CONFIRMING DARK PAST OF SUBURB’S NAME

IT is timely that the community is considering that the bell should toll for Bell Post Hill.

There is little dispute that the bell erected at Bell Post Hill was used by the squatters Stead and Cowie to help protect them from the Neerer balug clan of the Wathaurong people.

John Cowie and David Stead briefly established a run on this land, and erected their bell, in 1836.

The first, long-established, dispossessed settlers were the members of the Wathaurong tribe.

Cowie and Stead had cast lots with John Pascoe Fawkner and John Batman for country and squatted in the Corio Bay district.

They occupied a tract of country extending from the east bank of the Moorabool River to the shores of Corio Bay.

Coming from Van Diemen’s Land, they brought a large ship’s bell.

The bell was in place for about two years.

In 1838 they moved to the upper reaches of the Moorabool River, and took the bell with them.

While there are no written records of Aboriginal deaths at this time, the oral history of local Aboriginal people may record differently.

Those who erected the bell recorded the Neerer balug clan, who were illegally displaced, as being very troublesome.

The benign European view was that Stead, a Cornish Quaker with an apparent strong love of peace, had the bell erected in the belief that the local Aboriginal people would not make an attack on discovering that the settlers were prepared for them.

Later European settlers on the land at Bell Post Hill were John McWhirter and then John Calvert, who constructed the large, still-existing mansion Morongo. It is now part of the Kardinia International College.

European squatters and settlers frequently named their properties with local Aboriginal names.

It would seem that John Calvert named his homestead from the local name Morongoo.

There is much more about the history of Bell Post Hill in my book

Kangaroo and Canoe: First Peoples and Early European Australia. It is recently published by Australian Scholarly Publishing (www.scholarly.info).

Dr John Cary