Читать книгу The Book of the Bush - George Dunderdale - Страница 4

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The first white settler in Victoria was the escaped convict Buckley; but he did not cultivate the country, nor civilise the natives. The natives, on the contrary, uncivilised him. When white men saw him again, he had forgotten even his mother tongue, and could give them little information. For more than thirty years he had managed to live--to live like a savage; but for any good he had ever done he might as well have died with the other convicts who ran away with him. He never gave any clear account of his companions, and many people were of opinion that he kept himself alive by eating them, until he was found and fed by the blacks, who thought he was one of their dead friends, and had "jumped up a white fellow."

While Buckley was still living with the blacks about Corio Bay, in 1827, Gellibrand and Batman applied for a grant of land at Western Port, where the whalers used to strip wattle bark when whales were out of season; but they did not get it.

Englishmen have no business to live anywhere without being governed, and Colonel Arthur had no money to spend in governing a settlement at Western Port. So Australia Felix was unsettled for eight years longer.

Griffiths & Co., of Launceston, were trading with Sydney in 1833. Their cargo outward was principally wheat, the price of which varied very much; sometimes it was 2s. 6d. a bushel in Launceston, and 18s. in Sydney. The return cargo from Port Jackson was principally coal, freestone, and cedar.

Griffiths & Co. were engaged in whaling in Portland Bay. They sent there two schooners, the 'Henry' and the 'Elizabeth', in June, 1834. They erected huts on shore for the whalers. The 'Henry' was wrecked; but the whales were plentiful, and yielded more oil than the casks would hold, so the men dug clay pits on shore, and poured the oil into them. The oil from forty-five whales was put into the pits, but the clay absorbed every spoonful of it, and nothing but bones was gained from so much slaughter. Before the 'Elizabeth' left Portland Bay, the Hentys, the first permanent settlers in Victoria, arrived in the schooner 'Thistle', on November 4th, 1834.

When the whalers of the 'Elizabeth' had been paid off, and had spent their money, they were engaged to strip wattle bark at Western Port, and were taken across in the schooner, with provisions, tools, six bullocks and a dray. During that season they stripped three hundred tons of bark and chopped it ready for bagging. John Toms went over to weigh and ship the bark, and brought it back, together with the men, in the barque 'Andrew Mack'.