THE POET PHILLIP ASSOCIATION 199 



mation that " after a protracted illness Mr. Batman died last 

 night ". It would appear as if the Government only considered 

 that another pertinacious claimant was happily disposed of, for Sir 

 George Gipps simply advises the Home Office that, " as an in- 

 dulgence, he had consented to allow the materials of the houses and 

 everything else that is movable to be taken away for the benefit of 

 Mr. Batman's family ". 



The wail of the dispossessed widow and her eight fatherless 

 children went up a few years later in the form of a petition to Her 

 Majesty Queen Victoria, appealing for a plot of land somewhere else 

 on the broad acres of the colony, but it probably never penetrated 

 beyond the Downing Street repository for such prayers. At any 

 rate, it was fruitless, and no compensation of any kind beyond what 

 may have been realised by the old building materials was ever 

 vouchsafed to the pioneer's family. 



Notwithstanding the urgency of the Government to get the 

 trespasser cleared off, no attempt was made to sell the land on 

 which the house stood. For ten years or more it remained un- 

 utilised, until, in the expansion following on the gold discoveries, the 

 frontage to the river became gradually covered with wharves ; the 

 extension of Flinders Street westward passed through the garden ; 

 the fruit-trees gave place to a depot on which the coal supply of the 

 city was stored ; and in 1870 the entire hill which perpetuated the 

 name of the discoverer, and was for long the most noticeable land- 

 mark of the settlement, was levelled for the extension of the railway 

 yards. With the right of self-government the property had passed 

 under the control of the Parliament of Victoria, and a community 

 enjoying a revenue of 8,000,000 a year would certainly not have 

 grudged having to pay the actual outlay which had been expended 

 on his homestead by so enterprising a colonist as John Batman. 



