Convicts or Pirates?

The first half of 1851 was an unsettled time in the Port Phillip District. As the date for separation from New South Wales approached the newspapers carried stories about gold discoveries as well as many reports of highway robberies, forgeries, burglaries, and other...

Old Colonist Festivities

A meeting was held in Melbourne on 3 August 1853 to consider what was believed to be a very general feeling being manifested for a re-union of the Colonists of the “olden time.” At this preliminary meeting chaired by the Town Clerk, William Kerr, it was...

Graham Berry

M.L.A. for Geelong, Premier of Victoria Peter Mansfield outlines the Career of Sir Graham Berry Born in Twickenham, near London in 1822, Graham Berry became an apprentice draper after completing his primary school education. He married Harriet Blencowe around 1848 in...

Exiles – a Different Class of Victorian

To the residents of the Port Phillip District in 1844 it was a matter of pride that the area was convict free and whilst they turned a blind eye to the 900 convicts who were already assigned to government public works or who worked as servants, they certainly...

Governor Bourke & the Founding of the Port Phillip District

When Dr. Maxwell Waugh was lecturing at Monash University, he discovered that Richard Bourke, the 8th Governor of New South Wales, was passionate about education and was the catalyst behind the introduction in 1848 of a free, secular and compulsory system of State...

The Pentonvillians

Pentonville, Millbank and Parkhurst were the prisons from which the exiles came. Their arrival met with a mixed reception, but this article from the Port Phillip Patriot of 21 November 1844 left its readers in no doubt as to where it stood on the matter:...