Archives
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Unwin’s Special Survey – 1841 – prized Yarra River frontages
In 1841, Frederic Wright Unwin, a Sydney solicitor, purchased 5,120 acres or eight square miles of land approximately 10 km north-east of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The land was purchased from the Crown for one pound an acre under the terms of the short-lived Special Survey regulations. Ditto, Henry Dendy and his selection for the settlement […]
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Australia Felix – Made by Aborigines
One of the great truths of the British occupation of Australia is naturally the price the Aborigines paid, but the land itself suffered too as described in A History of the Port Phillip District the 1830s and 1840s as the Squatters spread making the greatest land grab for wool and cattle runs of Major Thomas […]
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Adverse Possession – Abuse – Fraud – Rosa Rossi
Prosecutors want a former Victorian policewoman to be jailed for fraudulently taking control of strangers’ homes despite her claims that she thought she was, at times, acting lawfully (that is, she had adverse possession rights). Rosa Rossi was a sergeant with Victoria Police when in 2016 and 2017 she took control of six properties she had […]
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Victoria – Before Torrens
Before Victoria was a Colony in its own right, Port Phillip (Victoria) was a province of the Colony of New South Wales. ^ With the spread of the squatters seeking out unoccupied lands and settling new grazing runs, especially with a river frontage, this pattern was happening unchecked without official permission and not officially recognised […]
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Black Lives don’t Matter
Excerpts from The History of Brighton by Weston Bate 1841 – 1851 Page 89 An abundance of fish seems to have been the attraction for the numerous (white) families on the foreshore. The capsize of a fisherman’s boat and the loss of its crew was conjectured in 1843, when in rough weather several schools are […]
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A history of Brighton – stolen lands
The go-to official history of Brighton was researched and penned by Weston Bate in his eponymous book – A History of Brighton 1962 MUP. Brighton, 5120 acres, from North Road to South Road and, from the shores of the Bay to East Boundary Road, purchased in 1841 by an Englishman Henry Dendy from Surrey for the […]
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Kulin Nation – the first people
I grew up in Melbourne. Sadly, there was zero recognition for the first people. Growing up in Brighton I guess I took it to heart the legal fiction of terra nullius. There were scarcely any other cultures but white Anglos. Our community had erased everything leaving not a scintilla of even remnant forest or vegetation […]
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Royal Commission into wildfires take note
The Aborigines also modify the environment for the use of fire, which they could light in about 60 seconds by ingeniously contriving the friction of wood according to Curr who saw them do this. Burning the grasses encouraged edible bracken ferns and helped to regenerate the grass creating the lightly timbered plains which attracted the […]
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Who founded Melbourne?
Who founded Melbourne? Heated debate on this question has overemphasized it’s importance and there’s been confusion between the idea of establishing a pastoral settlement in the Port Phillip district and that of establishing a village or township on the site of Melbourne. A number of men had thought of settling near Port Phillip before 1835, […]
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Melbourne – Climbing on the Sheeps Back
Melbourne’s earliest beginnings can be tracked and traced back to 1803 and the survey that was undertaken by Charles Grimes (Surveyor-General NSW). But the story of Victoria and Melbourne only really begins with the expansion of the sheep industry. First, from the south, (Van Diemen’s Land) Tasmanian, Edward Henty in 1833 (Portland) and John Batman […]
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