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A
Detailed History of Pipemakers Park
From
the document- 'Pipemakers Park Conservation Analysis and Plan',
Melbourne's Living Museum of the West, 1996
European
Discovery and Settlement
As far as we know, the first European explorers to pass close by the
study area were Surveyor-General Charles Grimes and his party on 3 February
1803, the height of summer. With Grimes were Lieut. Robbins, James Fleming,
a gardener, and five seamen who rowed the boat. They went up the Maribyrnong
as far as Braybrook, where they found ‘rocks across’ and ‘a
place the natives had made for catching fish’.
Fleming’s diary relates their journey:
... went in boat, up the Great River, at between two and three miles
it divided in two, we took the left-hand stream at half past eight o’clock.
The land became high where we landed and went on a hill. [Flemington?]
... No trees for many miles.
Came to the boat and proceeded on; 1.
The boat would have passed the study area about mid morning. The travellers
had noted the river’s salt water and it took them some time to
find fresh water: ‘Passed two dingles; no water; came to a third
one where we found some water, [possibly Maidstone] where we dined,
and proceeded on.’ They noticed ‘some straggling she oaks
by the side of the river’ and crossed it at the rocky ford at Braybrook.
Here they left their boat and went off to explore Avondale Heights and
Keilor. They returned by evening and camped for the night, returning
the next day.
Grimes’ map and his diary also describe the country:
... traced up the N.W. branch of the river where the land was high,
it was covered with stones and where low a swamp - from the top of the
hills the country on all sides presented an open grassy plain - without
timber - as far as the eye could reach. 2.
The reports by Fleming and Grimes deterred the New South Wales government
from further investigation and indicate the likely difficulties in settling
a stony area with clay soil and lack of fresh water. Their descriptions
also highlight features which were later to be important factors in
the use and development of the study area - high land, low land, the
presence of stone, surrounding grassy plains, a navigable river.
John Batman’s diary, 32 years later, enthused about the grasslands.
Batman came up the Maribyrnong River on 3 June 1835, looking for new
pastures and ready to negotiate with the indigenous inhabitants on behalf
of the Port Phillip Association in Van Diemen’s Land.
Left the vessel about 9 o’clock. I went up the river about five
miles, sounding as we went ...
I landed and joined the party. [about Stony Creek] They had walked about
seven miles over a grassy country, thinly timbered with she oak, and
scarcely another tree. A few miles further I came to the banks of the
river which appeared deeper than where I had landed from the boat. On
both sides the land open, and covered with excellent kangaroo grass.
In passing up the banks passed over several rich flats, about a mile
wide, and two or three long, not a tree, and covered with kangaroo grass
above my knees. Hundreds of tons of hay could here be made of the above
grass. The land of the best description, equal to any in the world.
3.
The ‘rich flats’ may have included the study area, or land
further upstream. Batman and his companions (seven Sydney Aborigines
and three white servants) were on foot. A map later drawn by him shows
his track, which indicates that he walked across the plains but did
follow the Maribyrnong River for part of his journey. 4.
He may have passed in the vicinity of the study area but probably cut
across Maidstone, rejoining the river at Braybrook.
Batman’s visit and his treaty with Aboriginal leaders marked the
beginning of an invasion. John Wedge followed weeks later, to allocate
portions of the ceded land to members of the Port Phillip Association.
His map (1835) shows the ‘Saltwater River’ and it can be worked
out that the study area is in Portion 11, allotted to Mr Collicot. This
was later transferred to J.T. Gellibrand. Wedge commented on the open
country, ‘thickly covered with a light growth of grass, the soil
being in general stiff and shallow.’ He noted that the two rivers
were navigable for five or six miles above the junction.
However, the reality was that independent settlers were moving in. John
Aitken was the first to arrive with sheep (in August 1835). Within 18
months of Batman’s exploration, there were 19,231 sheep and 71
people ‘on the Saltwater River’, according to the 1836 census.
Of this number, 64 were male, chiefly pastoralists, overseers and shepherds,
four were female, two were children.5.
The upper reaches of the valley were especially popular, but there was
considerable activity downstream, with the first shearing near Flemington
and the ford at Braybrook as the main crossing place before punts and
bridges. The household nearest to the study area in 1836 may have been
that of Cottrell, Ferguson and Solomon, with seven males, two females,
one boy and 3,700 sheep. According to one source, Cottrell’s run
extended from the punt (at what is now Footscray) upstream, but in 1840
he sold it to Fortescue Arthur. According to the Kenyon Index, Fortescue
Arthur’s holding included Footscray and Maribyrnong. 6.
By 1840 Robert Hoddle and his assistants had surveyed the area and drawn
maps. The government had divided the land into parishes and sections,
the first sub-division of the area. Hoddle’s map of 1840 is the
first clear map of the study area and shows it within the parish of
Cut Paw Paw, part of Section 21. 7.
The name is said to be derived from Aboriginal words, Koort Boork Boork
- ‘clump of she oaks’. The rest of the area now known as Maribyrnong
was divided into Section 20, (858 acres) and a Reserve on both sides
of the river. The map shows the whole of the Maribyrnong area dotted
with she oaks, except for an open area immediately adjoining the river,
probably flood plain. The word ‘ironstone’ written on the
section south of the study area, indicates that there were rocky outcrops
along the escarpment, possibly ferruginous sedimentary rocks below the
basalt. This reddish stone may also have been the stone which can still
be seen in the older portions of the extant bluestone buildings. The
only pastoral station shown on this map was ‘Mr Solomon’s
station’ in the Braybrook/Maidstone area. 8.
On 13 September 1845, the whole of the Maribyrnong area was subject
to a sale of occupation licences. James Johnstone obtained an annual
pastoral licence for Section 21 and the reserve to its north, clear
evidence that the study area was part of a pastoral holding. Johnstone
paid £14 for Lot 10, which totalled 601 acres. Joseph Solomon
obtained licences for Sections 17,19 and 22 (Braybrook- Sunshine area).
Section 20 was withdrawn from sale to give Solomon ‘water frontage
for his back run’. 9.
On
23 September 1846, when the annual licences were again put up for auction,
Johnstone obtained a licence for Section 21, this time at a cost of
£4-13s-11d. 10.
Possibly
‘Johnstone’ was James Stewart Johnstone, a Scotsman, who had
previously held a pastoral station, ‘Eumemmering’, in the
Dandenong area. He had recently become a proprietor of the Melbourne
Argus newspaper, was an alderman of the city of Melbourne and ran the
‘Southern Cross Hotel’ in Bourke Street. 11.
By 1847, the sections had been divided into portions and the land in
Maribyrnong, including the study area, was up for sale. Comparisons
of maps over the years shows that Pipemakers Park is within portions
6,7 and 8 of Section 21. One of the main purchasers was Joseph Raleigh,
who bought eight lots, including Section 21, portions 4, 5, 6 and 7.
William Fletcher bought Portion 8. 12.
Thus Raleigh and Fletcher were the first purchasers of the land that
is now Pipemakers Park. An analysis of the sales yields useful evidence
on the relative values of the land and the context in which the study
area is set. In particular, the low price of the study area land suggests
that there were no buildings on the land in 1847.
1.James
Fleming, ‘Journal of Exploration of Port Phillip, made by Charles
Grimes, Surveyor General of New South Wales’, in J.J.Shillinglaw
(ed.), Historical Records of Port Phillip, Melbourne, 1879, p.27.
2. Charles Grimes, Journal of Expedition to Port Phillip 1802-3, Archives
Office of New South Wales, Sydney. (manuscript). Copy courtesy of Bob
Hayes.
3.James Bonwick, Port Phillip Settlement, London, 1883, p.184.
4.Stuart Duncan, ‘In the steps of John Batman: a geographical excursion’
(notes), Melbourne, 1988. Dr Duncan thinks Batman exaggerated distances
a good deal.
5.1836 census, Public Records Office, courtesy of the late George Seelaf.
See also John Lack, A History of Footscray, p. 11, ‘Half the squatters,
and half the stock in Port Phillip were along the Saltwater River and
Jackson’s and Deep Creeks.’. There were 40,000 sheep by the
time of the census, in November 1836.
6.A.S.Kenyon, ‘The Port Phillip Association’, Victorian Historical
Magazine, vol. 16, no.3, 1937, pp.112-113; Kenyon Index , State Library
of Victoria, entry for Fortescue Arthur.
7.Parish of Cut Paw Paw map, 1840 (Sydney C/10), Central Plans Office,
Melbourne. Reproduced in O. Ford and P. Lewis, Maribyrnong: Action in
Tranquillity, p.viii.
8.The 1841 census lists 20 people living on Solomon’s station,
and eight people at Fortescue Arthur’s.
9.Port Phillip Gazette, 13 September 1845, p.1; 27 September 1845, p.3.
10.Port Phillip Government Gazette, 1846, pp, 208, 272. Solomon also
obtained a further licence.
11.T.F.Bride, Letters from Victorian Pioneers, Melbourne 1898; republished
with notes by C.E.Sayers,1969;1983 edition, pp.106, 114. See also E.Finn
(‘Garryowen’), The Chronicles of Early Melbourne 1835-1852,
Melbourne 1888; facsimile edition, 1976, pp. 126, 315; Port Phillip
Almanac, 1846, p. 96; Hugh Anderson, Saltwater River History Trails,
Melbourne, 1984, pp.45-46, which briefly outline J.S.Johnston’s
career and refer to his vineyard and house, Craiglee, at Sunbury; Kenyon
Index, State Library of Victoria.
12.Port Phillip Government Gazette, 23 October 1847; 19 January 1848.
See also ‘Map of the Suburban Lands of the City of Melbourne,’
by Thomas Ham, 1852. State Library of Victoria. Reproduced in O.Ford
and P. Lewis, Maribyrnong: Action in Tranquillity, p.1.
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