340 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 





years, when a more suitable residence was provided for him, Jolimont was tenanted by 

 the Protestant Bishop of Melbourne. The pleasure-grounds surrounding the house have 

 been since subdivided, and are now covered by a populous suburb. 



Captain Lonsdale was appointed secretary to Mr. Latrobe, and also sub-treasurer at 

 Melbourne, and it was considered necessary for the more effectual administration of 

 justice to station a resident judge at Port Phillip. Mr. Justice Wills was selected for 

 that purpose, and the choice proved to be an unfortunate one, for he was afterwards 

 removed on account of infirmities of temper, exhibited on the bench. During the month 

 of May, 1839, the pioneer settler, John Batman, was gathered to his fathers. A simple 

 obelisk of dressed bluestone was erected to his memory in the year 1881. It stands in 

 the old Melbourne Cemetery a place of burial which is now no longer used. 



By the end of the year 1840 Governor Gipps was enabled to report to the Colonial 

 Office that villages had been laid out along the road from Sydney to Melbourne, that 

 police stations had been formed, and that the route between the two places was as safe and 

 as easily traversed as any other in New South Wales. The large and fertile province of 

 Gippsland was discovered and partially explored by Angus McMillan, who started on the 

 nth of January, 1840, from a station near the Snowy Mountains, accompanied by a stock- 

 rider and a native, and penetrated to within sixty miles of Wilson's Promontory. On 

 his return he met Count Strzlecki, who was setting out on a similar expedition. That 



gentleman ascended the Murray to its sources in 

 the Australian Alps, discovered and named Mount 

 Kosciusko, travelled thence in a south-westerly 

 direction to Mount Tambo and the Omeo District ; 

 crossed the Great Dividing Range, and heading for 

 Western Port passed over and named eight large 

 rivers ; was compelled to abandon his .horses, which 

 were exhausted ; and, after undergoing the severest 

 hardships and privations, succeeded in opening up a 

 magnificent country, covering an area of five thou- 

 sand six hundred square miles, with two thousand 

 square miles of coast range and two hundred and 

 fifty miles of sea-board, rich in natural resources, 

 remarkable for its picturesqueness and fertility, and 

 capable of supporting a population of several mil- 

 lions. It only remains to acid by way of com- 

 pleting the record of Victorian exploration that 

 in 1854 Dr. Baron Ferdinand von Mueller sup- 

 plemented the important discoveries in the moun- 

 tainous country to the northward of the Great 

 Dividing Range by the ascent of Mount Wel- 

 lington, by exploring the sources of the Mitta Mitta River, and by scaling the two highest 

 peaks of the Bogong Range, which he named Mounts Hotham and Latrobe respectively. 

 By an Act of the Imperial Parliament passed in 1842 the inhabitants of Port Phillip 

 were empowered to send six representatives to the Legislative Council of New South 



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BATMAN'S MOM .MKXT. 



