Discussion 7: “ ...[S]eparation at last!”

Each year in Victoria, on 11th of November, with a minute’s silence at the eleventh hour, we commemorate the end of the Great War in 1918 and the fallen from all our major conflicts. Yet some 68 years before, on 11 November 1850, the people of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales, celebrated their creation as a new colony, named Victoria for the Queen of the British Empire.

The festivities that attended the passing of the Separation Bill that created the new colony lasted a week, including rockets and a beacon-fire on Flagstaff Hill, as well as entertainments, festive lights and decorations. The week of celebration culminated in a procession of various societies, trade and religious and ethnic clubs, schools, native mounted police and dignitaries that also ‘opened’ Prince’s Bridge over the Yarra. It was estimated that some 15,000 attended the processionat a time when Melbourne’s population was less than 25,000 people.

Victoria was finally formally proclaimed a colony on 1 July 1851, when the NSW Legislative Council passed the enabling Act that gave effect to the decision in 1850 of the Imperial Parliament in the Australian Constitutions Act (known as the Australian Colonies Government Act) which permitted Separation. This Constitutions Act granted responsible government and bicameral parliaments to South Australia and Tasmania, as well as Victoria.

This discussion, the first in the 2026 series, explores how this Separation came about, and what the creation of the colony meant for the people of Victoria and its subsequent history.

Format

Background information

Settlement, displacement and destruction in Port Phillip District

The formal designation of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales was made in September 1836 by Governor Bourke, following the growth of illegal settlements and occupation by squatters around Melbourne and Portland. With this decision, Bourke also appointed a Chief Agent of government control, with Captain William Lonsdale serving as magistrate and agent for the auction of land.

Within a few short years, extensive pastoral runs and the growing towns of Melbourne and Geelong, which were the ports and service centres for this industry, had transformed what is now Victoria. This drastic expanssion caused widespread deaths and displacement of the Aboriginal people who had lived on these lands.

As A.G.L Shaw notes “…Aboriginal society, after surviving for thousands of years in the area … but probably weakened by earlier disease, was to be almost destroyed in a single generation after 1835” (1996:31). Estimates of the impact of early European presence on Aboriginal people in Victoria suggest that some 60,000 had become 10,000 to 15,000 by 1835 following earlier contact, including violent contact, and the effects of smallpox epidemics.

The rapid growth of European settlers in the Port Phillip District was accompanied by a sustained campaign for Separation from New South Wales, coinciding with “..the politically uneasy influence of humanitarians…” and growing concerns for the welfare of the Aboriginal population (Boucher and Russell, 2015:12).

These concerns, expressed in The House of Commons Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements) in 1837 led to the creation of the Port Phillip Protectorate in 1838 - a significant part of the story of Victoria in the context of the rapid growth of Port Phillip District and the demands of settlers for representation.

Mitchell and Curthoys (2015) argue that, following the creation of Victoria as a separate colony, the establishment of a central Board for the Protection of Aborigines was the first in the Australian colonies and the most comprehensive reserve system established - a system not seen in this form in other British settler colonies in North America or New Zealand.

The complex impact of humanitarianism combined with the very rapid European settlement, inside and outside the boundaries of Port Phillip District, raises questions about the patterns and impacts of early settlement in Victoria, particularly in relation to the experiences of Aboriginal people in the region, as well as their relationship with the settlers and their governments.

The road to Separation

The demands by settlers for separation from New South Wales began in the very early years of the Port Phillip District with a letter to Lord Glenelg, the Colonial Secretary, on this matter from the Port Phillip Association in March 1836.

Governor Bourke visited Port Phillip District in 1837 and recommended to Glenelg in that year that the appointment of a Lieutenant Governor for the District was warranted. Expecting a military officer to be appointed (as was common), the Port Phillip District received instead Charles Joseph LaTrobe, a widely travelled, cultured ‘European’ from a milieu more missionary than military, an administrator whose experience had been in the West Indies with released slaves. And Glenelg advised Governor Gipps that LaTrobe’s attention should be focused on “the state of the Aborigines” and the relations with the settlers. LaTrobe remained the first and only Superintendent of the District reporting to Governors Gipps and then Fitzroy from October 1839 until Separation in July 1851.

The public campaign for Separation gained momentum in 1839, involving many public memorials and petitions sent to London. The grievances were in part economic – owing to the accrual of land sales revenues in Sydney, without sufficient public expenditure in Melbourne. They were also in part political – demonstrated by an unwillingness to receive or be associated with convicts, and a desire for greater local political representation on the NSW Legislative Council which met in Sydney.

The continuing agitation for Separation was given context with the incorporation of the City of Melbourne Council in 1842 - through legislation passed by the NSW Legislative Council - and no local representation for other parts of the District.

Dramatically, in 1848 the electors of Melbourne were persuaded to elect Lord Grey, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, as the City’s representative to the NSW Legislative Council. Grey seemed to respond to the strength of feeling behind this protest vote and began to move on the constitutional changes necessary for Separation.

The attempts to draft legislation for local representation that would be acceptable to the Imperial Parliament and the “Colonial Reformers” meant that Bills failed to pass in 1848 and 1849. When Separation arrived in 1851, concerns remained about the representation of the ‘cities’ versus the squatting districts, and suggestions about federation had been rejected.

Conclusion

By 1855, the new colony of Victoria had lived through horrific bushfires in 1851, the largest gold-rush of its times (or since), and an unprecedented increase in population – by then more than 300,000. It had passed its first constitution creating a Legislative Assembly, and was working through a set of Chartist demands, including introducing the world’s first secret ballot voting system. These foundations created unrivaled growth and democratic reforms - and alongside this, the instigation of a Select Committee of the Legislative Council to investigate the numbers of Aboriginal people in the region, their health, education and access to resources as well as their “ethnography”.

What was the impact of the decades from the declaration of the Port Phillip District to the Separation and creation of Victoria on the nature of our society, economy and polity?

Recommended reading

To be provided.

References

Boucher, L and Russell, L (eds) (2015) Settler Colonial Governance in Nineteenth-Century Victoria, ANU Press, Canberra.

Broome, R. (2024) Aboriginal Victorians A History since 1800, (2nd edition) Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

Serle, G. (1963) The Golden Age A History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851-1861, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.

Shaw, A.G.L. (1996) A History of The Port Phillip District, Victoria Before Separation, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.