BIRTH OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA. NOVEMBER 1850
On November 11th 1850, citizens of the Port Phillip District (as Victoria was then known) received the news that they were to gain independence from New South Wales… And the new Colony was to become known as Victoria.
The news came just 15 years after the founding of Melbourne in 1835. Furthermore, it came at an opportune time for the new Colony, given the unexpected events of the following year that nobody could have foreseen…
The population of Victoria in 1850 was around 65,000. Gold was discovered the following year (1851) and within a decade the population was over half a million. Victoria would become the richest Colony in Australia and Melbourne itself, the wealthiest city in the entire British Empire, aside from London.
On November 10 a journalist with the Melbourne Herald named Edmund Finn took delivery of some newspapers which had just arrived from the UK. The news was almost 3½ months old, the average length of a voyage.
He read that Queen Victoria would assent to an Act to separate the Port Phillip District from New South Wales following the passing of the ‘Australian Colonies Bill‘ through both Houses of the British Parliament on August 1st.
The new Colony was to be known as Victoria.
Finn organised a special printing of the Melbourne Herald and saw to it that this was distributed immediately. The separation was the result of a decade of advocacy and was greeted with many days of jubilant celebrations across Melbourne.
Please expand the photo to read the small text. The wording is interesting including…
“The long oppressed and long buffeted Port Phillip is at length an INDEPENDENT COLONY.
FOOTNOTE: New South Wales lost its northern land in 1859 when Queensland was proclaimed a separate Crown Colony.