Victoria

The smallest (just over 227 000 square kilometres) mainland Australian State but second only to NSW in population, comprises the south-eastern corner of the Australian continent and is bordered by NSW in the north and South Australia in the west. Originally part of NSW, it was known as the Port Phillip District until its separation in 1851 from NSW, with which it shares the Murray River as a border. It remained the British colony of Victoria until its incorporation in the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Victoria was briefly settled in 1803-4 by a party under David Collins, and in 1826-28 the explorers Hamilton Hume and William Hovell reached Port Phillip Bay, on which the present capital, Melbourne, stands. Permanent settlement began in the middle 1830s, when John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner independently established themselves at Port Phillip, and the Hentys also crossed from Van Diemen's Land to settle further west at Portland Bay. After Sir Thomas Mitchell reached Portland Bay overland from NSW in 1836, the 'Australia Felix' part of Victoria was quickly settled by squatters, who included the novelist 'Rolf Boldrewood'. Victoria made rapid progress after the discovery of gold, and for a period in the 1880s, the heyday of 'Marvellous Melbourne', was the most populous Australian colony. The progress of Victoria in the decades following the discovery of gold is an important theme in Henry Handel Richardson's trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930). A three-volume social history, The Victorians, was published in 1984 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of European settlement in Victoria. The volumes were written by Richard Broome, Tony Dingle and Susan Priestley. A similar 1984 celebratory volume was Don Garden's Victoria: A History.

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