Free Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution by Peter Fitzsimons

is to be found at the end of the long carriage driveway on the estate of Jolimont en Murs , past the grotto, shrubberies and bountiful diamond-and-sickle-shaped garden beds in the latest style, to the flowering-creeper-adorned house where Charles La Trobe and his family live. It is a place known by many a loyal subject as ‘The Chalet for its uniquely Continental form.
    ‘Small as our establishment is,’ La Trobe had described it to his older sister Charlotte in England, ‘I assure you that there is not a more comfortable, well regulated and more tasty one in this part of the world both without and within.’
    Though modest by London standards, the estate is really something compared to the rest of Melbourne and, though the setting is a triumph of taste rather than treasure, at least the glassware is crystal and the silverware actual silver. Invitations are highly prized and, on this particular night, while Charles La Trobe presides at the head of the table and one of the guests is regaling the assembly with a very jolly story of how in India – if you can believe it! – they use leaves of the banana plant for plates, he is interrupted by the sound of thundering hooves and carriage wheels coming to a halt on the gravel driveway. In an instant, the insistent pounding of at least two sticks comes on the door. Whoever has arrived is in a desperate hurry.
    Charles La Trobe is not perturbed, however, and as one of the servants answers the summons he neatens up his neckerchief and comments that perhaps the pounding on the door has come from ‘a new governor in search of a night’s lodging!’
    Begging your leave, Your Honour, but the new arrivals prove to be the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, William Nicholson, and his immediate predecessor in the post, Augustus Frederick Adolphus Greeves. Nicholson, who for some reasons has a rag tied around one of his fingers, is flourishing an Adelaide newspaper that has just arrived – highly prized, for that city usually gets its news from England between five and eight days earlier than Melbourne.
    ‘Your Honour,’ he says, ‘allow me to draw your attention to the fact that the Separation Bill has passed through both Houses. The news is spreading quickly, and I shall be unable to restrain the people.’
    La Trobe, of course, understands only too well the import of the revelation, that the British Parliament had actually passed this Separation Bill on 1 August, a little over three months earlier. It is what his colony has been straining towards for well over a decade: separation from New South Wales. It means that its six parliamentarians will return from the New South Wales Legislative Council in Sydney, and, if elected or appointed, instead be part of a separate Legislative Council set up in Melbourne . . .
    They would have, as the other colonies would have, their own Constitution, their own Supreme Court! In the Port Phillip District – soon to be renamed ‘Victoria’ under the legislation, in honour of the Queen – they would no longer be subject to Sydney’s capricious whims but would be able to rule themselves, to make laws and gain control over general revenue from taxes and levies on the colony’s subjects (even if the Crown would retain control over the revenue from the sale of land).
    La Trobe – who realises he is about to go from being a mere Superintendent to a Lieutenant-Governor, while the Governor of the senior colony, New South Wales, Sir Charles Augustus FitzRoy, will be installed as the ‘Governor-General’ – is gracious enough to allow that the people may celebrate that night, at which point the Lord Mayor thanks him profusely and immediately heads off to light his private bonfire, the signal the good people of Melbourne have been waiting for that their general jubilation may be unfettered.
    And of course it does not stop there. For not only do those celebrations continue well into the night, but the general joy is so profound that they go on for many days