Port Phillip
| Port Phillip | ||
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 Memorial stone in memory of the first European settlers in Port Phillip in 1803 |
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| Waters | Bass Street | |
| Land mass | Australia (continent) | |
| Geographical location | 38 ° 9 ′ S , 144 ° 52 ′ E | |
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| width | approx. 50 km | |
| depth | approx. 50 km | |
| Tributaries | Yarra River | |
 Beacon Cove Beach, Port Melbourne |
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Port Phillip is a large bay on the south coast of Australia , on which the metropolis Melbourne ( Victoria ) is located.
history
Port Phillip was formed about 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age when the sea level began to rise again. The valley of the Yarra River was flooded and is now the eastern bay of Port Phillip. Already before the bay was formed 20,000 years ago (according to some sources 40,000 years ago) Aboriginal peoples settled the surrounding area.
The first Europeans to reach Port Phillip were the crew of Lady Nelson , who discovered the bay on February 15, 1802 under the command of the Australian explorer John Murray . Murray named the bay Port King after the then Governor of New South Wales Philip Gidley King . The governor, in turn, renamed the bay Port Phillip in memory of his predecessor Arthur Phillip .
About 10 weeks after Murray's sighting of the bay, Matthew Flinders and the Investigator's crew found the entrance to the bay. Matthew Flinders was not aware Murray was already there.
Based on the reports of Murray and Flinders, Governor Philip Gidley King sent Lieutenant Charles Robbins on the ship Cumberland to fully explore the bay. Crew member Charles Grimes was the first European to walk along the bay and discovered the mouth of the Yarra on February 2, 1803 .
King decided to establish a penal colony in Port Phillip. In October 1803, a group led by Lieutenant Colonel David Collins, consisting of 400 people, created the Hobart settlement . This location is on the Mornington Peninsula in what is now Melbourne 's Sorrento district . Due to a lack of fresh water and timber, this first European settlement in Victoria was abandoned in May 1804. Collins sailed with his people to Tasmania , where they founded what is now the capital, Hobart.
A convict named William Buckley escaped the penal colony in a stolen canoe. He lived in a cave near Point Lonsdale on the west side of the entrance to the bay ("The Rip").
The Port Phillip area remained uninhabited until 1835. Then settlers from Tasmania, under the leadership of John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner , who had lived as children in the "Hobart" settlement on Port Phillip Bay, founded Melbourne on the lower reaches of the Yarra. John Batman met William Buckley , who was helpful in talking and negotiating with the Aborigines.
Geelong was founded in 1838 and became the main port of the ever-growing wool industry in the western wetlands. Geelong remained the leading settlement in the bay until the 1851 gold rush gave Melbourne a decisive advantage due to its closer proximity to the sites and made it the most important city in Victoria. As a consequence of the Jervois-Scratchley reports of 1877 on the defense of the Australian colonies, fortifications were built at the entrances to the larger ports in Australia from 1888, such as Fort Nepean and Fort Pearce in Port Phillip Bay. Fort Nepean is said to have fired the first shot on the British side in World War I when it stopped the German freighter Pfalz of North German Lloyd , which was leaving Melbourne .
The suburbs of St Kilda and Brighton gradually emerged along the southeastern coast of the city, and further south the towns of Sorrento and Portsea . The swampier shore of the western part of the bay was not so popular. As a result, there were hardly any residential areas in this area. A base of the Royal Australian Air Force , Point Cook and the Werribee Sewage Farm are located in this area. Over the past twenty years, the population has grown faster along the western side of the bay.
Web links
Competition venues for the 1956 Summer Olympics
