CHAPTEE III. 



INTERMEDIARY EXPLORATION HUME AND HOVELL'S OVER- 

 LAND JOURNEY GOVERNMENT SETTLEMENT AT WESTERN 

 PORT. 



THOUGH some thirty years elapsed before the waters of Port Phillip 

 were again disturbed by any vessel more pretentious than a pos- 

 sible stray sealing cutter, the Government of New South Wales 

 did not by the withdrawal of the settlement abandon the idea of 

 establishing a post there. It was probably nearly a year after 

 Collins had left before Governor King became aware that his 

 directions for leaving a small official staff on the spot had been 

 ignored. Even while the Ocean was embarking Lieutenant 

 Sladden's party, King was writing to Lord Hobart that he pur- 

 posed sending a trusty person to fix a post either at Port Phillip or 

 Western Port, as might be deemed most expedient. The selection 

 fell upon Lieutenant Bobbins, E.N., who had accompanied Grimes 

 in his survey of the bay, and towards the end of 1804 he was de- 

 spatched in the armed Government cutter Integrity, accompanied 

 by Lieutenant Oxley, E.N., to report upon the most suitable place 

 for a post of occupancy, without regard to its fitness for agricultural 

 settlement. They devoted their time exclusively to an examina- 

 tion of Western Port, and they jointly condemned it. Bobbins 

 expressed his opinion that it possessed no advantages to render it 

 suitable for settlement ; that it was badly watered, while most of 

 the land was low and swampy, adding : "In comparing -it with 

 Port Phillip, which I was at the examination of in 1803, in con- 

 junction with Mr. Grimes, I have not seen any part of the Western 

 Port, in my opinion, so eligible for a settlement as the freshwater 

 river at the head of that port ". Oxley is even more emphatic than 

 his colleague, and declares that if Port Phillip was bad, this place 



47 



