John Batman, disfigured by syphilis and crippled, died a lonely death on 6 May 1839. Alienated from his wife who had left for England at his expense in February, and separated from his children who were in the care of a governess, his only attendants were his Sydney Aboriginal servants. His remains were buried two days later in an unmarked grave in the Melbourne cemetery, established just two years before on the site of what is now the Queen Victoria Market. The man who reputedly proclaimed himself to be ‘the greatest landowner in the world’ in the public houses of Launceston, and with ambitions for a pastoral empire secured in part by a form of agreement with the indigenous inhabitants, seemed destined to be remembered only in the legal disputes which ensued over his heavily indebted and mortgaged estate.

In October a more secure form of government for the new settlement was established and Charles Joseph La Trobe, together with his wife, young daughter and prefabricated house, arrived to take up the office of Superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales. In November he was joined by another educated and cultured man, who was to become an unlikely ally in the cultural improvement of the primitive settler-community. Redmond Barry had set sail from Ireland with the ambition of securing a grant of land to become a squatter in New South Wales. Famously, his affair with a married woman on the voyage doomed him to be shunned by the Governor and Sydney society, so he made his way south to the village on the muddy banks of the Yarra.

Forty years later Melbourne had grown from a village to a thriving city and a marvel. It was the capital of a colony established in its own right on 1 July 1851 and transformed soon after by the discovery of gold and the wealth that followed. Before he left the colony in 1854 La Trobe made provision for the land, and funds from gold revenue, to establish a University and a Public Library. Redmond Barry, appointed as Judge of the newly constituted Supreme Court of Victoria in 1852, was made Chancellor of the University and President of Trustees for the Library.

Barry's ambition for the Library was that it should be second only to the British Museum, and he set out to bring to the new community the latest editions of the most authoritative texts. While this reflects an imperial awareness, he was just as concerned to build a record of colonial progress and development. In this he was both a creator and a collector of Australiana. Works were commissioned, and others made for exhibitions found their way into the collection. Barry successfully lobbied for a system of legal deposit, and in 1869 legislation was passed requiring a copy of every Victorian pamphlet, newspaper, map and book to be placed in the Library. He also sought the records of the exploration and settlement of Port Phillip, and by building a contemporary collection as well as one from the earliest settlers, he enshrined in the Library his canon of Victoria's history. In this he found John Batman a place, but it is a place that has changed through time.1

In May 1879 the now Sir Redmond Barry, KB, KCMG devoted one of his monthly displays of the Library collection to items of Australian interest. Many greats were on show. John Gould's Birds of Australia (the most expensive item from the Library's first book order) and his Mammals of Australia; South Australia Illustrated and New Zealand Illustrated by G. F. Angus; and Eugene von Guerard's Australian Landscapes, comprising 24 hand-tinted lithographs made by the artist, were just some of the illustrated books. These were joined by the more pedestrian 112 volumes of Victorian Pamphlets, remarkable in the eyes of the Argus in that they covered ‘…only a quarter of a century’, and the large collection of similar volumes for the other Australian colonies and New Zealand.2

Manuscript items were also on display, including letters written to La Trobe from early colonists in response to his request for accounts of their experiences in settling the land. He had intended to use these letters as sources for a history that he hoped to write, but age, infirmity and failing eyesight defeated him. They were presented to the Library in 1872 by his Melbourne agent, James Graham (who had also arrived in 1839), and form the origins of what is now known as the La Trobe Australian Manuscript Collection. In a touching letter to La Trobe thanking him for the gift, Barry reported on a dinner with Graham and twenty other guests at the Melbourne Club: ‘…of the number two only fell short of thirty years residence in the country — on such an occasion, as you may well conclude, olden times and doings were freely discussed and your name was often mentioned.’ The letter must have been of some comfort to La Trobe who died three years later. Explorers also had their place. Items from the archive of the Victorian Exploring Expedition (better known by the names of its leaders, Burke and Wills) presented to the Library in 1874 by the Royal Society of Victoria, were on view, as was an extract from the logbook of the Lady Nelson, the first British vessel to enter Port Phillip, which had been presented to the Library by F. B. Labilliere. Matthew Flinders' account of his expedition to the Furneaux Islands in Bass Strait rounded out this section. On the recommendation of J. J. Shillinglaw, who spent many years researching a biography of the great navigator, Barry acquired the item from Flinders' daughter during his 1877 visit to England. There was even an album of ‘Fawknerana’ including speeches, clippings, issues of the Melbourne Advertiser, and letters from this redoubtable founder of the settlement, gathered together and bound by the Library.3

One key figure missing in the growing pantheon was John Batman. James Bonwick, schoolmaster and historian, published his Discovery and Settlement of Port Phillip in 1856. This told the story of all attempts at settlement and displayed an intimate knowledge of the Journal that John Batman had kept during his exploration of Port Phillip in May and June of 1835. Batman had undertaken this voyage as a member of the Port Phillip Association, a group of Tasmanian businessmen and pastoralists seeking to expand to new lands across Bass Strait. Bonwick used the Journal as evidence of a worthy motive for the treaties Batman signed with the Aboriginal people, and for his visionary identification of the place for a village. This was followed in 1857 by a shorter work, Early Days of Melbourne. Redmond Barry, aware of the existence of the Journal, attempted to acquire it for the Library. A clipping from an as yet unidentified newspaper is pasted to the inside of the first leaf of the Journal and identifies the owner as ‘Mr. Wm. Weire, Town Clerk of Geelong who married a Miss Batman.’ The article continues: ‘Sir Redmond Barry is anxious that the custodianship of the work should be transferred to authorities of the Melbourne Library, and that the M.S. should be richly bound and shown at the approaching exhibition.’ But to which exhibition does the clipping refer? Barry was most closely involved with the 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition until his resignation almost on the eve of its opening. The 1872 and 1875 Exhibitions in Melbourne were really displays of the Victorian contribution to the Vienna Universal Exhibition in 1873 and the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 respectively. Barry was present as the Victorian Commissioner in Philadelphia, but after most of the exhibits were lost through shipwreck, drawing scorn and ridicule from the local press, he had no further involvement in such endeavours. It is likely, then, that Barry had wanted the Journal for the 1866 Exhibition, and he failed in his attempt. Bonwick, meanwhile, sealed Batman's place in legend with his 1867 publication, John Batman the Founder of Victoria, dedicating the profits of the work to the grandsons of Batman, the children of William Weire.4

In June 1879, perhaps prompted by reports of the display of Australiana the month before, the merchant J. B. Were wrote to Barry on behalf of Richard Ocock, sometime lawyer to the Were brothers, and the estate of John Batman. On offer were Batman's copies of the Geelong Deed and the Melbourne Deed. Drawn up in triplicate, they were intended to provide a legitimising basis in the eyes of colonial authorities for pastoral expansion into ‘Australia Felix’ by the Port Phillip Association; and, by annual tribute to the indigenous inhabitants of the Bellarine Peninsula and the Yarra Valley, provide some basis for a more peaceful settlement than had been achieved in Tasmania. Historian Richard Broome sees Batman's act as heralding ‘the invasion of Port Phillip’ and as a ‘swindle and hoax’, but acknowledges that ‘…it was the only treaty ever offered Aboriginal people in Australia and for some fleeting moments it created an air of reciprocity: albeit an extremely one-sided arrangement.’ The documents were promptly rejected by the Governor in Sydney and the Colonial Office as inimical to the doctrine of terra nullius and therefore a threat to the Crown monopoly over land. Despite this, the Melbourne Deed was reproduced in the very first book printed in Port Phillip in 1840. Latest Information with Regard to Australia Felix by George Arden was a guide to prospective settlers, and by including the Deed Arden made an early claim for Batman as the founder of the settlement.5

In his letter to Barry Were explained that

Barry's reply the following month properly pointed out that he needed to take the matter to the Trustees as a whole and asked for some verification of the authenticity of the items. He then stated: ‘They have no value whatsoever except as a peculiar kind of evidence of a remarkable transaction.’ The bartering over the next few months saw the price finally settled in November 1879 at £5. The low price and Barry's dismissive comment needs careful interpretation. Barry was a ‘black-letter lawyer’ and for him these relics of a failed attempt at a treaty would have no legal worth; besides, he often drove a hard bargain, as William Stallard found when he sold the Library his set of Audubon's Birds of America.6

Barry died in the following year, but his interest in Batman was taken up by other community leaders. Speaking at a dinner held in Kyneton in April 1880, Sir William

Mitchell, President of the Legislative Council, gave an account of the settlement of the colony and remarked:

Mitchell touched a chord, and within a space of two weeks, aided by the energy of J. J. Shillinglaw, a fund was established to raise money for a monument to Batman. The Committee included many of the colony's leaders: Baron Von Mueller, Sir John O'Shanassy, William Clarke, George Coppin, and James Bonwick. Shillinglaw was the secretary and enlisted the help of his friends. Samuel Calvert donated a sketch of a man paying homage to an unmarked grave which, slightly modified to make the man older and holding the hand of a small boy, became the masthead of the subscriber sheets distributed throughout the colony and Tasmania. Batman's surviving daughter, now resident in England, was an early subscriber with a gift of £10, and his son-in-law William Weire, still Town Clerk in Geelong, became an enthusiastic supporter.

The monument was unveiled over the grave on Saturday, 3 June 1882, in the presence of surviving pioneers, William Weire and his sons. The Lord Mayor, Alderman C. J. Ham, spoke at the unveiling, and announced that he had, on the advice of James Bonwick, acquired for the Public Library Batman's Journal, which Weire had proposed to sell on the London market. Ham paid Weire £40 for the Journal, and had a binding made, ‘…but so as not to interfere with the manuscript’ and in November he presented the Journal together with items related to James Cook to the Library.7

The Batman documents became items of curiosity and features in exhibitions and displays. In 1896 the Library played host to the first inter-colonial conference of librarians. The conference opened on 21 April with a gathering of over 600 in the presence of the Governor, Lord Brassey, and the President of the Conference, Sir John Madden. Over the following two days, between papers on topics as diverse as libraries from the reader's point of view, and the decimal classification of Dewey, delegates and members of the public could visit an exhibition of ‘Old, Rare and Curious Books, Manuscripts, Autographs, Examples of Binding etc.’ in the McArthur Gallery. Of the 507 items on show, 281 were from the Melbourne Public Library, with loans from private individuals, the libraries of Melbourne University and Ormond College and the Public Library of New South Wales (which sent its copy of the first folio of Shakespeare). In a note in the catalogue the Chief Librarian, Edmund LaTouche Armstrong, explained that the exhibits were grouped by lender and not in any thematic way as he had only three days ‘for the compiling and printing of the catalogue and placing of the exhibits’. The Melbourne Library's collection of Australian manuscripts was on view with an arch little note in the catalogue for items 186 and 187:

The press responded to the exhibition by commenting more on the books on display, with the Argus journalist noting that they were ‘…purchased in years gone by when money was plentiful and when utilitarian considerations did not exclusively control the selection of books for the Public Library.’ Although the same journalist did note that Batman's deeds were the instruments by which half a million acres were conveyed ‘…in consideration of sundry blankets, tomahawks, pairs of scissors, looking glasses and so forth.’8

Ten years later a similar exhibition was mounted to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Library and to accompany a celebration to mark the opening of the extension to the Natural History Museum in Russell Street. This exhibition had 465 exhibits, with 167 items of Australiana including the Library's key manuscript items, among which were the Batman documents. An indigenous voice appeared in the form of the sketchbooks of Tommy McCrae. In a note in the catalogue Armstrong remarked that

Speaking at the opening the President of the Trustees, Henry Gyles Turner, reminded the Premier and guests that twenty years before when the Library opened Barry Hall his predecessor had predicted the need for another wing within two years. The need was now pressing, and the Trustees had proposed to the Government funding for a great domed library with room for 500 readers and a million books, modelled on the recently completed Library of Congress. In the following year the Government provided an initial grant of £10,000 and Armstrong's great building project began.9

The new Library with its closed stacks required a different organisation of the collection, and Armstrong implemented the Dewey system. The project went on beyond the opening of the Dome in 1913; in April 1914 Armstrong recommended the establishment of a Victorian Historical Museum and the Trustees allocated the old newspaper room in the basement of the Buvelot Gallery for the purpose. In his memoir Armstrong described the collection as a ‘…miscellaneous collection of portraits of Governors, politicians and other public men prominent in the affairs of Victoria in its early days’, together with ‘…models of ships and nuggets, the first printing press used in Melbourne, and other objects illustrating the early settlement of Port Phillip.’ There is a sense that these were the oddments left over from the Dewey classification or discards from the finer Art collection growing steadily with the aid of the Felton Bequest. The outbreak of war halted this expansion and the space, far from being a display area, became storage for these orphans.10

Shillinglaw died in 1905 and Bonwick in 1906; but new impetus to honour Batman came with the formation of the Historical Society of Victoria in 1909. His monument in the Old Melbourne Cemetery (so-called since the opening of the Melbourne General Cemetery in 1853) became the focus of commemorations of the pioneers. In 1913 the Historical Society successfully lobbied the City Council to rename Yarra Bank Road as Batman Avenue, but his grave became the subject of an argument. The old cemetery occupied valuable land at the fringe of the city close to the intersection of the main northern and western roads. As early as 1877 part of the section allocated to Jewish and Aboriginal graves was removed for a new market, and by 1917 pressure for a complete resumption of the site for this purpose resulted in legislation and the initial removal of graves to a New Melbourne General Cemetery, established in 1906 in farmland on the railway line north of the city. Opposition to this ‘desecration’ came from the Anglican Archbishop Henry Lowther Clarke and Rabbi Dr Joseph Abrahams, but soon had a less conventional leader.

In 1918 Isaac Selby formed the Old Cemetery and Soldiers Memorial Union. Selby had migrated from New Zealand in 1882, establishing a precarious existence as a lecturer on religious and historical themes. In the 1890s he moved with his family to San Francisco pursuing an interest in spiritualism. He returned to Melbourne on his own to stand as a candidate for the first Federal parliament and on losing returned to America. Suspicious of his wife's relationship with the leader of the Universal Spiritual Association, he sought a divorce, and when the judge presiding over the case found in her favour he drew his pistol and fired a shot at him. He missed, and spent the next seven years in a lunatic asylum. Released in 1910 on the condition that he returned to Australia, he resumed his interest in history and public speaking. In the preface to his Old Pioneers Memorial History of Melbourne Selby explained that he had learnt the value of cemeteries as historical records from his visit to the Lone Hill Cemetery in San Francisco, and he had a firm belief in the undeniable veracity of inscriptions on headstones. Selby brought a sense of ‘manifest destiny’ to his reading of Victorian history and transposed the confidence of one golden city to another. He combined enthusiasm for saving the cemetery with ambition for an Australian Westminster Abbey on Flagstaff Hill to commemorate the pioneers and the war dead. The Returned Servicemen preferred the more stable leadership of Sir John Monash so he focused his attention on the pioneers. His advocacy failed; and the remaining graves, including that of Batman, were transferred in 1922. Selby then argued that Batman's Memorial should be placed on Flagstaff Hill but the City Council preferred the recommendation of the Historical Society and it was moved to Batman Avenue. His Old Pioneers Memorial Fund moved their annual commemorations to Batman's new grave in the cemetery that had long since adopted the name of its railway station: Fawkner. On January 27 1924 a new obelisk paid for by the City Council was erected over the grave and dedicated by Batman's great-grandson, and in the following year the pavement of Flinders Street in front of the Customs House was graced with the Batman Stone. Proposed by Colonel Richard Crouch, a member of the Historical Society, and paid for by him, it was set near to the spot where Batman supposedly proclaimed the place for a village.11

In 1929 the Library moved the Historical Museum from storage in the Buvelot basement to display in the mezzanine in Barry Hall. Opened by the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir William Irvine, the exhibition was augmented with loans organised by the Historical Society of Victoria and was refreshed at regular intervals with changing displays. In 1931 it was moved to the ground floor of the newly completed McAllan wing. In a talk on 3AW on Sunday, 11 December 1932, Chief Librarian Ernest Pitt explained its purpose. While teaching art or music of only local origin would be parochial, the purpose of teaching history was different. Knowledge of universal history was desirable, ‘…but knowledge of the history of one's own country is essential if one is to have an intelligent understanding of the problems which (we) have to face.’ For Pitt the purpose of the historical collection and its exhibition was to make the learning of history ‘…much more interesting and efficient by the ability to trace by means of documents, pictures, plans and photographs, the various landmarks of our history’. He then traces through this history the early maps of Australia showing Tasmania joined to the mainland, the extract of the journal of the Lady Nelson, a photostatic reproduction of the first day's orders at the settlement at Sullivan's Cove (carefully explaining that the originals were housed at the Public Record Office in London) to the first permanent settlements by Henty and Batman. Batman's Journal and the treaties were key exhibits, as was the depiction of the signing of the treaty in the painting by J. W. Burtt, on loan from Mr B. Worsley. For Pitt:

Pitt and his colleagues worked hard to develop an even grander display for the centenary celebrations, where pride in pioneers, and especially Batman, reached a new volume. Scheduled to begin in October 1934 to mark the Henty settlement, the celebrations were to continue until the Batman and Fawkner anniversaries in 1935. History was celebrated in many forms — ‘Cook's Cottage’ was brought to Melbourne by Russell Grimwade, Pioneer Women were given a commemorative garden in the Domain, and a new leadlight window was installed in the foyer of the Town Hall contrasting images of Batman's landing with the modern city. Batman was also depicted in a famous poster designed by Percy Trompf as a ghostly figure looking over the city that had replaced his predicted village. The Library exhibition was opened on 16 October 1934 by the President of Trustees, the Revd Dr. E. H. Sugden. Comprising items from the collection and loans, it occupied the ground and first floors of the McAllan wing. Organised chronologically, it included a Cobb and Co. Coach and the first Melbourne Cable Tram and traced developments up to the 1880s. Batman was there in the documents, the Burtt painting and Frederick Woodhouse's The First Settlers discover Buckley. For visitors wanting a souvenir, reproductions of the Melbourne and Geelong Deeds could be had for ‘eighteen pence the set of two’.13

The Centenary exhibition remained in place until July 1935 when it was reduced to a smaller display on the ground floor. In 1941 the threat of war saw the loan exhibits returned to their owners and the remaining items packed away for storage in the basement of the Dome. In 1944 the conglomerate Library, Museums and National Gallery of Victoria was dissolved and separate trusts were established for each institution. The Library was to remain on the original site, rebuilt to modern standards, and the formal transfer of the historical collection to its care cemented its role as the keeper of the State's memory.

Another centenary, this time of Separation from New South Wales, prompted renewed public interest in history. A committee was established by the Premier to devise appropriate celebrations and early in its deliberations settled on a proposal from Professor R. M. (Max) Crawford of the University of Melbourne for a special Library named for La Trobe and devoted to the Australian collections. The proposal was to emulate the Mitchell Library in Sydney and to serve in Crawford's view ‘not only historical students, but creative students in all fields who wish to draw inspiration from their own country.’ The committee worked hard to keep the project alive through changing governments and achieved the setting of a foundation stone for a La Trobe Library on Monday, 2 July 1951, on the Latrobe Street side of the Library site. The stone was inscribed as ‘commemorating the courage and the enterprise of the Pioneers,’ and the invitation to the ceremony listed the key manuscripts forming the ‘basis of this great collection’, the first of which was Batman's Journal.14

Batman and his village have had an uneasy relationship, as witnessed by changing representations in public art. His portrait is included in a curious Napier Waller mosaic (now hidden behind a false wall) of eight Aboriginal elders supporting nine representations of Victoria's pioneers. Commissioned by Commercial Union Insurance in 1963, it was placed in the foyer of their offices in Temple Court on Collins Street. Fifteen years later the City Council had Stanley Hammond create sculptures of Batman and Fawkner for the forecourt of the National Mutual building just over the road. These show youthful and purposeful pioneers, but the plaque that accompanies the sculptures disguises as much as it reveals. Revised in 1994, it makes no mention of Batman's or Fawkner's convict connections or their vexatious relationship and even describes the abandoned convict settlement at Sorrento more heroically as an ‘expedition’. A smaller plaque next to it makes the patriotic claim for Batman that he was ‘The only Australian born citizen to found an Australian Capital City.’ In 1992 the City Council moved Batman's memorial from Batman Avenue back to the Queen Victoria Market, where it now stands (minus its rear section) at the north-east corner of the car park. Another plaque was added to the monument. The original inscription states that the site of settlement chosen by Batman was ‘then unoccupied’ and the new plaque explains that ‘It is now clear that prior to the colonisation of Victoria, the land was inhabited and used by Aboriginal people’. Both the original and the new conveniently ignore Batman's observation of ‘natives on the shore’ in his journal note of a site for a village, and the fact that his treaties are a unique colonial acknowledgement of prior ownership.

By 1994 any sense of reverence was replaced with post-modern humour. The sculpture, The businessmen who brought their own lunch: Batman, Swanston and Hoddle by Alison Weaver and Paul Quinn, and donated by the people of Nauru in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the City of Melbourne, consists of three very thin and startled looking men in suits on the south west corner of Bourke and Swanston Streets. Revision and postmodern combine in another City Council commission completed the following year. The Another View Walking Trail — Pathway of the Rainbow Serpent was created by Ray Thomas, a member of the Gunnai (Gippsland) people and Megan Evans. Conceived as an ‘exploration of the complex relationship between Aborigines and European settlers’, the trail is accompanied by a booklet which describes the significance of 17 sites around Melbourne, 13 of which have new artworks installed as counterpoints to the traditional interpretation. The Batman Memorial at Queen Victoria Market is number three and the Batman Stone on Flinders Street is number eight. Here another plaque has been placed in the pavement representing Simon, a Wurrundjeri man, who threatened to kill the first settlers in 1835.15

Settler communities demand a founder, for foundation stories help define the moment at which history begins. For much of Australia these stories start with decisions made in a distant country and are muddied by the convict stain. Melbourne was different. Founded in defiance of restriction, proposed on the faint hope of a treaty, it was a new beginning. Mythologised Batman is the inspirational founder. Deconstructed Batman is the personification of a rampant capitalism. Isaac Selby, drawing on Bonwick and proclaiming beneath the monument championed by Shillinglaw, maintained that ‘Batman had the ideal. He dreamt before he acted…He had a vision and therefore is the true founder of Victoria.’ In stark contrast, Jeff and Jill Sparrow in their book Radical Melbourne see his ‘pioneering expedition’ as ‘motivated by nothing more noble than the desire for personal enrichment…’ and note that ‘the “treaty” Batman claimed to sign with the local Aborigines was regarded by many at the time as transparent cover for a gigantic land-grab.’ But what if we allow Batman an ambiguous place as a liminal figure caught between the certainty of his boat and the native shore? In 1997 the City Council commissioned the sculptor Fiona Foley and the sound artist Chris Knowles to create a piece to commemorate the Reconciliation Conference. Installed in front of the Town Hall, the sculpture consists of seven oblong pillars of smooth-faced sandstone inscribed in turn with the names of the items detailed as tribute in the treaties. Accompanied by the sounds of the bush, with occasional calls of coo-ee or low voices in Wurrundjeri, Foley saw the sculpture as posing questions: ‘How do we reconcile an exchange of functional and non functional goods in return for 600,000 acres of land and a yearly rent that was not honoured? As the history was written by the victors it is only now that the silent history of the indigenous populations is given a voice’. For Knowles, ‘In the midst of the chaos that has overtaken the land of the Wurrundjeri, this installation stands as a zone of reflection, contemplation and consideration.’ Despite the solidity of the stone, this monument, like the chance for reconciliation, was momentary. The sculpture was removed and is now installed in a below-ground courtyard between the car park and the steel and glass of the Melbourne Museum — more exhibit than experience.16

The Library continues to exhibit the Batman documents in the Changing Face of Victoria and has digitised them, together with pamphlets by Bonwick and Selby, enabling visitors on site and online to make their own interpretation. The City Council, it would seem, has no place now for Batman as the founder of Melbourne. The Batman Stone has been removed from the pavement on Flinders Street, and the official founding moment is the arrival of the Enterprise on 30 August 1835, commemorated with a park named for the vessel and annual events around Melbourne Day. Captain John Lancey, George Evans, William Jackson, Robert Hay Marr, Charles Wise, his wife Mary, and Evan Evans, who were on board, are now the founders — but hardly household names.17

I would like to record my thanks to Gerard Hayes, Shona Dewar, Des Cowley and Sandra Burt for their assistance in guiding my research for this article.