Melbourne did not, like other Australian capitals, originate under official auspices.
It owes its birth to the enterprise of some settlers from Tasmania, where the country
available for pastoral purposes was becoming overstocked.

    In May 1835 John Batman, as agent for what later became the Port Phillip Association
crossed from Launceston in the schooner Rebecca and explored to the west and north of
Port Phillip. He fell in with a wandering band of aborigines, from whom he "purchased"
600,000 acres of land, giving blankets, tomahawks, flour and other goods in payment;
and having established a depot at Indented Head, near the entrance to the harbour, where
he left some of his men, he returned to Tasmania to prepare for a transfer to the new country.

    A few weeks later an independent party organized by John Pascoe Fawkner entered
Port Phillip and made their way up the Yarra to the present site of Melbourne, where
they established a camp on 29th August 1835.

    Here they were found by John Helder Wedge, a member of the Port Phillip Association
who had come over to inspect Batman's "purchase"; as they refused to move from what
he considered to be the association's territory, Wedge brought some of the Batman
party up from Indented Head to camp alongside them.
Not only was there a personal dissimilarity between the two leaders, Batman and
Fawkner; there was as much between their respective associations. Batman's was
composed of businessmen, ex-civil servants, pastoralists, and professional men,
whereas Fawkner's party was made up of tradesmen, mechanics, and labourers.
The one party seemed to be the complement of the other. Thus was the nucleus of
Melbourne formed.

    In May 1836 he sent a police magistrate to inspect the new settlement, which then
consisted of " three weather-board, two slab, and eight turf huts"; and in the
following September, having obtained the approval of the Colonial Office, he
dispatched thither an official party under Captain William Lonsdale, who was to act
as resident magistrate. This party included surveyors who were to map the harbour
shores, trace the Yarra's course, and subdivide the district for the purpose of sale.

    In March 1837 Bourke visited the settlement and authorized the laying out of a town
on the site the settlers had selected; Lonsdale preferred a site at the mouth of the
Yarra, but lack of a water-supply at the time made it ineligible.

    Bourke in his own mind seems to have agreed with Lonsdale, for to the site at the mouth
of the Yarra he gave the name Williams Town after the reigning monarch, whereas the
more inland site was named Melbourne after the then Prime Minister.

    The first sale of town allotments took place in June 1837. The infant town had no lack
of names; the Tasmanian newspapers called it "Batmania' and "Glenelg"-the latter on the
analogy of Sydney and Hobart, after the British Secretary of State for the Colonies;
other references give the forms "Bearbrass", "Bearport", "Barcheep" and "Bearbury" -
all apparently variations of the native name of the locality, which was
"Berrern" or "Bararing".

    When Sir Charles Fitz Roy, the Governor, was on a visit to Melbourne in 1849 the ship
Randolph arrived with transported convicts, but La Trobe refused to allow them to land
and Fitz Roy saw that he could not insist upon it.

    The expansion of the surrounding areas occurred with the influx of emigrants.
Williams Town situated at "the anchorage" on the western shores of Hobson's Bay, was
the first suburb, its foundation being contemporaneous (happening at the same time)
with that of Melbourne.

    The sale in 1839 of 25-acre blocks lying east and north-east of the town gave rise to
"Newtown", subsequently named Fitzroy and Collingwood, and Richmond.
Liardet's Beach", at the mouth of the river, across the bay from Williams Town, boasted
a couple of public houses and a few fishermen's huts by the end of 1840, and from this
beginning developed Sandridge (Port Melbourne). The watering places of St Kilda and
Brighton were established in 1841 or 1842; about the same time the first stopping place
on the northward road to Sydney acquired the name of Brunswick; a few years later the
brickmaking industry, which had previously flourished on the south bank of the Yarra,
was transferred thither and Brunswick began its career as an industrial suburb.

    Connections with the south side of the Yarra River was via punts. More permanent connection established by the erection of bridges across the Yarra River in 1846 and 1850.

    Population Growth up to Federation