by Flagstaff Hill has been there from the start of colonial Melbourne: cemetery, signal post, scientific observatory, and lunching spot.
Flagstaff Gardens is one of the primary green spaces in central Melbourne. At the edge of the city’s legal precinct, in the north of the CBD, it provides a small oasis for scores of shoppers and office workers each day.
The gardens slope upward to a hill in the middle of the park. Here you can find benches (always full), a flagpole, and a small memorial.
This is ‘Flagstaff Hill’; when Europeans first founded Melbourne, one of the most significant locations in the city.
While the tribes of the Kulin Nation have lived on the lands around Melbourne for thousands of years, its European history is short.
The first settlers arrived in 1835. Two parties came by ship within a few months of one another; one lead by John Batman and one by John Fawker.
Both brought settlers looking to take advantage of the area’s potential for agriculture.
Melbourne was founded on the banks of the Yarra River, adjacent to a small waterfall that prevented further passage upstream (see, The Yarra Waterfall). The original township was modest; a cluster of wooden buildings, situated around the pier.
A few hundred Europeans arrived with the first ships, which swelled to a few thousand by decade’s end.
One of the requirements for the new town was a cemetery.
Melbourne’s first was to be located on a quiet spot just outside settlement. The site chosen was a low rise on vacant land to the northwest, which was given the name ‘Burial Hill.’
The first burial took place there in 1836. Five more bodies would be interred, on the slope facing town, over the next year.
But Melbourne’s expansion soon meant that Burial Hill was enveloped. The hilltop site was also not suitable for the growing number of deceased people.
In 1837, a new, larger cemetery was founded further west, where the Queen Victoria Markets stand today. The graves on Burial Hill were initially left where they were, with a small picket fence placed around their location.
In the 19th century, Melbourne was one of the world’s most isolated cities. The only nearby, Western settlements were in Sydney and Hobart; these were equally small, and remote.
The only link to the outside world was by sea. Cargo, news, and people would come and go from the colony’s dock, which was built at Sandridge on the shore of Port Phillip Bay.
As the dock could be seen from the top of Burial Hill, a signal station was built there. As ships came and went, signal flags would be raised and lowered, communicating their movements to the public.
A cannon shot would announce new arrivals.
Shipping news was posted on a bulletin board at the flagstaff, and people awaiting cargo, letters or loved ones would visit each day. The many windowed signal office also kept records of natural phenomena, including an earthquake in 1847.
‘Adrift in Melbourne’, Robyn Annear
Burial Hill came to be known as, ‘Flagstaff Hill’.
In 1841 a time ball was added, that was dropped at the top of the hour. People would synchronise their timepieces to this, setting the official Melbourne time.
On 1 July 1851, Victoria was formally made an independent colony. Prior to this, it had officially been part of New South Wales, and governed from Sydney.
Independence was the culmination of a long lobbying campaign from Victoria’s leaders, and was cause for much celebration in Melbourne. The city’s excitement found focus at Flagstaff Hill, where the Independence Proclamation was read in public for the first time, and the canon fired to mark the moment.
A bonfire was lit in the evening, so large it got out of control and burnt down the signal station’s outhouse.
Later, the celebrations would continue in the Royal Botanic Gardens, where people gathered around a giant Eucalypt that came to be known as, ‘The Separation Tree’. The revelry lasted several days.
The arrival of the telegraph in Australia ended the usefulness of Flagstaff Hill as a signal station. The telegraph reached Melbourne in 1854, station operations were curtailed three years later.
It had become such a part of the city’s life, a public campaign was organised to keep the station running privately. Funds were raised, but by this time the Government had already removed the flagpole.
While the signal station receded into history, its main building would soon find a new purpose.
Georg Balthasar von Neumayer was a German scientist, who came to Melbourne in 1857 to study magnetism.
In the mid-19th century, interest in the natural sciences increased greatly. Magnetism, with its mysterious, invisible forces, was one of the most popular areas of study.
That the Earth was magnetic had been discovered 200 years beforehand. Now teams of scientists spread out around the world, mapping the planet’s magnetic field; it was thought a greater of understanding of this would improve weather forecasting, and nautical navigation.
Many of these expeditions had royal patronage, and utilised the latest scientific equipment. This frenzy of enquiry would be given the name, ‘The Magnetic Crusade’.
Caught up in this spirit, Neumayer travelled to Australia to study the country’s magnetic fields. In 1852, he spent time at an existing observatory in Hobart; five years later he returned to establish his own in Melbourne.
Backed by King Maximillian of Germany, he brought £2000 worth of technical equipment with him.
The state government were happy to allow Neumayer’s study to proceed, as long as they bore no cost. He would make up the monetary shortfall with fundraising from the local German community.
Finances settled, the government then rejected his request to work out of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Instead, they offered him the former signal station on Flagstaff Hill.
Neumayer set up his observatory, and added several buildings to the site.
He had a complex of ‘magnetic rooms’ built around the old station. There was the sunken, sixteen sided Horary House, the Absolute House, and a domed meridian room. Magnetic observations and meteorological readings were made on the hour, around the clock.
‘Adrift in Melbourne’
The buildings were constructed from wood, with brass and copper nails, and partially buried to reduced interference. Neumayer’s precise instruments were placed on sandstone pillars, and trigonometrically located to each other.
As well as taking readings, the observatory also gathered information from other sources. Weather reports were received from around the state, and notices posted at customs requested all arriving ships to bring their logbooks for analysis.
Neumayer employed a sizable staff, to manage this work. He divided his time between the observatory, and the field.
In 1860, Neumayer joined the expedition led by Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills, attempting the first north-south crossing of Australia. Wills had been one of Neumayer’s assistants at the observatory, while the scientist had sat on the expedition’s organising committee.
Joining the party at Swan Hill, Neumayer travelled as far as the Darling River in western New South Wales, taking magnetic readings. But he felt unable to leave his work in Melbourne too long, so then turned back.
Burke and Wills would continue north, eventually reaching the Gulf of Carpentaria in February 1861. But poor planning and lack of bush experience would cost them: both men, and five others, would perish on the return journey, when they ran out of supplies.
Only former soldier John King would survive, and return to Melbourne alive.
Neumayer’s travels also took him across Victoria.
Between 1858 and 1864, he undertook his own expeditions on horseback. Logging 11 000 kilometres, he completed a detailed magnetic survey of the state, establishing hundreds of meteorological stations at the same time.
Data from these would pour into Melbourne subsequent.
In 1862, the government placed Neumayer in charge of meteorological study across Victoria. They also granted his wish to relocate to the Botanic Gardens.
He held this and other official posts until the early 1870s, when he returned to Germany.
By the time Neumayer departed, Flagstaff Hill had fallen into poor condition.
One side of the hill had been quarried, with the extracted rock broken into gravel that was used to improve Melbourne’s streets. This left a large crater, on one side of the park.
Neumayer’s scientific buildings were demolished in 1863, with no oversight of the area once he left, many of the trees were cut down for firewood. The hill was also used for dumping rubbish.
With the city around the site growing rapidly, local residents finally began to complain, petitioning the State Government to take action.
This task was assigned to Clement Hodgkinson, Deputy Surveyor General. Hodgkinson had the quarry landfilled, then oversaw a systematic program of plantings, that restored the park’s appearance.
The six graves from the old cemetery were relocated as well. In 1871 they were moved to Fawkner Cemetery.
The park was formally renamed Flagstaff Gardens, and protected by an act of Parliament in 1873.
The gardens have been refined in the years since, and now feature manicured paths and flower beds. Several small information boards record the details of the Flagstaff and Neumayer; a stone obelisk marks the former site of the cemetery.
Standing atop the hill, looking towards the bay, the view from Flagstaff Hill now shows a sea of unbroken modern buildings.
