THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT GOVERNMENT 159 



The superfine Press in Sydney appeared to look with some 

 contempt on the new settlement, for the Sydney Gazette, in De- 

 cember, 1836, has this sneering reference to its progress : "A 

 house has been erected for the Commandant. Three public-house 

 licenses have been granted ; one is kept in a log hut (Mr. Fawk- 

 ner's), the others are of turf. There is only one shoemaker in the 

 settlement, but no tailor, carpenter or wheelwright, who are much 

 wanted. There are neither butcher nor baker, and the settlers 

 luxuriate upon salt beef and damper, which they wash down with 

 copious libations of rum and water, which are very plentiful there. 

 . . . The greater part of the settlers who have emigrated thither 

 are said to be a drunken, worthless set, and a complete pest to the 

 place." The explanation of this unwarranted and splenetic attack 

 is that Tasmania supplied the settlers and Sydney the governing 

 officials. As a set-off the Launoeston paper, the Cornwall Chronicle, 

 about the same time indulged in an attack on Captain Lonsdale 

 for his meddlesome interference, and recommended the adventurers 

 to abandon their plans of settling in Port Phillip, which was not the 

 El Dorado it had been pictured, and to return to the cultivation of 

 Tasmania, where they were assured that if the land was properly 

 cleared and cultivated, it would be found far more productive than 

 that on which they had squatted without title or license. 



But these depreciatory utterances fell in stony places and took 

 no root. The men who had set themselves to found a colony had 

 shown a bold front to hardships, and to what they considered 

 arbitrary dealing of the Government, and they were not to be 

 cajoled into the abandonment of their enterprise ; so the summer 

 of 1836 was passed in waiting and in anxious suspense. Sheep 

 and cattle continued to arrive, and were landed about the mouth 

 of the Yarra and at Point Henry, on Corio Bay, to find their way 

 experimentally over the occupied country to the grassy plains that 

 stretched away to the north and west, leaving the question of tenure 

 for future settlement. The Governor was expected to visit the 

 settlement in April, and in January, 1837, Mr. J. T. Gellibrand, 

 the moving spirit of the Port Phillip Association, who had already 

 twice visited Port Phillip, determined to go over again to renew 

 with Sir Eichard Bourke on the spot the conference he had held 



