Victorian Explorers

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Victoria, Australia
Surnames/tags: Victoria_Australia Explorers

The aim of this page is to eventually have it as a location to describe a brief history of the explorers who helped to open up the area of the Port Philip District, otherwise known as Victoria. It should hopefully provide a list of explorers and where they explored in, to, or from Victoria.

In the mean time, this page is a location to have a list of things that can be done, in order to present the historical events and people who were involved in exploring and opening up the area of Victoria, so that we can endeavour to have profiles for all of these people.

• Bass Strait was named after English explorer and physician George Bass.
• Bass Strait was possibly first detected by Captain Abel Tasman, when he charted Tasmania's coast in 5 December 1642.
• Captain James Cook in the Endeavour tried to sail through Bass Strait against prevailing winds, in April 1770, and eventually turned back, without proving whether Van Diemen's Land and New Holland were joined or not.
• The captain of the Sydney Cove in 1797, ran aground on Preservation Island, and speculated when he reached Sydney, that there was likely to be a strait, because of the strong south westerly swell and the tides and currents, which suggested as much.
• George Bass, without Flinders, in an open whaleboat with a crew of six, sailed to Cape Howe, and westward as far west as Western Port bay.
• George Bass and Matthew Flinders sailed in the sloop Norfolk through Bass Strait, while circumnavigating Van Diemen's Land, visiting the estuary of the Derwent River, in 1798-99. Flinders' recommended to the Governor of New South Wales, John Hunter, to call the stretch of water Bass Strait.
• In 1798, French government despatched an expedition commanded by Nicolas Baudin, to explore the strait. Apparently sighting the entrance to the bay 30 March 1802.
• Lieutenant James Grant passed through Bass Strait on board the HMS Lady Nelson in 1800, naming the coast from Cape Otway to Wilsons Promontory as Governor King's Bay, however failing to discover Port Phillip. He named Portland Bay in 1800, in honour of the Duke of Portland. He named Churchill Island where he apparently planted a crop of corn and wheat.
• Lieutenant John Murray on board the HMS Lady Nelson discovered Port Philip Bay 15 Feb 1802, naming the bay Port King after Governor of New South Wales Philip Gidley King. King renamed the bay on 4 Sept 1805 Port Phillip, after his predecessor Arthur Phillip. Murray apparently based the Lady Nelson at what is now Sorrento Beach, probably Sullivan Bay, (I am speculating). Apparently, Murray formally took possession of the area on 8 March 1802, for King George III, with a ceremony at Point King Foreshore Reserve in Sorrento.
• Matthew Flinders further discovered Port Philip 10 weeks later in 1802, I believe going to the top of, and naming Arthurs Seat, after a hill of like characteristics in Edinburgh (if I'm not mistaken).
• Governor King sent Lieutenant Charles Robbins in HMS Cumberland to fully explore Port Phillip Bay. The surveying party inclued Charles Grimes. Their survey included the mouth of the Yarra River, which they visited 2 Feb 1803.
• James Tuckey was dispatched from the Sullivan Bay Settlement, to explore Port Phillip Bay, possibly part of the group who explored through to Western Port Bay. A ship also sailed to the northwest shore of Port Phillip.
• Charles Grimes' party found the Yarra and Marybyrnong Rivers, 2 January 1803.
• Hume and Hovell made some kind of expedition in 1824, I believe across land from Sydney to somewhere possibly around Portland (need to confirm this)
• French explorer Jules Sebastien Cesar Dumont d'Urville on a scientific voyage onboard the Astrolabe, stopped at Western Port in 1826.
• British concerns that the French were trying to start a settlement at Western Port, caused them to dispatch the HMS Fly, with Captain Wetherall, Colonel Stewart, Captain S. Wright & Lieutenant Burchell and brigs Dragon and Amity, to sail to Western Port leaving Sydney 18 Nov 1826. They landed at Settlement Point with a number of convicts, and detachments of the 3rd and 93rd regiments, establishing a settlement near Corinella. The settlement was abandoned about 12months later on order of Governor Darling.
• Port Phillip was apparently mostly undisturbed until 1835, when John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner (a child at Sorrento settlement), established Melbourne on the Yarra River.

Samuel Anderson established a settlement at Bass in 1835.

• Big Lizzie at Red Cliffs, even though it isn't a story of exploration, as such, they were exploring the limits of what they could do at the time, and so it is an interesting story that could be included here.