I landed
here from that whale-boat on the 30th of last May, and I have been
waiting for you ever since. In a few weeks we had about a hundred
and fifty people camped here. They came mostly in cutters from
Melbourne, looking for work or looking for runs. They said men were
working for half-a-crown a day without rations on the road between
Liardet's beach and the town. But there was no work for them here;
and, as their provisions soon ran short, they had to go away or
starve. I stopped here, and have been starving most of the time.
Some went back in the cutters and some overland.
"Brodribb and Hobson came here over the mountains with four Port
Phillip blacks, and they decided to look for a better way by the
coast. I landed them and their four blacks at the head of Corner
Inlet. They were attacked by the Western Port blacks near the River
Tarwin, but they frightened them away by firing their guns. The four
Port Phillip blacks who were carrying the ammunition and provisions
ran away too; and the two white men had nothing to eat for two or
three days until they made Massey and Anderson's station on the Bass,
where they found their runaway blacks.
"William Pearson and his party were the next who left the Port. They
took the road over the mountains, and lived on monkey bears until
they reached Massey and Anderson's.
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