Phillip Bay, these settlers rapidly transformed one of the most ecologically rich regions in Victoria into a centre of colonial expansion.
For the Wadawurrung, whose custodianship of Country extended across the Moorabool–Barwon catchments, Lake Burrumbeet, Ballarat Highlands, and You Yangs, colonisation brought devastation: dispossession of land, suppression of ceremony, and violent clashes known collectively as the Silent War.
This article examines the first colonisers who entered Wadawurrung Country, the establishment of early Geelong and Ballarat, and the resulting frontier conflicts and cultural impacts.
Wadawurrung Country Before Colonisation
Before European arrival, Wadawurrung Country—part of the Kulin Nation confederacy—encompassed over 10,000 square kilometres of diverse ecosystems: volcanic plains, coastal dunes, eucalypt forests, and river valleys.
Wadawurrung communities lived through seasonal movement between inland and coastal camps, harvesting murnong (yam-daisy), hunting kangaroo and emu, fishing in the Barwon, and trading with neighbouring clans of the Woiwurrung, Boonwurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, and Gunditjmara (Clark, 1990; Barwick, 1984).
Cultural law, moiety, and kinship structured governance and ceremony. Sites such as Wurdi Youang (a pre-contact stone arrangement aligned with solar events) and Mount Buninyong held deep spiritual significance. Country was alive with ancestral presence and responsibility—concepts fundamentally at odds with colonial land ownership (Presland, 1994).
The First Colonisers: 1836–1838
Early Explorers and Squatters
The first Europeans to enter Wadawurrung Country were overlanders from Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales in 1836–1837, including Captain Foster Fyans, Joseph Gellibrand, Henry Smythe, and the Learmonth brothers.
John Batman’s “Port Phillip Association” had already opened the floodgates by publicising the fertile lands west of the Yarra. Within months, settlers crossed the Werribee and Little River, encroaching on Wadawurrung estates around Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula (Boyce, 2011).
Captain Foster Fyans, a former British military officer, was appointed Police Magistrate of Geelong (1837), combining judicial, military, and administrative powers.
The Learmonth brothers established vast sheep runs around Burrumbeet and Ercildoune, which became the nucleus of Ballarat’s early pastoral economy.
Dr Alexander Thomson and David Fisher laid out the first farms along the Barwon River, using convict labour under government license (Cahir, 2012).
By 1838, the Geelong district had more than 50,000 sheep grazing on land that, only a year earlier, sustained interconnected Wadawurrung families.
Founding of Geelong: Frontier Outpost and Military Base
Geelong, known to the Wadawurrung as Jillong—meaning “land” or “tongue of land”—became a strategic port for exporting wool to Van Diemen’s Land and England.
Captain Fyans’ camp at Point Henry served as both magistrate’s court and barracks, from which mounted troopers patrolled Wadawurrung Country. His correspondence records repeated “dispersals” of “native parties” near the You Yangs, Barwon River, and Lake Connewarre (Clark, 1995).
Under Fyans’ direction:
Township surveys were conducted in 1838–39.
Convict gangs constructed roads, jetties, and police barracks.
Settler militia patrols were formed to protect sheep stations.
Geelong thus began as both a commercial venture and a military post, its growth dependent on suppressing Wadawurrung resistance.
Expansion into the Western Plains
Following the Geelong settlement, squatters fanned westward and northward:
By 1839, the Ballarat Highlands and Mount Emu Creek were occupied by runs under the Learmonths, Henry Anderson, and William Cross Yuille.
The Moorabool–Leigh river corridor, once a vital trade and ceremony route for Wadawurrung and Wathaurung families, became a line of wool stations.
To the west, near Skipton and Lake Bolac, pastoral expansion merged with the territories of the Gunditjmara and Djargurd Wurrung, leading to overlapping frontier conflict zones (Critchett, 1990).
The overlanders’ journals describe “magnificent pastures” but omit mention of the hundreds of Wadawurrung people already living there—revealing the colonial fiction of terra nullius in action.
Conflict and Resistance
From the moment settlers arrived, Wadawurrung resistance was swift and organised.
Attacks on livestock and burning of huts were recorded near the Barwon and You Yangs as early as 1836.
In 1837–38, Fyans reported several reprisals after shepherds were speared near Moorabool River, resulting in the killing of entire Wadawurrung camps.
Massacres occurred near Bellarine Peninsula, Inverleigh, and Burrumbeet, though colonial records often described them as “dispersals” (Clark, 1995).
These acts of violence were not isolated incidents but part of the Silent War—a series of unacknowledged frontier conflicts across Victoria (Reynolds, 1987; Broome, 2005).
Wadawurrung resistance also took cultural forms: maintaining ceremony, continuing to burn Country for renewal, and preserving sacred knowledge in the face of displacement.
Ballarat: From Pastoral Run to Gold Rush Town
By the early 1840s, Ballarat—originally Balla Arat, meaning “resting place” in Wadawurrung language—was dominated by sheep runs and squatters’ homesteads.
Mount Buninyong, sacred to the Wadawurrung as a creation site, became a pastoral lookout.
The Yarrowee River was diverted for stock watering, disrupting fishing and eel trapping.
Missionaries and protectors, such as William Thomas, recorded the disintegration of family groups due to hunger and disease.
When gold was discovered in 1851, thousands of diggers flooded onto Wadawurrung land, exacerbating the dispossession that had already begun under pastoralism. The Ballarat diggings—later symbol of democracy through the Eureka Rebellion (1854)—were built upon land taken from its traditional custodians without consent or compensation.
Environmental and Cultural Change
Colonisation reshaped the Western Plains ecosystem and cultural landscape:
Fire regimes ended, leading to the growth of invasive shrubs and loss of grassland biodiversity.
Wetlands such as Lake Connewarre and Lake Burrumbeet were drained for agriculture.
Wadawurrung languages, ceremonies, and burial grounds** were suppressed under mission and protectorate systems.
Survivors were forced into Nerre Nerre Warren, Framlingham, and Coranderrk by the 1850s (Barwick, 1998).
Despite this devastation, Wadawurrung cultural identity persisted through oral history, community renewal, and connection to Country—continuing into present-day cultural revival movements.
The Wider Colonial Context
The colonisation of Wadawurrung Country mirrored broader patterns across the British Empire:
In New Zealand, the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) provided a legal façade for land confiscations.
In Canada, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 promised protection but paved the way for reserve systems.
In South Africa, “frontier farmers” occupied Indigenous lands under grazing licenses similar to Bourke’s system in Victoria.
These imperial models used bureaucracy—licenses, surveys, and leases—to normalise dispossession and transform Indigenous land into capital.
Legacy and Truth-Telling
Today, the story of the first colonisers on Wadawurrung Country is being re-examined through truth-telling initiatives such as the Yoorrook Justice Commission, Treaty Victoria, and local Wadawurrung cultural heritage programs.
Memorials, community-led research, and archaeological work around Geelong, Ballarat, and the Bellarine Peninsula are uncovering massacre sites and restoring Indigenous place names. These efforts mark a new phase of historical recognition and reconciliation.
Conclusion
The first colonisers on Wadawurrung Country—pastoralists, magistrates, and speculators—established Geelong, Ballarat, and the Western Plains as centres of colonial wealth. Their expansion was built upon the dispossession and displacement of Wadawurrung people, whose Country had sustained human life for countless generations.
Yet this history is not only one of loss. It is also a story of survival, resilience, and renewal. The Wadawurrung continue to reclaim their language, protect sacred sites, and assert sovereignty over their ancestral lands—ensuring that the true history of the Western Plains is told, not from the perspective of the coloniser, but from the enduring strength of First Peoples.
Reference List
Attwood, B. (2003). Rights for Aborigines. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Barwick, D. (1984). ‘Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans, 1835–1904.’ Aboriginal History, 8(2), pp.100–131.
Barwick, D. (1998). Rebellion at Coranderrk. Canberra: Aboriginal History Monograph.
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.
Presland, G. (1994). Aboriginal Melbourne: The Lost Land of the Kulin People. Melbourne: Harriland Press.
Reynolds, H. (1987). The Law of the Land. Ringwood: Penguin.
Written, Researched and Directed by James Vegter (22 October 2025)
MLA
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Magic Lands Alliance acknowledges the Traditional Owners, Custodians, and First Nations communities across Australia and internationally. We honour their enduring connection to the sky, land, waters, language, and culture. We pay respect to Elders past, present, and emerging, and to all First Peoples’ communities and language groups. This article draws only on publicly available information; many cultural practices remain the intellectual property of their respective communities.