Port Phillip Association - Batman's Treaty

Batman's Treaty

Batman sailed from Launceston in the schooner Rebecca in May, 1835. In June Batman went up the Yarra River and noted in his journal “this is the place for a village”. After leaving some men to build a hut and start a garden, Batman and the Rebecca returned to Van Diemen’s Land. Here Batman showed Wedge where he had explored and, from these details, Wedge prepared the first map of Melbourne in June 1835 (published in 1836), showing the location Batman had chosen as the site for the “village” and the division of land between association members.

Batman’s treaty with the aborigines of Port Phillip is the only example of any settlers (official or unofficial) giving recognition to the rights of the aborigines to the land. The members of the Port Phillip Association did not intend the treaty to be a fair commercial transaction, but a means of obtaining permission from the aborigines to avoid resentment (and subsequent violence) after settlement.

For some time Batman's Treaty, as it came to be called, was assumed by some historians to be a forgery, but the recollections of the aboriginal elder Barak, who was present at the singing of the treaty as a boy, established that Batman, with the aid of his New South Wales aborigines, did in fact participate in a ceremony with Wurundjeri elders for permission to settle amongst them. In aboriginal culture, this ceremony was called a tanderem.

The deeds which Batman took back to Van Diemen’s Land were intended not for the aborigines, who had no need of title deeds. Existing British policy (the Nineteen Counties Order) was designed to prevent such settlement, and Batman hoped to convince the colonial and imperial authorities that the association had entered into a scheme for settling the district which would, it was hoped, avoid bloodshed between whites and blacks. According to Batman’s petition to George Arthur, he and Wedge would proceed immediately to the district with stock, and only married servants (with their wives) would be allowed to accompany them.