Dr Paul Michael Donovan is preparing to publish an article in the Victorian Historical Journal on the life and legacy of John Frederick Mulder (1840–1921) — an interesting figure in Geelong’s 19th-century history. Mulder was a respected (more…)
Superintendent Charles Joseph La Trobe sent a circular letter to a number of early settlers in the Colony of Victoria, asking them to provide written accounts of their arrival and early activities in the district. (more…)
David Fisher of Roslin, Geelong – 21 September 1853 David Fisher’s letter is a wide-ranging firsthand account of life in the Port Phillip District soon after first European settlement. It is included in the Letters (more…)
You can listen to a reading of this article by clicking the link below: Ambition and Inheritance: The Making of the Robertson Legacy In January 1836, William Robertson — a Hobart businessman and farmer — (more…)
The author of Memoranda of a trip to Port Phillip in 1836 was Joseph Tice Gellibrand, a former Attorney General in Van Diemen’s Land (VDL) and one of the 15 members of the Port Phillip (more…)
By Martin Williams (Section 1) and Terry Scott (Section 2) 11 March 2025 Martin Williams, member of our society and historian, has been moved to write a comprehensive rebuttal of the claims that the 1824 (more…)
Hume & Hovell 1824: Who fired the cannon? On December 16, 1824 the Hume and Hovell finally reached Corio Bay, close to Point Lillias and ‘Bird Rock’. The next day the party camped adjacent to (more…)
A review of Hamilton Hume Sketch Maps: Origins and Modern Treatment by Martin Williams Following Hamilton Hume and William Hovell’s first overland journey of exploration from southern New South Wales into Victoria in 1824 a (more…)
On September 30, 2024 William Wood, from the Foyle Special Collections Library at King’s College London, published an interesting article on the exploration of Hume and Hovell following an intriguing request from a researcher. The (more…)
Hume and Hovell: ‘Knowing the Past, but not captive to it’ As its 200th anniversary draws near Michael O’Donnell reflects on Hume and Hovell’s epic exploratory journey, which reached the shores of Corio Bay near (more…)
Foster Fyans (1790-1870) played a significant role in the European settlement of Victoria and the dispossession of its Aboriginal people. This article examines a letter he wrote in 1853 about his experiences at that time. (more…)
This is the seventh instalment of the Investigator’s series ‘The Story of Geelong’, published in May 1967. Using John Wedge’s journals and a subsequent map of his explorations the writer takes the reader along on (more…)