George Town is a straggling village lying two miles within the entrance of the Tamar; in its neighbourhood were found greenstone, basalt, and trappean rocks. Launceston, the northern capital of Tasmania, lies thirty miles up the river, or rather at the confluence of the two streams called the North and South Esk, which form it.
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.
We found that the Governor was attending not only to the present but the future welfare of the colonists, by examining into the most eligible spots for erecting lighthouses at the eastern entrance of Bass Strait, fronting the North-East extreme of Tasmania, the numerous dangers besetting which have been fatal to several vessels. These buildings will be lasting records of the benefits the colony derived from Sir John Franklin's government.
As we subsequently visited the Tamar, it is needless to give here the little information we gathered during our brief stay. Our observations were made on the south point of Lagoon Bay, where we found a whaleboat belonging to a party of sealers just arrived with birds' feathers and skins for the Launceston market. They had left their wives and families, including their dogs, on the islands they inhabit.
RETURN TO PORT PHILLIP.
On the morning of the 22nd, we were again out of the Tamar, and making the best of our way to Port Phillip for a meridian distance. There was little tide noticed in the middle of the Strait; the greatest depth we found was 47 fathoms, 68 miles North-West from the Tamar, where the nature of the bottom was a grey muddy sand or marl.
At noon on the 23rd, we entered Port Phillip, and ran up through the West Channel in three and three and a half fathoms.
Point Lonsdale, the west entrance point, being kept open of Shortland bluff--a cliffy projection about two miles within it--leads into the entrance; and a clump of trees on the northern slope of Indented Head, was just over a solitary patch of low red cliffs, as we cleared the northern mouth of the channel. From thence to Hobson's Bay, where we anchored at 3 P.M., the course is North by West 22 miles across a splendid sheet of water, of which the depth is 11 and 13 fathoms.
William Town, the seaport town of Australia Felix, named after his Majesty King William IV., stands on a very low piece of land forming the southern shore of Hobson's Bay, called Point Gellibrand, after a gentleman from Hobart, one of the first who brought stock to Port Phillip. He was lost in the bush in a very mysterious manner in 1834. No trace of him or his horse was found till 1842, when some of the natives showed where his mouldering bones lay. The point that bears his name scarcely projects sufficiently to afford large ships shelter from south winds in Hobson's Bay. In the North-West corner of the latter is the mouth of the Yarra-yarra river; but although only one mile and a half from the general anchorage, it is very difficult to be made out. The following anecdote will illustrate the difficulty of detecting the mouths of rivers in Australia. Soon after we anchored in Hobson's Bay, a small schooner passed, going to Melbourne. Several of the officers were at the time standing on the poop, and each selected a spot at which the schooner was to enter the river; and although, as I have before stated, we were only one mile and a half from it, none of us was right. A single tall bushy-topped tree, about a mile inland, rose over the schooner as she left the waters of Hobson's Bay.
William Town consisted, at that time, of only a few houses. One disadvantage under which this place labours is badness of water, while the country around it is a dead level, with clumps of very open woodland. The formation is whinstone, but the soil's fertile quality shows an absence of sandstone.