AN AUSTRALIAN PIONEER.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 59, 9 March 1880, Page 1

AN AUSTRALIAN PIONEER.

[From the Argus Feb. 2.] Seventy-sir years ago last Friday a certain ship Bailed out of Port Philip Heads to seek aorefcs Bass's Straits, Bomewhere on the banks of the D?rwent, a spot to which might be transferred the penal settlement which she had been sent out to form on our shores. Her keel was the third that fu trowel our waters. We on hardly be sufficiently thankful that it left no trace. The Ocean was the name of the transport whiob brought hither this cargo of " rattlesnakes/ together with some few artizina and settlers. She had been escorted by a line of battle ship, called the Calcutta, on board which was the ofli i»l staff of the expedition. But it waa war .time, and so soon as the oaptain of the frigate bad seen Governor Collins and bis settlement fairly landed at Point Nepean, he eaileJ away on his business, and subsequently, after having made a stout fight of it with the enemy, was captured, and passed a few years : more or losb agreeably in a French prison. When Coohrane blew the Calcutta into the air with the tricolor flying at her peak, in the Basque Roada affair, no doubt Captain Woodriffe partook of an extra glass of grog at this naval mess established at Verdun, for he was a true tar of the old school, and,' it ia satisfactory to know, ended bis days in "Greenwich tier." Meantime the settlement on the Tootgavook Sand Hills did not go on at all well. Collins sighed for an island all to himself. Governor King, at Sydney — a practised pen-and-ink man— with the little Ladj Nelson for a postman, could sit at any time " come senior offioer " over him. So he, with many economic twinges, again chartered the Ocean tb carry him to Van Diemen'e Land, and on January 30, 1804, departed from this "uninhabitable country," and finally founded Hobart Town, wfcere he rests,

after life's fitful fever, in the" chancel of a church which old Tasmanians assert waa called St. David's, after him. Among the adventurous settlers who accompanied CJ-overnor Collins to the future scene of hie kind-hearted labors, was the widow of a naval officer; and her family of four daughters and & son. He husband, a captain in the navy, had been killed in the expedition to Egypt. There were thousands of such suffering women under the dreadful war oloud in which old England was at this time enveloped. , Lord Hobart, the then Secretary for the Colonies, advised Mrs Hobbs to emigrate, and so it oame : about that the little family ' were among oar 1 first colonists, who quitted our shorea 76 years ago, and the last of whom was on Friday, on the very anniversary, laid in his grave in the St. Kilda cemetery. 4 life so unpretentious as that of Mr. James Hobbs might claim to avoid public notice, bat that in his 88 years he has seen, if not exactly the birth, at any rate the growth, of the seven great colonies of Australia. He was born at Saltash, in Cornwall, and at 10 years of age waa put into the service, where, as they say, he was reared "between two guns." After his mother and sisters had settled at Hobart Town, , he joined His Majesty's ship Buffalo at Sydney in 1805, and when that ship departed for England with Governor King in 1806, he was drafted with the gunner, the boatswain, the carpenter, and nine seamen into the Porpoise, Captain Porteous, of which John Oxley, afterwards Surveyor- General of New South Wales, was the first lieutenant* The curious reader will find some interesting particulars of the tyrannical' conduct of "Bounty Bligh," the Governor at Sydney, in the Chronicle of Port Phillip, by Mr H. G. Garner, which that gentleman gathered from Mr. Hobbs. •■ The stbries that might be told 'are far beyond our present limits. A man who' has seen, and spoken wiih Australian Governors by the dozen, who remembers the time when His Excellency, asking a guest to dinner, requested him at the same time to bring his loaf of bread with him, would have many odd tales to tell. Throughout his long life Mr. Hobbs preserved a character of great energy and staunch integrity. . IFoj? some years he was in the Customs department of this colony, whence he re r tired with a pension of £137 10s in 1854. He was married to a daughter of Mr Joseph Hone, the master of the Supreme Court of Hobart . Town (brother of the celebrated William Hone), by whom he had a family of .12 children. To them and to his numerous friends it must be a satisfaction to know the good name he has left behind, and his death may serve to remind his fellow-colonists that there is now living but one other person who was present at the famous attempted settlement' in 1803. The portrait and aome further particulars respecting Mr. Hobbs may be found in the curious volume, " Earl/ Historical Records of Porfc Phillip," which was published by the Victorian Government.