HISTORICAL KEV/KW OF VJC'/'OK/.l. 



325 



with that object in view. Before Governor King could receive a reply from the Home 

 Authorities he commissioned Surveyor-General Grimes and Lieutenant Charles Rohbins 

 to walk round the harbour discovered by Lieutenant Murray and to report upon it. 

 This was in December, 1802. In fulfillment of the duty thus imposed upon them, Mr. 

 Grimes, as the leader of the expedition, discovered the River Yarra on the 3Oth of 

 January, 1803, and ascended it as 

 far as Dight's F'alls. The course of 

 the Saltwater River was also traced 

 from its outfall back to Keilor, but 

 although Corio Bay was carefully 

 circumambulated the party hugged 

 its margin too closely to allow of 

 their discovering either the Barwon 

 or the Moorabool. Strange to say 

 the report of the Surveyor-General 

 was altogether condemnatory of the 

 country as a place of settlement. 

 The British Government, however, 

 had meanwhile arrived at a different 

 conclusion, and had issued instruc- 

 tions, eight days after the discovery 

 of the Yarra, to Lieutenant-Governor 

 Collins to proceed to Port Phillip, 

 or any part of the southern coast 

 of New South Wales or the islands 

 adjacent, and establish a settlement. 



there. The selection of that officer was unfortunate, for he appears to have come out to 

 Australia with a foregone conclusion that his mission would prove an unsuccessful one. 

 Collins sailed from England in the Calcutta, accompanied by the Ocean as a store-ship, on 

 the 24th of April, 1803, having on board two hundred and ninety-nine male convicts, 

 sixteen married women, a few settlers, and fifty men and petty officers belonging to the 

 Royal Marines. The Calcutta entered Port Phillip Heads on the iSth of October following 

 and found that the Ocean had preceded her. A landing was effected at what is now 

 Sorrento, and Lieutenant -Tuckey, with two assistants, was dispatched in the Calcutta s 

 launch to survey the harbour, which occupied the party nine days. " The disadvantages of 

 Port Phillip," and the unsuitability of the " bay itself, when viewed in a commercial light," 

 for the purposes of a colonial establishment, were strongly dwelt upon by Collins in his 

 despatches to the Admiralty, and he ventured to predict that the harbour would never 

 be " resorted to by speculative men." Influenced by his representations Lord Hobart 

 sent him instructions to break up the settlement and proceed to the River Denvent, in 

 Van Diemen's Land. These were cheerfully obeyed, and on the 2/th of January, 1804, 

 Collins quitted Port Philip in the Ocean. During the fifteen weeks which the expedi- 

 tion had spent on shore there had been one birth, one marriage, and twenty-one deaths. 

 The first white child born in Victoria saw the light on the 25th of November, 1803, 



THOMAS HENTY. 



