Boyce challenges the view that the 1835 pastoral land grab which caused the death of a large proportion of Port Phillip Aboriginals was caused by 'inevitable market forces' or evil and degraded convicts. Instead he places blame for the deaths at the feet of Government officials of the day, from Van Diemen's Land, New South Wales and London, whose inaction in the face of Aboriginal mortality he sees as culpable. The book is very readable and nicely structured. I learned a lot about the Port Phillip Association. Perhaps there could not be, but there was not much of an Aboriginal voice in the narrative; always the problem with a history of dispossessed people. Boyce found many supporting statements from British observers, but few or none from Aboriginal survivors or their descendants. ( )

This is a terrific book, and not just for Melburnians keen to learn more about their city.

James Boyce is a distinguished historian with an impressive CV, but the best thing about his books and writing is that they are very accessible for non-historians. He has the knack of writing history for the everyday reader without dumbing down. I like that.

For those reading this blog from overseas, you need to know that we Australians are a bit ambivalent about our national day. January 26th 1788 is commemorated as the day on which The First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove, but this day is also remembered as Invasion Day by many indigenous people and they regard it as a day of mourning. Outside of Sydney, there is also some muttering about the Sydneycentric choice of date, and there are also those who would rather not celebrate the founding of a penal settlement, especially not one that spent its first night on our shores in drunkenness and debauchery. At a practical level, since the day falls in the middle of our long, lazy summer holidays, teachers can’t be enlisted to engender patriotic enthusiasm amongst the young. No amount of fiddling about with the date on which the public holiday is scheduled has been able to muster the sort of hoopla that national days are supposed to arouse in the populace. For most of us, it’s a day to have a barbecue if the weather is nice, and perhaps watch the same old re-enactment that’s always on the telly (if it happens to be on the news, that is. Very few of us have ever attended an actual re-enactment, much to the disappointment of the organisers).

All this angst about our national day may well be misplaced, because James Boyce thinks that the real founding of our nation began in Melbourne, nearly 50 years later in 1835. The illegal squatter camp set up on the banks of the Yarra was the signal for European control over Australia because it was the end of controlled settlement within tightly defined limits. It put an end to Aboriginal sovereignty and that started the continental land rush. And what’s more, he thinks that the founding of Australia originated from Tasmania where settlement had reached its limits, not from New South Wales…
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2011/12/03/1835-the-founding-of-melbourne-and-the-conque... ( )