316 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



dazzle, and he had learned bitter lessons. At first the progress was 

 very slow, for by the 31st of December, 1850, the population was 

 only returned at 342. But the site had many natural advantages, 

 and when it became better known its attractions gathered a popu- 

 lation considerably in excess of Portland and Belfast combined. 



The only other coastal town at this time was Port Albert, in 

 Gipps Land, a little to the east of Wilson's Promontory. Here, 

 even in these early days, some 200 persons were employed in work- 

 ing a cattle trade with Van Diemen's Land. But it has never 

 shown much sign of prosperity, the immediately adjacent country 

 being poor and scrubby, while the greater facilities offering else- 

 where for the shipment of stock left it stranded and somewhat 

 desolate, until in quite recent years it was wakened to activity by 

 the establishment of railway communication with the Metropolis. 



In the interior there were rudimentary groups of rough build- 

 ings at Kilmore, on Butledge's Special Survey ; at Kyneton, on 

 the Campaspe, and at one or two of the river crossings on Major 

 Mitchell's track, as the main road to Sydney was then called. 

 None of these places could be called centres of population, being 

 merely a few stores, grouped round a police-station, for the supply 

 of the surrounding squatters, and the inevitable shanties for provid- 

 ing liquid refreshments to their generally hard-drinking servants. 

 The country may be said to have been at this time a vast sheep- 

 walk, worked for all it was worth by men who realised the good 

 thing they had got. When counting up their large annual profits, 

 they doubtless felt some disquiet occasionally in the expectation 

 that a growing democracy would soon be clamouring for a rental 

 more commensurate with the privileges enjoyed. 



The so-called "discovery" of Gipps Land pertains to this 

 period. Since the days when the adventurous young Surgeon Bass 

 had beached his boat upon its inhospitable shores, near Cape 

 Everard, no white man was known to have penetrated its interior. 

 Landings had been effected about Corner Inlet by the half-savage 

 sealers who occasionally infested the coast, and sometimes carried 

 off the native women in their luggers, but the long 200 miles of 

 coast line offered neither attraction nor facility for exploration. On 

 the landward side it had barriers that for long seemed to be insur- 



