Page 24 - 1978 NAB Calendar Early Australian Maritime Life Part Two

THE LANDING-PLACE AND MARKET RESERVE IN
1839 with its imposing turret and its balcony
Although much less elaborate than Liardet has
NOVEMBER shown, there was by 1839 a kind of office at the overlooking the river. The queue at the police-
Liardet’s view painted in 1875 suggests that this site on wharf. It was associated with a refreshment booth, station (back right) may have been symbolic to
Liardet of the social climate of early Melbourne.
the Yarra River was still unimproved when he arrived in where ships’ captains waiting for their papers could Was there perhaps a rush to bail out erring
1839. He shows the open space occupied by some of take a cup of coffee if the walk to the Lamb Inn for friends or to make complaintsabout the frequently

the crude buildings of the earliest phase of settlement stronger stimulants seemed likely to interfere with erratic behaviour of junior officials?
and dominated by a collection of huge tree stumps. But their supervision of cargo handling.
it was nevertheless at the hub of commerce. The figure In the background Liardet has rather jumbled the Seen as a whole, whatever its inaccuracies, thin
on the extreme right of the picture is Richard Webb, first town. Some of its key buildings are on the right sites painting is a fascinating reminiscence of a
collector of customs, of whom Liardet wrote in his but have been turned askew, others face correctly settlement poised between the primitive and the

manuscript, ‘Mr. Webb had not any accommodation for but are in the wrong position. He seems to have sophisticated, where polished boots, frock-coats
an office and was compelled to use his hat for a desk made a collection of the places he remembered most and top hats were worn with ceremony amid dust
to sign the ships’ papers’. To emphasize this point, keenly. Many of them are depicted individually in his and mud.
Webb’s hat and papers are shown being whisked away other water-colours. (This note was written from “Liardet’s water-
by a breeze that has also set his hair and coat-tails colours of early Melbourne’’. Source:published by
flying. One of the few to be shown fairly accurately is Melbourne University Press on behalf of The
Fawkner’s two-storey hotel. It stands to the right of Library Council of Victoria.)
the picture at the corner of Collins and Market Streets
W. F. E. Liardet: See first note.
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