by Bill Gammage
Perth, 12 August 1829
In December 1696 Willem Vlamingh’s ships stood off the Perth coast, and he saw a sight soon familiar to sailors. Smoke from many fires came like thick fog from the land. Vlamingh realised that people had lit them, and decided to catch someone to take home. A party walked inland; others rowed up a river they named the Swan, for as at Sydney and Hobart the birds were common. A ford stopped the boats at the Causeway. The water was ‘a little brackish’, but fresh in nearby wells. Today it is salt: the Avon and the Helena upstream flow less, and a rocky bar at the Swan mouth was removed in 1895–7, letting in the sea. The river had many fish and birds, the land was pleasant, ‘open land mixed with forest’, with ‘millions of flies’.103 Vlamingh caught no-one.
James Stirling established Fremantle on 1 June 1829, and Perth on 12 August, where the Causeway ford stopped him. He argued:
a Town at the mouth of the Estuary would be requisite for landing goods and as a Port Town, while another sufficiently high on the River to afford easy communication between the Agriculturalists on the Upper Swan and the Commercial Interest at the Port would tend much to the speedy occupation of that useful District. In selecting a site for this purpose, the present position of Perth seemed to be so decidedly preferable in building materials, streams of water and facility of communication, that I was induced on these grounds to establish the Town there.104
His decision followed a quick trip upriver on 10–14 March 1827.105 At Point Heathcote he found good soil and ‘Many Fresh springs of water’, and later put a garden there.106 His first camp was
a landing-place on the left shore, and in a few Minutes a blazing fire, with roasting Swans before it, shed chearfulness on our resting place; our dominion here however was not undisputed for [of] all places I have ever visited I think it contained the greatest number of Musquitoes. This phenomenon was easily accounted for when daylight shewed us that we had taken up our Quarters on a narrow ridge between the River and a Swamp.107
Probably this was Perth. Understandably they moved early, to ‘a level Country 15 or 20 feet above the water, covered with bronze grass and studded by a few green trees . . . Swans and Ducks, which at Frazer’s Point were numerous, now became still more so, and of the first kind we killed with ease as many as we wanted. Fish we saw in abundance.’108 Upriver, beautiful grass–forest templates seemed suited to agriculture:
On the Flats the Blue Gum Tree flourishes, but in a ratio of not more than 10 to an Acre, and they are generally unaccompanied by any other Tree or Shrub except a long leaved and beautiful Species of Acacia . . . [an] open forest-like character . . . the lowlands resemble fields of grain, for the high grass had been turned yellow by the Sun.109
Grass–forest belts continued to Ellen Brook (picture 35), as far as Stirling’s men could row. Charles Fraser, Stirling’s botanist, wrote that the country varied
alternately, on each bank, from hilly promontories of the finest red loam and covered with stupendous Angoferas, to extensive flats of the finest description, studded with magnificent Blue and Water Gums and occasional stripes of Acacias . . . Plains were seen to extend to the base of the Mountains, interspersed with stripes of good forest Land.110
Fraser was supporting Stirling’s colonial venture, so their superlatives may exaggerate, but their account of the Swan’s alternating grass-forest ‘stripes’ is accurate enough. When James Turner went upriver to Perth in 1830, he was ‘quite astonished at the splendid scenery on both sides of the river, although the soil is nothing but white sand. The foliage of the trees was exquisite and together with the many beautiful turnings in the river one might fancy themselves in fairyland.’111 In 1838 Backhouse was more prosaic, although his comments may reflect the rapid impact of stock on sandy soil. The land below Perth was
marked on maps ‘gently undulating grassy country, thinly timbered’, it is difficult to find grass upon many parts of it, but there is an abundance of rigid herbage, chiefly of a stemless Xanthorrhoea, called here the Ground Blackboy, and a profusion of rigid shrubs, unfit for pasturage . . . as in other instances, the soil with the gayest productions, is the worst in quality.112
Above Perth the land ‘improved’. The
scenery was frequently of a beautiful description, and the banks, in many places, were composed of a rich alluvial soil, covered with excellent grass. Unfortunately, the good soil was rarely found to extend more than half a mile from the river, and often not more than fifty or a hundred yards . . . In some parts, the country was thickly clothed with forest; in others it had the appearance of a fine park, in which scarcely a tree was to be seen that one would think it necessary to destroy . . . not more than two trees to the acre . . . the country being more commonly what is denominated ‘open forest’, with spots where the trees are very close together.113
This was also true of the Canning,114 and such was the skill of its managers that as late as 1841 the ‘whole country of the middle and upper Swan resembles a vast English park’.115
‘Perth, the intended capital, stands on a rising spot covered . . . with trees . . . The river, at this part, is about half a mile wide, or rather more, but is so shallow that it may sometimes be forded.’116 The ‘rising spot’ ran down from Mt Eliza along Hay Street. Here Stirling put his camp beside a spring feeding a small creek. North lay swamps, including at Perth Station and Hyde Park. South to the river was marshy, west the timbered ridge carried springs and a camp, then rose to tree-studded land burnt for grass. Now King’s Park, it was a kangaroo trap. As at Risdon, fresh pick lured mobs into a cul-de-sac, where hunters drove them down a steep drop beside the river along Mounts Bay Road to ambushers below. The Perth survivors Daisy Bates knew in 1907 were kangaroo totem people.117 Traders as well as pastoralists, they mined high-quality ochre and sent it thousands of miles over tough country into South Australia and the Northern Territory. One pit was at Success Hill, near a spring, swamps and a ceremonial ground.118
Perth illustrates the value of swamps in 1788. Dozens surrounded the lower Swan, some big, some small, with tubers, roots, crayfish, mussels, birds, eggs, tortoises, snakes and goannas. Fish and eel traps threaded the water, and templates improved the land. On better alluvial soils huts stood by yam grounds,119 and eucalypts or acacias split Kangaroo and similar grasses into plains. In late summer the grass stood tall, dense and ‘bronze’, looking to newcomers like a crop.120 Yet swamps and dry, sandy soil are unlikely places for farmers. People looking inland might not have occupied them, but these settlers looked to the sea, obliging them to strike an awkward balance between a port and fresh water. This was also so of the next capital newcomers founded.121
Melbourne, 20 August 1835
At Queens Bridge, 8 kilometres up the Yarra, an odd feature lay in 1788: a row of basalt stones along the top of shallow falls, where people crossed the river. Newcomers assumed they were natural, and perhaps they were. Above them the river was fresh except in king tides; below was brackish. The river was deep whereas nearby creeks were at best chains of ponds, and the falls fell into a broad basin where small ships could turn. The place was literally pivotal.
It was not a port. The Yarra emptied into Port Phillip, which in 1802 Flinders thought might suit to settle. ‘The country around Port Phillip has a pleasing, and in many parts a fertile appearance’, he wrote, ‘It is in great measure a grassy country, and capable of supporting much cattle, though better calculated for sheep.’122 Peter Good saw why: the west side ‘was an extensive plane which is chiefly rich Meadow land . . . which if it were not frequently cleared by burning would soon become impenetrable as was the case which had escaped the last conflagration . . . a few months before’.123 This warned that perhaps the land was not so ‘fertile’, but in October 1803 David Collins arrived to found a settlement, and James Tuckey enthused,
The face of the country is the most beautifully picturesque that can be imagined, swelling into gentle elevations of the brightest verdure, and dotted with trees as if planted by the hand of tas
te, while the ground is covered with a profusion of flowers of every colour; in short on entering the port, we looked on it as a perfect paradise and flattered ourselves into the most illusive dreams of fruitfulness and plenty.124
‘The timber within two miles of the beach’, he added, ‘is generally small. In the more sandy spots, they are close, and, where the best Soil is found, they are very thinly scattered.’125 William Crook thought the Port
beautifully diversified with hills and dales. It is nearly covered with . . . trees . . . with grass between, and no underwood scarcely, so that some parts look like a park, others orchards, &c.; but the soil is universally light and sandy . . . One can scarcely walk 10 yards without meeting traces of the natives . . . Perhaps a tenth part of the trees are burnt.126
Later arrivals described ‘a beautiful carpet, covered with grasses, herbs and flowers of various sorts—the scenery was that of an extensive park’. The head of the bay was ‘enchantingly beautiful—extensive rich plains all around with gently sloping hills in the distance, all thinly wooded and having the appearance of an immense park. The grasses, flowers and herbs that cover the plains are of every variety that can be imagined.’127 The praise paid unknowing tribute to the port’s managers, for it described land carefully burnt. But there was little fresh water, and soon fires skirted the bay. On 30 January 1804 Collins left to settle Tasmania.
From Tasmania in June 1835 the next settlers came. They admired the port, but beauty would not catch them again. They wanted water and grass. At the head of the bay they went up a salt river guarded by mangroves, samphire flats and tall tea-tree banks. Three kilometres up it branched, north to the Saltwater (Maribyrnong), east to the Freshwater (Yarra). They took the Yarra, clogged with debris. Scrub lined both banks except where ‘Contiguous to the river, there are some beautiful pieces of land, clear of trees’, and ‘vistas of grassy land . . . here and there’.128 The land further back had few trees and good grass, mostly Kangaroo Grass, the most ‘beautiful sheep pasturage I ever saw in my life . . .’, Batman claimed.129 James Flemming concluded, ‘In several places there are small tracts of good land, but they are without wood or water . . . The country in general is excellent pasture and thin of timber . . . newly burnt.’130 The land south was more swampy, but ‘varied . . . by open clear land and . . . clumps of trees’.131 Batman rowed on to the falls and noted the city site, then moved off to find grass.
On 20 August 1835 more settlers came from Tasmania, finding
a continuation of good land with plenty of good grass and herbage, but thinly timbered with she-oak and honeysuckle; but we found no fresh water till we came to the east branch of the river at the head of the bay, where we found a good stream of fresh water, and beautiful hills and plains of good soil and excellent grass. Here we made up our minds to settle.132
In 1853 John Fawkner claimed that his men
reached with great joy the basin at Melbourne, and were delighted, in fact, half wild with exultation, at the beauty of the country. The velvet-like grass carpet, decked with flowers of the most lively hues, most liberally spread over the land, the fresh water, the fine lowlands, and lovely knolls around the lagoons on the flat or swamps, the flocks, almost innumerable, of teal, ducks, geese, and swans, and minor fowls, filled them with joy. They all with one voice agreed that they had arrived at the site of the new Settlement.133
South, hills and rises interrupted swampy and often scrubby flats, ‘an immense wilderness’,134 but carefully arranged. Tea-tree belts edged grass, grass and scrub alternated along swamps, tree clumps stood in open land, clearings broke up scrub. Near the falls clans met in a large clearing hidden in tea-tree to talk, dance and, some newcomers said, fight.135 West were ‘grassy hills forest land’. South was swamp, then ‘Sandy forest land the timber indifferent’, swamp at Albert Park, ‘Barren heath’ to the coast and ‘Open forest land’ at St Kilda. Near Albert Park rose ‘a strikingly green grassy hill’ where kangaroos grazed—Emerald Hill, burnt every 2–3 years.136 Towards Arthur’s Seat, country on fire in January 1804,137 grass dominated, ‘fertile and beautiful . . . one extensive surface of green . . . very lightly wooded with mimosa, shea oak, gum and lightwood’, which ‘teems with life. The large Kangaroo . . . may be seen in flocks of 3 or 400 . . . The Koala, petaurus or flying opossum, Bandicoot, Wombat, Native Cat, Dasyurus Opossums, both kinds, Phalangers are very numerous.’138 The valleys around Arthur’s Seat, especially on the Melbourne side, ‘had a very pleasant appearance, in some places being thickly clothd with wood, in others nearly bare of wood but cov-erd with a bright green verdure & in others bare spots of a brownish colour’ marking recently burnt ground.139 The district had ‘a very pleasing appearance, having much resemblance to a Gentlemans Park in England, being covered with a fine Green grass and Numerous Trees and Bushes in pleasing irregularity, and so far apart as to admit the whole surface to be covered with Grass . . . much of the herbage had been burnt a few months ago’.140
The land north of Yarra falls appealed most to newcomers. It was ‘park-like’, ‘beautifully situated’, ‘open, grassy forest, rising into low hills’.141 Tea-tree patches stood on the river below Spencer and King streets and round a small swamp below Russell and Exhibition streets. Wallaby and other grasses, herbs and murnong swathed the riverbank, and grass and scattered trees cloaked hill and valley over the city’s southwest third from Swanston Street to Flagstaff Hill, which ‘being covered with a beautiful grassy surface . . . had the appearance of a large lawn’.142 Northwest was Blue Lake (North Melbourne Swamp),
a real lake, intensely blue, nearly oval, and full of the clearest salt water; but this, by no means deep. Fringed gaily all round by . . . pigs-face in full bloom, it seemed in the broad sunshine as though girdled about with a belt of magenta fire. The ground gradually sloping down towards the lake was also empurpled, but patchily, in the same manner, though perhaps not quite so brilliantly, while the whole air was heavy with the mingled odours of the golden myrnong flowers and purple-fringed lilies.143
In the city’s east a dance ground lay in or near dense forest east of Swanston Street and south of Bourke Street.144 Just west a small creek, often dry, ran down Elizabeth Street, ‘a jungly chasm—an irregular broken-up ravine, through which the winter flood-waters thundered’. It split two hills, ‘rising and picturesque eminences . . . on the verge of a beautiful park’,145 one cresting east at Spring Street, the other west at William Street, each burnt differently. ‘The Eastern Hill was a gum and wattle tree forest, and the Western Hill was so clothed with sheoaks as to give it the appearance of a primeval park.’146 Both were ‘lightly wooded’, the west topped with mushrooms,147 the east with grass between the Museum and Parliament House. It may have been a family camp. In most directions it commanded ground burnt often, as in March 1836, when the area ‘looked very pretty. The grass had been all burnt off by bush-fires and the autumn rains had caused it to spring up again.’148 At Fitzroy and Treasury Gardens to the east, open forest gave way to ‘dense gum forest’, mostly Manna Gum, where in the 1840s boys would ‘gather and devour the manna fallen from the milk-white boughs . . . it was perfectly delicious’.149 Fire had promoted grass and reeds but suppressed tea-tree, secluded clearings in dense timber, burnt sharp tree–grass edges across hill and valley, and put grass on one hill, sheoak on another, and eucalypts and grass on a third. It made Melbourne abundant and beautiful, yet at most a few families patterned and seamlessly integrated its diversity.
On 4 March 1837 Governor Richard Bourke came from Sydney to inspect this ‘beautiful and convenient site’:
It does not however promise to afford water, which must be procured (at first at least) entirely from the River. A good Dam will need to be constructed here to keep up the fresh water & to effect its entire separation from the Salt . . . Timber is to be had but at a distance of about 8 miles . . . the soil in the neighbourhood is generally good, in many spots very rich.150
Here was a place for a village, but not a port, and wit
h too little fresh water. Its beauty recommended it. The people who made it so were not there when it was taken, for it was winter, a time safe to be up in Mountain Ash country or to go north to trade for greenstone, perhaps near where Batman met them. They avoided the city area in spring, when taking eggs and young was banned. They came in summer, when yams were dug, fish and mussels got from the river, and land burnt. By then they found strangers plundering their country.
The strangers spread. ‘For some miles around Melbourne’, Thomas Winter recalled,
the country bears the same beautiful character—grassy and luxuriant, with trees scattered over it, as in the least woody parts of old forests in England . . . [most] is plain, generally without trees, nearly flat and often stony. Some of these plains are lightly timbered, and are then called forests. The hills vary much, some . . . with . . . short pasturage; others covered with rich, long herbage, and spotted with trees; while others are woody to the top.151
Backhouse wrote, ‘The country, as far as the eye can reach, has the appearance of a continued series of parks, even to the ascent of the distant hills. In many places, it is clear of trees; the grass is verdant, and pretty thick for a country which has not been subjected to the fostering hand of man.’152 Charles Griffiths thought the country
very picturesque . . . a good deal of it . . . is perfectly clear of timber; other parts are wooded about as thickly as the open parts of an English park; while in those most heavily timbered the trees are about ten to thirty yards apart, with grass growing under them, and the ground perfectly free from brushwood of any kind, though flowering shrubs are interspersed here and there.153
Swamps grew ‘fine grass, fit to mow; not a bush in it’, and ‘swarmed’ with ‘swans, geese, ducks, quail and other wild-fowl’. Snipe ‘abounded’ in Yarra backwaters. On the plains emu were so common and so curious that newcomers shot them from their tents. Other habitats supported kangaroo, wallaby, pademelon, bettong, koala, possum, pygmy possum, sugar glider, wombat, bandicoot, antechinus, dunnart, water rat, quoll, echidna, platypus, bat, quail, parrot, pelican, eel, shellfish, at least 20 fish species, herbs, yam, manna, wattle seed and gum, and more. It was a staggering variety.
