History of Batman's Treaty, Merri Creek, 1835, Victoria.

n June 6th, 1835, bounty hunter and grazier John Batman claimed to have signed two land treaties with eight Wurundjeri elders. The location of the meeting in Batman’s journal is believed to be at Merri Creek, Northcote. There were two land deeds signed, three copies of each with suspicious signatures and markings. The Melbourne treaty for 500,000 acres, and the Geelong/Indented Heads treaty for 100,000 acres. The Geelong/Indented Heads deed was not possible as it was Wathaurong/Wadawurrung Country. Batman maps out a settlement at the Yarra River and names it Batmania. He then leaves a campsite at Indented heads and sails back to Van Diemen’s land to prepare for the land grab. On June 11th, Batman arrives back to Van Diemen’s land and walks into the Cornwall Hotel, John Pascoe Fawkners pub and claims he is the greatest landowner in the world. On July 6th, Murrangurk, a Wathaurong elder walks into Batman’s campsite at Indented Heads. The man is a convict named William Buckley who escaped Sullivan’s Bay settlement in 1803. He’s been living with the Wathaurong/Wadawurrung people for 32 years.

Buckley’s communication of the treaty:

“They had seen several of the native chiefs, with whom, as they said, they had exchanged all sorts of things for land; but that I knew could not have been, because unlike other savage communities, or people, they have no chiefs claiming or possessing any superior right over the soil: theirs only being as the heads of families. I therefore looked upon the land dealing spoken of as another hoax of the white man, to possess the inheritance of the uncivilised natives.” – William Buckley, Morgan, J 1852, The life and adventures of William Buckley, Archibald MacDougall, Hobart, Tas.

A map was drawn up by John Helder Wedge for the land grab. On August 26th, Batman’s treaty was claimed void by the British Government and the Crown claimed the land was theirs, not Batman’s or the indigenous custodians who had lived here for thousands of years. This didn’t stop Batman and his Van Diemen associates from arriving to take land with thousands of sheep.

The Port Phillip Association shareholders include:

John batman

Charles Swanston

Jospeh Gellibrand

John Helder Wedge

William Sams

John Collicott

Henry Arthur

Anthony Cottrell

James Simpson

John Sinclair

Michael Connoly