The first white settler in Victoria was the escaped convict Buckley;
but he did not cultivate the country, nor civilise the natives. The
natives, on the contrary, uncivilised him. When white men saw him
again, he had forgotten even his mother tongue, and could give them
little information. For more than thirty years he had managed to
live--to live like a savage; but for any good he had ever done he
might as well have died with the other convicts who ran away with
him. He never gave any clear account of his companions, and many
people were of opinion that he kept himself alive by eating them,
until he was found and fed by the blacks, who thought he was one of
their dead friends, and had "jumped up a white fellow."

While Buckley was still living with the blacks about Corio Bay, in
1827, Gellibrand and Batman applied for a grant of land at Western
Port, where the whalers used to strip wattle bark when whales were
out of season; but they did not get it.

Englishmen have no business to live anywhere without being governed,
and Colonel Arthur had no money to spend in governing a settlement at
Western Port. So Australia Felix was unsettled for eight years
longer.

Griffiths & Co., of Launceston, were trading with Sydney in 1833.
Their cargo outward was principally wheat, the price of which varied
very much; sometimes it was 2s. 6d. a bushel in Launceston, and 18s.
in Sydney. The return cargo from Port Jackson was principally coal,
freestone, and cedar.

Griffiths & Co. were engaged in whaling in Portland Bay. They sent
there two schooners, the 'Henry' and the 'Elizabeth', in June, 1834.