176 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



right of occupation, there had sprung up a small collection of 

 settlers tenements on the banks of the Barwon, in what is now 

 called South Geelong, fully a year before the Government recog- 

 nised it ; and by the end of 1837 there were something like thirty 

 stations formed on the Barwon, the Leigh, the Moorabool, and on 

 the Bellarine Peninsula. 



Indeed, as early as the 8th of June, 1837, a memorial, signed by 

 no less than forty-six squatters in the Geelong district, was addressed 

 to Sir Eichard Bourke, urging the appointment of a resident police 

 magistrate, and a small body of mounted police for the maintenance 

 of order and the protection of the memorialists against what they 

 considered the growing aggressiveness and hostility of the natives. 

 Unlike the modern disciples of State Socialism, these sturdy pioneers, 

 in preferring their request, manfully offered to defray the entire 

 cost in any measure the Government might propose. 



The signatures to this document are nearly all those of well- 

 known pioneers, most of whom rose with the country's progress 

 to great affluence, though not any of them played a leading part in 

 its political development. The Manifolds, the Roadknights, the 

 Murrays, Thos. Austin, Charles Swanston, Von Steiglitz, J. A. Cowie, 

 Joseph Sutherland, and a dozen other names that were as household 

 words in the western district in the " forties," left no mark on the 

 political history of the colony that had proved so generous to them. 



The Sydney Government were not long in dealing with a re- 

 quisition so influentially signed, and Captain Foster Fyans, formerly 

 of the 4th Regiment, was appointed Police Magistrate for the 

 district, and despatched from Sydney in September, accompanied 

 by a clerk and three constables. The raising of a contingent of 

 mounted police, if still deemed advisable, was relegated to the 

 settlers of the district under the supervision of the new magistrate. 

 Captain Fyans was prompt in recognising the suitability of Corio 

 Bay for a place of permanent settlement, and, immediately on his 

 installation, began to urge upon the Government the advisability of 

 having a site for a town surveyed forthwith. The position he oc- 

 cupied in point of salary and authority was on a par with that of 

 Captain Lonsdale, and in one of the latest despatches addressed by 

 Sir Richard Bourke to the Colonial Secretary, the British Cabinet 



