BY JAMES BACKHOUSE WALKER. 221 



In his narrative of Collins' expedition Lieut. Tuckey 

 says of the country he had just left: "The kangaroo 

 seems to reign undisturbed lord of the soil, a dominion 

 which, by the evacuation of Port Phillip, he is likely 

 to retain for ages." — Surely as unlucky an attempt at 

 prophecy as was ever made ! 



Could some truer prophet have lifted the veil of the 

 future for Collins, he would have shown the disappointed 

 Lieut,-Governor a picture which would have more than 

 surprised him. He would have shown him, within 

 little more than thirty years, a small party of adventurous 

 squatters leaving Van Diemen's Land to seek a new land 

 of wealth on the shores of Port Phillip. Amongst them 

 he would have noticed a man — whom he himself had 

 brought out as a boy in the Ocean, and taken to the 

 Derwent,* and who was now returning to the unpromis- 

 ing and unproductive country which the Lieut.-Governor 

 had abandoned in despair, to find in it a land of fair 

 plains and of springs of water — a land of promise — a 

 veritable Australia Felix — soon to be wealthy in flocks 

 and herds. Such a prophet would have shown him this 

 country, which he and Governor King agreed in think- 

 ing wholly unsuited for settlement, within another fifteen 

 short years invaded by tens of thousands of eatr^r 

 emigrants rushing to secure at least some small share 

 of its wonderful wealth, until in another generation it 

 had grown into a land of gardens and farms, rich in 

 corn and wine, crowded with villages and cities ; and on 

 the unpromising shores of Port Phillip there stood a 

 great city, the centre of a free and prosperous state 

 numbering more than a million souls. 



• Mr. John Pascoe Fawkner. 



