MELTON HERITAGE

Some of the earliest visitors to Kulin lands were not from Europe at all but Macassans from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.^[1] However, by the early 19th century, a succession of white men began venturing into the area. Both John Murray and Matthew Flinders explored Port Phillip Bay in 1802, and the following year colonial government surveyor Charles Grimes came close to what is now Melton.^[2]

Around this time, another survey party based at Sorrento recorded a dramatic encounter with Wathaurong warriors defending Country at the Werribee River.^[3] In 1824, Hamilton Hume and William Hovell made their mark as the first white men to traverse the western plains. In 1839, a young assistant surveyor to the colonial government, William Wedge Darke, surveyed land around the fledging settlement of Melbourne. This survey became the reference point for the first land sales in the Melton district, which took place in 1840.^[4]

The mantle of the first European settler family in Melton is commonly given to the Pyke brothers. The Pyke estate, Pennyroyal Creek, is considered by some as ‘the foundation of the City of Melton’.^[5] Another figure sometimes described as ‘Melton’s first settler’ is Edinburgh-born squatter John Hunter Patterson, who came to the mainland from Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). In 1836, Patterson established Greenhills station, which still exists today. 

John Aitken was grazing sheep in the area even earlier than the Patterson and Pyke families. Known as ‘the colony’s leading flockmaster’, Aitken played a crucial role in developing Australia’s wool flock.^[6] Simon Staughton was another early pastoralist who settled in the Melton district, becoming one of the largest owners of freehold land in Victoria. Staughton’s Exford Estate homestead, completed around 1846, still stands in Melton South as one of the oldest residences in the state.^[7] The grand Eynesbury Homestead also belonged to the Staughton family. Other early pastoralists of note include William Cross Yuille and the magnate William John Turner ‘Big’ Clarke. Another important figure is James Pinkerton, and the Pinkerton family name remains prominent in Melton today.

As white settlers arrived in greater numbers and made their mark on the land, Kulin life was radically disrupted. Newly erected fences restricted free movement and vital waterways became inaccessible. Flora and fauna that were important sources of food were quickly decimated by the presence of thousands of sheep and other livestock pounding the earth with their hard, cloven hooves.^[13] European diseases wrought havoc amongst Kulin people, as did alcohol.^[14]

Frontier violence in the Melton area was particularly brutal. Mount Cottrell is one recorded massacre site, where a band of Wathaurong families were killed in a reprisal attack for the murder of Charles Franks and Thomas Flinders.^[15] Settler Ned Wedge gave an account of the fate of groups of Aboriginal people in the Werribee area: ‘Oh, they all disappeared one night; they stole a bag of flour containing arsenic; their yells could be heard a mile off’.^[16]

Within a few years of the European incursion onto Kulin Country, local tribes faced annihilation, making the invasion, as one historian has described it, ‘one of the fastest land occupations in the history of empires’.^[17] As early as 1838, the Kurun jang balug were reduced to a small group forced to seek refuge with neighbouring clans.^[18] These few survivors were soon forced off Country to face a life under the control of missionaries and state ‘protectors’.

The decimation of Kulin ways of life marked the beginning of a challenging new chapter for the people who had thrived on their traditional lands for millennia. First Nations people have fought ever since to keep their families together and maintain their connection to land and culture. For the newcomers, however, settlement marked the beginning of a promising life in a new home, as Melton began to develop and prosper.