A Man Who Should Describe Glasgow As Being
On The Southern Coast Of England, Near The Eastern Entrance Of The
Channel, would be just about as near the truth as Lord Hobart managed to
get.* (* Froude's amusing story of Lord
Palmerston, when, on forming a
Ministry, he thought he would have to take the Secretaryship of State for
the Colonies himself, comes to mind. He said to Sir Arthur Helps, "Come
upstairs with me, Helps; we will look at the maps, and you shall show me
where these places are." Froude's Oceana page 12.)
King moved immediately. He despatched the Lady Nelson and the Albion on
August 31 to establish a settlement on the river Derwent, with Lieutenant
John Bowen in charge; and in September 1803 the first British colony in
Tasmania was planted. It had a variety of adverse experiences before at
length the beautiful site of the city of Hobart, at the foot of Mount
Wellington, was determined upon; but here, at all events, was a
beginning, and the tale from that time forward has been one of steady
progress.
As soon as the imagined threat of French invasion lost its impulsion, the
colonising energy of the governing authorities subsided. The Tasmanian
settlement remained and grew, but Trafalgar removed all fear of foreign
interference. Hence it was that nearly forty years elapsed before any
real effort was made to settle the lands within Port Phillip. Then the
first energies that were devoted towards creating the great state of
Victoria were not directed by the Government, which no longer had any
political motive for forcing matters, but were made by enterprising
stock-owners searching for pastures.
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