62 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTOKIA 



and hitherto condemned spot. It was not supposed that any good 

 thing could come out of Port Phillip, for had not Murray and 

 Grimes, Collins and Tuckey alike borne testimony to its barren 

 and waterless shores. It is true that Western Port had not fared 

 much better at the hands of its latest visitors, Bobbins and Oxley ; 

 but then it was less known and had potentialities. No one had 

 penetrated the lands to the north of French Island, and imagination 

 now dressed them in the soft outlines and verdant garments of the 

 romantic Iramoo plains. The Sydney newspapers, having prob- 

 ably little in the way of live news with which to fill their columns, 

 started a controversy on the pros and cons of the new country. 

 One of them went so far as to declare that it appeared as if the 

 site of Sydney had been pitched on probably the worst spot in the 

 whole continent; another looked to Western Port as the seat of 

 the coming metropolis ; while a third sneered at the legends of the 

 fertile plains, and bluntly expressed a doubt as to whether Messrs. 

 Hume and Hovell had ever really encountered the river they made 

 so much of. The controversy, which extended over a good part of 

 1825 and 1826, kept alive the reports of the rich tracts awaiting 

 pastoral occupation, and they attracted attention farther afield than 

 Sydney. The settlers in Tasmania, who were beginning to find 

 the area of good grazing country already inadequate to their rapidly 

 increasing flocks, turned longing eyes towards the much praised 

 Western Port, with results to be related farther on. But, mean- 

 while, the experiment of settling that spot was to be made once 

 more at Government expense, and for other reasons than those of 

 the immediate well-being of the community. An ever-present dread 

 that the French Government contemplated the appropriation of 

 some portions of the southern coast of Australia kept the Governor 

 of New South Wales in a continual simmer of anxiety. Sir Balph 

 Darling, who had just succeeded Sir Thomas Brisbane in the admin- 

 istration of affairs at Sydney, was instructed by the Colonial Office 

 to take immediate steps for forming a post of occupation at Western 

 Port, and another at King George's Sound, in order that any foreign 

 interlopers might be promptly informed that the whole of the inter- 

 vening territory was claimed by His Britannic Majesty by right of 

 possession. Accordingly on the 9th of November, 1826, H.M.S. 



