Frontier History in Colonial Early Victoria
John Batman and the 1835 “Treaty” of Port Phillip: Myth, Land, and Law
In 1835, John Batman, a grazier and explorer from Van Diemen’s Land, sailed across Bass Strait in search of land for pastoral settlement. What followed became one of the most contested events in Australian colonial history — the so-called “Batman Treaty.”
Claimed by Batman as a legal purchase of land from local Indigenous leaders of the Kulin Nation, the agreement was swiftly declared void by the British Crown. Yet its symbolism has endured for nearly two centuries, shaping national conversations about sovereignty, law, and the false promise of consent under colonisation.
Timeline: The 1835 “Treaty” and Its Aftermath
Early 1830s: Van Diemen’s Land settlers, facing land shortages and overgrazing, seek expansion onto the mainland.
April–May 1835: John Batman and his Port Phillip Association secure private funding to explore Port Phillip Bay for grazing land.
June 6, 1835: Batman meets Wurundjeri leaders along the Merri Creek on Woiwurrung Country and claims to have signed a treaty granting him 600,000 acres in exchange for goods.
July 1835: Batman’s party establishes a base near the Yarra River (Narrm), proclaiming it the site of a future city — Melbourne.
August 1835: Governor Richard Bourke of New South Wales issues a proclamation under the Doctrine of Terra Nullius, declaring Batman’s treaty invalid and all land the property of the Crown.
1836–1837: Government surveyor Robert Hoddle designs Melbourne’s street grid; official colonisation proceeds, bypassing Indigenous consent.
1840s–1850s: Frontier violence and displacement intensify as the Port Phillip District becomes a centre of settlement and trade.
Batman, the Port Phillip Association, and Colonial Ambition
John Batman was part of a generation of colonial entrepreneurs seeking wealth from land and livestock. A former bounty hunter of bushrangers and participant in the Black War in Tasmania, he carried both frontier experience and a belief in “acquisition by agreement.”
The Port Phillip Association, formed in Launceston in 1835, consisted of wealthy settlers, merchants, and politicians. Its aim was simple: to pre-empt official policy by securing a vast tract of fertile land before government sanction. Batman’s “treaty” was their legal façade for this ambition (Boyce 2011).
The Treaty: Exchange, Interpretation, and Misunderstanding
Batman’s journal records that on 6 June 1835, he met eight Woiwurrung and Wathaurong leaders — among them figures identified as “Jika Jika,” “Bebejan,” and “Bungal.” In exchange for goods including blankets, knives, flour, and mirrors, he claimed to have obtained possession of 600,000 acres.
From a European legal view, this appeared a contract of sale. But for the Kulin peoples, the encounter was likely understood through their own systems of tanderrum — a temporary ceremony granting visitors safe passage and resource access, not permanent alienation of land (Broome 2005; Cahir 2012).
In essence, Batman misinterpreted a protocol of respect as a deed of ownership. The concept of “selling land” was entirely foreign to Indigenous law, where Country is inherited, not transferred.
Governor Bourke’s Proclamation and the Doctrine of Terra Nullius
When news of Batman’s claim reached Sydney, Governor Richard Bourke acted swiftly. On 26 August 1835, he issued a Proclamation declaring:
“All lands in the Colony of New South Wales belong to the Crown, and no private person may purchase or receive grants of land directly from the Aborigines.”
This decree cemented the Doctrine of Terra Nullius, legally denying the existence of Indigenous sovereignty or ownership. It nullified Batman’s treaty, not because it exploited Indigenous people, but because it threatened the Crown’s monopoly on land sales (Reynolds 1987).
Ironically, while the proclamation voided the treaty, the government soon allowed Batman’s settlers to remain — effectively rewarding the illegal act through later leases and land grants.
Woiwurrung Country Before and After 1835
Before colonisation, the Woiwurrung and related Kulin Nation peoples lived in complex societies structured around kinship, ceremony, and trade networks. Country extended across the Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers to the Great Dividing Range.
Following 1835:
Sheep and cattle destroyed murnong (yam daisy) fields and wetlands.
Waterways were polluted by industry and settlement.
Disease, particularly smallpox and influenza, decimated local populations.
By 1840, only a few hundred Woiwurrung and Bunurong survivors remained near Melbourne (Clark 1995).
The city’s founding, often celebrated in settler narratives as visionary, was built directly upon this dispossession.
Myth, Memory, and the “First and Only Treaty”
For generations, Batman’s “treaty” was mythologised as the first and only formal agreement between settlers and Indigenous Australians. Statues and schoolbooks depicted him as a pioneer seeking fairness.
Yet modern scholarship and Indigenous testimony reveal a different truth:
The document was written in English legal language, unintelligible to its signatories.
Goods exchanged were symbolic, not payment for land.
The concept of consent under duress and power imbalance was meaningless.
What Batman framed as justice was, in reality, the first act of dispossession in Victoria (Broome 2005).
Law, Legitimacy, and the Legacy of the Treaty
While the treaty itself held no legal power, its implications have echoed across two centuries of law and politics.
It exposed the contradiction of a colonial system that denied Indigenous sovereignty while relying on its suppression for expansion.
It remains a reference point in contemporary debates about treaty-making, recognition, and truth-telling.
The Yoorrook Justice Commission (2023) and the Victorian Treaty process draw upon this history, demonstrating how unfinished the conversation remains.
Indigenous Responses and Survival
Despite immense upheaval, the descendants of the Kulin Nations continue to assert their rights and cultural authority. Wurundjeri, Bunurong, Taungurung, and Wadawurrung peoples maintain active connection to Country through cultural practice, education, and land management.
In 2005, the Wurundjeri Tribe Land and Compensation Cultural Heritage Council formally reclaimed and reinterpreted the Batman Treaty site near Merri Creek, acknowledging both the trauma and resilience embedded there.
Conclusion
The 1835 Batman Treaty stands as one of the most revealing episodes in Victoria’s colonial history — not a pact of equality, but an illusion of consent within an imperial system built on dispossession.
While it failed as law, it succeeded as myth, masking violence beneath the language of agreement. Understanding this event today requires dismantling its legend and acknowledging what it truly marked: the beginning of Melbourne’s colonisation and the enduring struggle for Indigenous sovereignty.
References
Boyce, J 2011, 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia, Black Inc., Melbourne.
Broome, R 2005, Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Cahir, F 2012, Black Gold: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850–1870, ANU E Press, Canberra.
Clark, I D 1995, Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria 1803–1859, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.
Reynolds, H 1987, The Law of the Land, Penguin, Ringwood.
Written, Researched and Directed by James Vegter (16 September 2025)
MLA
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