Vivid Postcards June 2004

VIVID POSTCARDS
Postcard from Melbourne

by Peter Mews
June 2004

The city of Melbourne was founded in 1835. Two men can lay claim to being the city's founder. The first of these men, a rapacious rake named John Batman, famously traded some blankets and beads to the local aboriginal people in exchange for their riverside lands. The colonial government did not, of course, recognise the transaction as legal, and subsequently sold off the land in quarter acre blocks. John Batman had to buy a piece like everybody else.

By the time of the land sales, 1837, Batman's nose was falling off. He was suffering the advanced onset of syphilis, and all the dissolution of his life was returning to him, in the form of his disintegrating face. Batman was a gentleman though, and he still liked to ride the streets of the fledgling city, his face covered with a distinctive red kerchief.

He died two years later, aged 39. A parson named Dredge recorded the event, proclaiming in his journal that Batman's ëdeath from disease induced by loose and profligate habits ought to be regarded by the living as an admonitory instance of the truth of the Sacred Scripture: the wages of sin is death!'

Batman left his mark on the fledgling city but there were few who mourned his passing. Least of all John Pascoe Fawkner, the second man who might be remembered as Melbourne's founder. Fawkner was Batman's rival in life and in death. In 1835 Fawkner was in Launceston, in the north of Tasmania, where he owned a pub. Here he heard of Batman's ìpurchaseî, and his grand plans for opening up the lands of Port Phillip for grazing. Within a month John Fawkner had a party of investors lined up and a boat fitted out for the purpose of landing a settlement on the Yarra river, where the city of Melbourne now stands. Fawkner prospered. He was a teetotaller, despising the demon drink, but was perfectly happy to make his fortune selling it to the many unfortunates flocking to the muddy streets of the new metropolis.

Fawkner outlived John Batman. He outdid him in every aspect of life, building a fortune, establishing newspapers, and generally making his influence felt. But he was the son of a convict, and moreover a ruffian and inveterate self-promoter. The genteel members of society could not tolerate the idea that this upstart should be their city's father. Rather they reinvented the character of John Batman, who had the grace to die young, and elevated his memory as the glorious founder of their city. And so today we can take a leisurely walk along Batman Avenue , following the pretty river into the city. We can imagine a genteel past. John Fawkner is also remembered. A distant suburb has been named after him. Moreover, at the end of Sydney Road where the traffic snarls and warehouses stand cheek by jowl with fast food franchises, is the Fawkner Cemetery.