John Batman Memorial 1881

BROWN, J. W.

Registration number

1086726

Artist/maker

BROWN, J. W.

Title

John Batman Memorial

Production date

1881

Medium

bluestone

Dimensions (H x W x D)

450 x 100 x 100 cm

Inscriptions

Upper plinth: JOHN BATMAN / BORN AT PARRAMATTA N.S.W. 1800 / DIED AT MELBOURNE 6TH MAY 1839 / HE ENTERED PORT PHILLIP HEADS / 29TH MAY 1835 / AS LEADER OF AN EXPEDITION WHICH / HE HAD ORGANISED IN LAUNCESTON V.D.L. / TO FORM A SETTLEMENT AND FOUNDED ONE / ON THE SITE OF MELBOURNE THEN UNOCCUPIED Brass plate attached to lower plinth: The city of Melbourne acknowledges that the historical events and perceptions referred to by / this memorial are inaccurate. An apology is made to indigenous people and to the traditional / owners of this land for the wrong beliefs of the past and the personal upset caused. Lower plinth: THIS MONUMENT WAS / ERECTED / BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION IN / VICTORIA / 1881 / CIRCUMSPICE / J W BROWN / CARLTON

Credit line

Erected by public subscription, 1881
City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection

Keywords

John Batman Memorial, J.W. Brown, Bluestone monument, Queen Victoria Market, 1881

Summary

Location: Queen Victoria Market Bluestone monument with upper and lower plinths. A low fence surrounds it. John Batman is best known as a founding father of Melbourne. A prosperous Tasmanian farmer, he looked to Victoria to increase his grazing lands. In 1835, Batman made his controversial ‘treaty’ with Wurundjeri elders and returned to Launceston to make arrangements for the new settlement. On returning to Victoria some months later, he found John Pascoe Fawkner had already settled the site of Melbourne. With his health declining, he settled on Batman’s Hill, near the present site of the Southern Cross Railway Station. He died of syphilis just four years later in 1839. Batman was buried in the old Melbourne cemetery (since 1922 the Queen Victorian Market), but no headstone marked his grave. When interest in Batman arose 40 years later it was near impossible to establish his burial place. Once found, a bluestone monument was erected in his memory. In 1922, the cemetery was de-registered and the monument moved to the north bank of the Yarra at Swan Street Bridge. Batman’s remains were exhumed and re-interred in the Fawkner Cemetery, named, ironically, in honour of his archrival. The monument was later returned to its original site.