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 PREFACE.

One of the early writers on New South Wales, then better known as Botany Bay, relates an amusing anecdote of a certain colonist, who during a journey in a stage coach, happened to mention that he had lately returned from Sydney. His fellow passengers, who had previously been very agreeable and communicative, became on the instant taciturn, buttoned up their breeches pockets, and shunned any further intercourse with the stranger who was sufficiently hardened to admit a residence in so suspicious a locality. When I state that the substance of the following "rambling story" was gathered in the Bush of Australia, I trust my readers will not consider the example cited above worthy their imitation.

The permanent settlement of the part of New Holland with which we have more particularly to deal took place in the year 1835, when Mr. John Batman and a small Company of enterprising Colonists from Van Dieman's Land found on some