Page:The History of Ballarat.djvu/36

 crossed, and the stock was easily passed over. At the Ovens they found a dry river-bed; Lake Burrumbeet was also dry that year. When Messrs. Hepburn and Coghill had left sheep at the Campaspe and Brown's Creek on their way, they pushed on, and from Mount Alexander they descried the Smeaton Hills, and, continuing their journey, found and took up the unoccupied country there. Smeaton Hill was called Quaratwong by the natives, and the hill between the Glenlyon road and Smeaton Hill was called Moorakoil. Captain Hepburn, a seafaring man originally, was one of the Hepburns of East Lothian, Scotland, and Smeaton was named by him after the East Lothian estate held by his relative. Sir Thomas Hepburn. Mr. Coghill was the first to plough land at the creek which bears his name, and in which locality there now is found one of the broadest and richest tracts of farming land in Victoria. He brought with him overland a plough, a harrow, and the parts of a hand steel flour-mill. In 1839 he ploughed and sowed wheat, and thus grew and ground the first corn grown there. In 1841 Captain Hepburn erected a water-mill for corn on Birch's Creek; that was the first mill of that kind. Birch's Creek was named after the brothers Arthur and Cecil Birch, who, with the Rev. Mr. Irvine, came overland soon after Messrs. Hepburn and Coghill, and settled at the Seven Hills. Besides the run at Coghill's Creek, taken up by Mr. Coghill for some others of his family. Cattle Station Hill was also taken by him. This run lay between Glendaruel and the Seven Hills, and was part of the purchased estate belonging to the Hepburns. The late Captain Hepburn long acted as a justice of the peace, and he was one of the squatters whom McCombie mentions as having taken part in a meeting held on the 4th of June, 1844, in front of the Mechanics' Institute, Melbourne, to protest against Sir G. Gipps' squatting policy, and to urge forward the movement for the separation of Port Phillip from New South Wales. The squatters mustered on horseback that day on Batman's Hill, and thence rode to the meeting in Collins street, the "equestrian order" thus giving an early example of the right freemen have, even in a Crown colony, to air public grievances publicly and fearlessly.