Edited transcript of the interview with Malcolm McIlvena, former President of the Coburg Historical Society (2006-2017).
Well probably the first thing that people don’t realise is that there were to the north, of us and Pretty Sally is one of them, there were seven volcanoes. We’re going back several hundred thousand years here and those volcanoes were erupting and as they did so the lava flowed down into pockets all around and created basalt and bluestone when it cooled. This of course is the basis there were 41 quarries in Coburg at one stage producing bluestone material either in the little bits for the roads or in big bits for the houses. There was a quarry actually in the Pentridge site and there are still lots of spaces in Coburg that were originally blue stone quarries and have been filled in and turned into something else in many cases parks and things. The book that was written by the Coburg Historical Society is called Between Two Creeks. We’ve got the Merri Creek on one side the Moonee ponds creek on the other
[John] Batman arrived in Melbourne 1836, from memory, and shortly afterwards John Pascoe Fawkner arrived. Now Fawkner and Batman were not very friendly shall we say. Batman had gone back to Tasmania to get his treaty authorised by the governor’s there and while he was there John Pascoe Fawkner turned up. Batman’s men said you cannot stay here, this was down by the Yarra, this has already been claimed by Batman. So Fawkner took his sheep and his men and they wandered off, up at the beginning, the Maribyrnong and then up the Merri Creek. He settled on a farm there. His farm the farm was called Oak Farm which might sound familiar to some people who live in Oak Park, and the suburb he called it Pascoe Ville. Now later on this became Pascoe Vale and Oak Farm became Oak Park.
In 1837 the surveyor in Melbourne surveyed the streets of Melbourne, nice square streets at right angles, and all the rest of it and after he’d finished there he came out to Coburg. He surveyed it as large farms because Coburg was to be the food bowl for Melbourne. And one of the stories is that one of his surveyor, Foot, a fella called Foot was his I think his wife was born in a village in England called Pentridge and so he got permission now that’s only one story there’s dozen of different stories about how Pentridge came about.
Image credit: Jessica Ferrari/Memento Media
About the ReCollection project.
As part of the 2017 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Memento Media partnered with Moreland City Council to present ReCollection at the Coburg Carnivale. ReCollection is about celebrating, sharing and capturing the memories of Moreland’s places, history and faces. The ReCollection exhibit showcased short documentaries and printed historical material which helped attendees take a trip down memory lane. During the Carnivale, many locals generously shared their stories about life in Moreland in our specially built ReCollection Recorder.
“John Batman ans John Pascoe Fawkner were both sons of convicts, both built fortunes from property in Van Dieman’s Land and joined to become the two principles of the Port Phillip Association. Batman was a chaotic character and his wild nature swung recklessly between acts of kindness and bloody-minded self interest, while Fawkner was a more calculating and meticulous personality. Within days of landing at Port Phillip they were a loggerheads, Batman parading around the settlement with Aborigines he’d bought from Sydney and Fawkner making plans for hotels and newspapers, the stuff of prosperous settlements. But their different humours didn’t prevent them from co-operating in the wholesale division of the Kulin lands.
“Some of the most astute businessmen in Hobart Helped establish the Port Phillip Association and they were joined by the more entrepreneurial members of the administration and judiciary. It was a formidable combination of law and enterprise; the entrepreneurs providing cash and energy and the legal minds steering the Association through the administrative shoals of colonial government by concocting sham documents of possession in the most portentous and arcane language.”
…
“Nothing happened at random here; this was an orchestrated campaign where the colonists worked against both the Kulin Nation and the colonial governments in Sydney and Hobart.”
-Bruce Pascoe, ‘Convincing Ground’ (2012) pp.8-9
link to moreland.libero.com.au
Bruce Pascoe gives a detailed account of the establishment of the Port Phillip colony in his book ‘Convincing Ground.’
“John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner were both sons of convicts, both built fortunes from property in Van Dieman’s Land and joined to become the two principles of the Port Phillip Association. Batman was a chaotic character and his wild nature swung recklessly between acts of kindness and bloody-minded self interest, while Fawkner was a more calculating and meticulous personality. Within days of landing at Port Phillip they were a loggerheads, Batman parading around the settlement with Aborigines he’d bought from Sydney and Fawkner making plans for hotels and newspapers, the stuff of prosperous settlements. But their different humours didn’t prevent them from co-operating in the wholesale division of the Kulin lands.
“Some of the most astute businessmen in Hobart helped establish the Port Phillip Association and they were joined by the more entrepreneurial members of the administration and judiciary. It was a formidable combination of law and enterprise; the entrepreneurs providing cash and energy and the legal minds steering the Association through the administrative shoals of colonial government by concocting sham documents of possession in the most portentous and arcane language. […]
“Nothing happened at random here; this was an orchestrated campaign where the colonists worked against both the Kulin Nation and the colonial governments in Sydney and Hobart.”
-Bruce Pascoe, ‘Convincing Ground’ (2012) pp.8-9
link to moreland.libero.com.au