Mornington Standard (Vic. : 1889 - 1908), Saturday 12 August 1905, page 5


HISTORY OF THE Mornington Peninsula. [By L. WILDING.] (Copyright.) ATTEMPT AT COLONISATION. October 23 was the date of the historical service of thanksgiving for the prosperous voyage and safe arrival at the settlement. On November 25 the first white child born in Victoria saw the light of day in anything but favorable circumstances. This infant was baptised on : Christmas Day, receiving the name of William James Hobart Thorne. The first marriage took place on November 28, when a free woman - Hannah Harvey - was united to a convict of the name of Richard Garrett. On December 27, four prisoners, Buckley, Marmon, Pye, and Gibson managed to elude the vigilance of the authorities. Gibson returned and gave himself up in a starving condition on January 24, 1804. In the course of his desperate wanderings he had travelled a long distance, and come across a river, which from his descrip-tion was subsequently ascertained to be the Yarra. Pye and Marmon, if they escaped being murdered by the blacks, must ultimately have died of starvation. Of Buckley a very re-markable story has been left to the world, and there are few individuals in Victoria who have not heard of the "wild white man." He had been a grenadier, in which capacity he served under the Duke of York at Flanders. At the time of his escape from penal servitude he was a young fellow of 23, who had been transported, like many more for a wrongdoing, or even indis-cretion that would now only be met by trivial punishment, but which then meant banishment and slavery. Buckley's offence had been that of striking his officer. With his three comrades he planned to make an escape. When this intention was carried out the fugitives managed to run the gauntlet of several shots from the sentry on duty, and mustered a gun, some rations, and a kettle. This last article had to be relinquished at the end of the first day's march on account of its bulk, and was many years afterwards found by a settler whilst ploughing. The fugitives trudged along, and soon got past the bounds of the Mornington Peninsula. The subsequent adventures of Buckley, who was taken up by a native tribe of which he afterwards became the chief, learning their language, and forgetting his own before he came across Batman's party in 1835, and having in the meantime been mated to an aboriginal woman, are not within the province of these articles. The numerous singular incidents of his life during that period occurred on the opposite side of the bay to the Peninsula of which territory his tribe were denizens. His convict friends evidently did not possess the hardi-hood of Buckley, and apparently soon attempted to return by the way they had come. Immediately on the return of the Ocean from Sydney the work of re-moving from the settlement proceeded with great gusto. The Lady Nelson, which had been sent to help to convey the expedition, again appeared in Port Phillip. These vessels arrived in December, and the Calcutta then took her departure for Sydney. As the whole of the party and belongings could not be taken away in one trip, Collins, who had the option of choosing either Port Dalrymple, at the estuary of the Tamar, in the north of Van Diemen's Land, or the River Derwent in the south, set sail with the bulk of the party on January 27, 1804. The last of the old settlement was shipped in the Ocean several months later. Thus was abandoned a land which afterwards grew into a colony of con-siderable importance. In a letter to Lord Hobart, Collins gave the opinion that commercial people would never desire to visit the place, and Tuckey predicted that the kangaroo was likely to remain "undisputed lord of the soil" for ages. It was the fate of Collins never to return to England. After a little over six years of worry, hard work, and hardship, during which he brought the struggling colony of Van Diemen's Land to the tranquil state of Tasmania of to-day, successfully through a good many troubles, he suddenly died on March 24, 1810, at an age of 55 years. At the time he was apparently only suffering from a ???? ???, and was sitting in a chair talking to his attendant. This first of the series of Victorian governors had gained the warm regard and respect of a number of friends in many parts of the world, and had the reputation of being one of the most good intentioned and humane men who had to deal with convicts in the early days of Australia.