Colonial Men

The Men of Early Port Phillip: Convicts, Squatters, Policemen, and Survivors on Wadawurrung and Wurundjeri Country, 1835–1855

MLA Educational Series — Gender, Colonisation, and the Making of Victoria

The first decades of settlement in Victoria were driven largely by men — explorers, convicts, squatters, soldiers, and administrators — whose actions transformed Wadawurrung and Wurundjeri Country into the colony of Port Phillip. While the colonial narrative long celebrated them as founders and pioneers, this same period was also defined by Indigenous men who defended, negotiated, and sustained their communities under the pressures of invasion. From stockmen and magistrates to protectors and resistance fighters, the men of the frontier embodied both creation and destruction, revealing how masculinity, power, and survival intertwined on the colonial edge.

Frontier Masculinities and Indigenous Authority

When Europeans entered Port Phillip in 1835, they encountered a society already structured by law, diplomacy, and gender balance. Among the Kulin Nations — Wadawurrung, Wurundjeri, Boonwurrung, Taungurung, and Dja Dja Wurrung — men held ceremonial and custodial responsibilities that sustained balance between people and Country. They were hunters, fire-keepers, and law-holders, tasked with maintaining sacred sites, hosting tanderrum (welcome) gatherings, and protecting families and waterways (Broome, 2005; Presland, 1994).

The new arrivals brought different systems of hierarchy, property, and labour. Male colonists imagined the frontier as a proving ground — a place to test endurance, assert dominance, and claim land. They entered a landscape already cared for and named, yet imagined it as “empty,” mapping over Indigenous authority with titles, licences, and fences. This collision of two forms of masculinity — custodial and colonial — would define Victoria’s early decades.

Convicts, Sailors, and Early Frontiersmen

The first European men to live in Victoria were sealers, whalers, and convicts — rough, transient figures who operated along the Bass Strait and south-west coast long before official colonisation. Their crews, often drawn from Van Diemen’s Land, combined maritime labour with violence and exploitation. Many raided Indigenous camps or abducted women, triggering cycles of retaliation (Critchett, 1990; Ryan, 2012).

One of the earliest and most complex encounters came through William Buckley, an escaped convict from Sorrento in 1803 who lived for over thirty years with the Wadawurrung. Buckley’s reintegration into colonial life after 1835 made him an intermediary — a translator between settlers and Traditional Owners. Yet even his influence could not prevent dispossession and violence once pastoral expansion began (Boyce, 2011).

Shepherds, Squatters, and the Land Rush

By the late 1830s, the Port Phillip frontier was dominated by squatters — ambitious pastoralists who claimed vast tracts of Indigenous Country without consent or treaty. They brought with them convicts, Highland Scots, and Irish labourers as shepherds and stockmen, whose low pay and isolation placed them on the front lines of the frontier.

Conflict soon followed. Indigenous men resisted the destruction of murnong (yam-daisy) fields and sacred waterholes by spearing livestock or burning pastures, while squatters responded with guns. The issuing of squatting licences in 1836 legalised seizure of Country, granting settlers both moral justification and military support for reprisals (Reynolds, 1987; Broome, 2005).

Violence spread across Wadawurrung Country — along the Barwon and Moorabool Rivers, the You Yangs, and into the Western District. Recorded in diaries but rarely prosecuted in court, these conflicts decimated Indigenous populations while enriching the pastoral elite (Clark, 1995; Critchett, 1990).

Law, Policing, and Frontier Control

Colonial authority on the frontier was embodied by men such as Captain Foster Fyans, the police magistrate of Geelong. A former British soldier and penal administrator, Fyans imposed order through strict discipline and paramilitary policing. He coordinated armed patrols, organised stock protection, and punished those who challenged the new colonial order (Cannon, 1991).

In 1837, the Native Police Corps was formed under the command of Henry Dana. Indigenous men from regions outside their own Country were recruited as troopers to track, arrest, and at times fight other Aboriginal people. While service in the Corps offered wages and prestige, it also created moral conflict and division, forcing Indigenous men to enforce colonial law against kin (Connor, 2002; Clark & Heydon, 1998).

The Corps, alongside the mounted police, blurred the boundary between law enforcement and warfare. Patrols described as “dispersals” often involved massacres or forced relocations (Clark, 1995). This system entrenched colonial masculinity as an arm of conquest — law wielded through violence.

Indigenous Resistance and Adaptation

Despite overwhelming odds, Indigenous men of the Kulin Nations defended their lands and people through both armed and diplomatic means. Derrimut of the Boonwurrung sought peace, warning settlers of attacks and appealing to officials for justice, though his efforts were dismissed. Others, including Wadawurrung and Wurundjeri warriors, conducted guerrilla-style campaigns — burning grasslands, raiding homesteads, and reclaiming stock in acts of retribution and survival (Broome, 2005; Clark, 1998).

Further west, the Gunditjmara and Jardwadjali men fought the long Eumeralla Wars through the 1840s, one of the most sustained conflicts in Australian colonial history (Critchett, 1990). Their resilience mirrored that of later leaders such as Simon Wonga and William Barak, who in the 1850s turned to political organisation, petitioning for land at Coranderrk. The evolution from resistance to diplomacy revealed a shift from immediate defence to long-term advocacy — a continuation of Indigenous law through new forms.

The Legal Silence of the Frontier

The colonial legal system excluded Indigenous people from justice. Court procedure required witnesses to swear a Christian oath on the Bible — a rule that effectively silenced non-Christian testimony. Crimes against Indigenous people, including massacres, assaults, and theft of land, were almost never prosecuted. Trials relating to events at the Convincing Ground, Mount Cottrell, and Barwon River were dismissed for lack of “admissible evidence” (Reynolds, 1987; Clark, 1995).

The law thus became an extension of frontier masculinity — protecting property and settlers while erasing Indigenous voice. Violence was not only physical but institutional, embedding inequality in the fabric of justice.

Missionaries, Protectors, and Moral Authority

Some men on the frontier — George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines, and William Thomas, his assistant — believed in humanitarian reform. They documented Indigenous life and language, negotiated truces, and occasionally intervened to prevent violence. Yet their work also advanced systems of surveillance and control. By concentrating survivors into reserves and missions, the Protectorate undermined traditional mobility and kinship (Clark, 1998; Barwick, 1998).

While missionaries preached peace, their efforts to “civilise” Indigenous people through Christianity and labour reflected the paternalism of the age. Their moral authority softened the image of empire while entrenching new forms of dependency.

Work, Industry, and the Building of a Colony

Beyond conflict, the frontier’s working men built the foundations of the new colony. Carpenters, carters, sailors, and labourers transformed Melbourne, Geelong, and Ballarat from tented outposts into trading ports. Many were former convicts or recent immigrants seeking fortune. Some employed Indigenous men as guides, translators, or farmhands, while others enforced exclusion from their former homelands. The wool industry, shipyards, and river wharves became symbols of progress for settlers and reminders of loss for Traditional Owners (Serle, 1971; Cannon, 1991).

Remembering and Reclaiming Frontier Histories

For much of Victoria’s history, statues and schoolbooks honoured explorers and governors, while Indigenous men were depicted as footnotes or foes. Recent truth-telling initiatives have begun to redress this imbalance. The memorial for Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, two Palawa men executed in Melbourne in 1842, acknowledges the resistance and humanity of Indigenous men who fought against injustice. Their story, along with those of countless unnamed Wadawurrung and Wurundjeri defenders, reframes the frontier as a contested ground, not a one-sided conquest (Boyce, 2011; Broome, 2005).

Conclusion

The men of early Port Phillip — Indigenous and European, free and convict — shaped a complex frontier defined by ambition, conflict, and endurance. Their interactions reveal a collision of worldviews: one guided by reciprocity and care for Country, the other by hierarchy and possession. While colonial masculinity built ports, roads, and towns, it also institutionalised violence and inequality. Against this, Indigenous men upheld law, family, and Country through resistance, adaptation, and leadership. Their legacy endures through contemporary truth-telling and treaty, which seek not to erase this history but to understand and reconcile with it — honouring the men who built, and the men who defended, the first foundations of Victoria.

References

Barwick, D. (1998). Rebellion at Coranderrk. Canberra: Aboriginal History Inc.
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.
Cannon, M. (1991). Old Melbourne Town: Before the Gold Rush. Main Ridge: Loch Haven Books.
Clark, I. D. (1995). Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria 1803–1859. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Clark, I. D. (1998). The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate. Melbourne: Heritage Matters.
Clark, I. D., & Heydon, T. (1998). The Confluence of the Native Police and the Gold Rushes, 1837–1853. Ballarat: Ballarat Heritage Services.
Connor, J. (2002). The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838. Sydney: UNSW 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.
Ryan, L. (2012). Tasmanian Aborigines: A History Since 1803. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Serle, G. (1971). The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851–1861. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Written, Researched and Directed by James Vegter (22 October 2025)

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