The boy from Liverpool and a city forged from gold
In June 1835, faced with a shortage of good grazing land in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), sheep farmer John Batman sailed across the Bass Strait to the mainland, literally seeking pastures new. He entered Port Phillip bay on the south coast of the yet to be fully explored mainland and fetched up on the land of the Kulin nations. “This will be the place for a village,” declared Batman and negotiated with the local Wurundjeri elders for 2,400 km² of land.
Batman sailed back to Tasmania to assemble everything needed to establish a ‘village’. On his return in September, he found fellow pioneer John Pascoe Fawkner had had the same idea and already set up camp with a party of settlers. There were words.
Eventually, the two men agreed there was enough room for both and they and their parties settled into a generally workable arrangement, despite ongoing disputes between Batman and Fawkner.
The following year Governor Bourke was authorised by the Crown to form an official settlement to be known as the Port Phillip District of New South Wales. The Commissioner reported that it comprised 13 buildings – three weatherboard, two slate and eight turf huts. “The whole of the European population,” he wrote, “consists of 142 males and 35 females.”
The reputation of the new settlement grew and by 1851, 23,000 people lived in what had been renamed Melbourne after the British prime minister. A movement to separate from NSW and create a new colony had been gaining momentum. On 1 July 1851 it was made official and named Victoria after the Queen.
That was a stroke of luck because the same year, gold was discovered in them thar hills only 100km away and the new colony was able to reap all the profits. Gold fever in Victoria took over from California and Melbourne’s population doubled within a year. People left their jobs in droves – 80% of the police force resigned to go to the diggings. During the 1850s, the Victorian goldfields were producing one third of the total world output and the city embarked on a building spree to parade its wealth.
In 1852, among the 75,000 people arriving in Melbourne was the Clark family with six children from Liverpool in England. Some of the older boys set off for the goldfields but gifted 14-year-old John began work as an architectural draughtsman in the Victorian Public Works Department. Such was his talent that at the age of 19 he was given the job of designing the Melbourne Treasury, which is astonishing given that most 19-year-olds find getting out of bed in the morning a big enough challenge. JJ Clark created what is now regarded as Australia's finest Renaissance Revival building and over the next six decades he went on to design some of the most beautiful buildings in Australia and New Zealand.
Amid Melbourne’s radically changed skyline, many of Clark’s buildings still stand, including the Old Treasury Building, now showcasing the history of Victoria in a stunning museum where you can visit the basement gold vaults that stored the bullion. Read about the two Cornish miners who discovered the ‘Welcome Stranger’, the largest gold nugget ever to have been found at the time, lying just 3cm below the surface and weighing 72kg. They must have been accompanied on their journey by one of those lucky Cornish pixies.
