List of pastoral licensees of the Port Phillip district and particulars of runs occupied 1834-1951.

Hunters and Collectors is about historical consciousness and environmental sensibilities in European Australia from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. It is in part a collective biography of amateur antiquarians, archaeologists, naturalists, journalists and historians: people who shaped the Australian historical imagination. Dr Griffiths illuminates the way these avid collectors and investigators of the Australian land and of its indigenous inhabitants contributed a sense of identity at colony-wide and eventually nationwide level. He also considers the rise of professional history, anthropology and archaeology in the universities, which ignored the efforts of the amateurs. Griffiths shows how the seemingly trivial activities of these hunters and collectors feed into the political and environmental debates of the 1990s. This book is outstanding in its originality, interpretative insight and literary flair.

People have been visiting and living in the Victorian Grampians, also known as Gariwerd, for thousands of generations. They have both witnessed and caused vast environmental transformations in and around the ranges. Gariwerd: An Environmental History of the Grampians explores the geological and ecological significance of the mountains and combines research from across disciplines to tell the story of how humans and the environment have interacted, and how the ways people have thought about the environments of the ranges have changed through time. In this new account, historian Benjamin Wilkie examines how Djab wurrung and Jardwadjali people and their ancestors lived in and around the mountains, how they managed the land and natural resources, and what kinds of archaeological evidence they have left behind over the past 20 000 years. He explores the history of European colonisation in the area from the middle of the 19th century and considers the effects of this on both the first people of Gariwerd and the environments of the ranges and their surrounding plains in western Victoria. The book covers the rise of science, industry and tourism in the mountains, and traces the eventual declaration of the Grampians National Park in 1984. Finally, it examines more recent debates about the past, present and future of the park, including over its significant Indigenous history and heritage.

This account of European settlement in the modern state of Victoria, Australia, spans developments from the first convict camp established in 1803 on the Bass Strait to the contemporary separation of the district from New South Wales. Aborigines, whalers, adventurers, squatters, speculators, and immigrants figure into this history of Victoria before the gold rush. The stories of such key leaders as John Baton and John Pascoe Fawkner offer insight into the founding of Melbourne, the economic depression and recovery of the 19th century, and the social progress of the 20th century. Details are drawn from primary sources including correspondence between officials in Melbourne, Sydney, and London and newspapers from Batman, Swanston, the Port Phillip Association, and La Trobe.

This book offers a fresh perspective in the debate on settler perceptions of Indigenous Australians. It draws together a suite of little known colonial women (apart from Eliza Fraser) and investigates their writings for what they reveal about their attitudes to, views on and beliefs about Aboriginal people, as presented in their published works. The way that reader expectations and publishers’ requirements slanted their representations forms part of this analysis. All six women write of their first-hand experiences on Australian frontiers of settlement. The division into ‘adventurers’ (Eliza Fraser, Eliza Davies and Emily Cowl) and longer-term ‘settlers’ (Katherine Kirkland, Mary McConnel and Rose Scott Cowen) allows interrogation into the differing representations between those with a transitory knowledge of Indigenous people and those who had a close and more permanent relationship with Indigenous women, even encompassing individual friendship. More pertinently, the book strives to reveal the aspects, largely overlooked in colonial narratives, of Indigenous agency, authority and individuality.

In ‘I Succeeded Once’ – The Aboriginal Protectorate on the Mornington Peninsula, 1839-1840, Marie Fels makes the work of William Thomas accessible to anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and the descendants of the Aboriginal people he wrote about. More importantly, people who live, work, study, holiday or just have a general interest in the area from Melbourne to Point Nepean can learn about the original inhabitants who walked the land before it was cleared for agriculture and urban development. Of course, development of the Mornington Peninsula is ongoing and this book will help those involved in development or the management of Aboriginal cultural heritage to identify, document and protect Aboriginal places that may not be identifiable through archaeological investigations alone. Marie Fels supplements Thomas’s writings with other contemporary accounts and her exhaustive historical research sheds new light on critical events and the significant places of the Boon Wurrung people. Of particular importance is the critical review of information about the kidnapping of Boon Wurrung people from the Mornington Peninsula.