John Batman

At 38 years old, John Batman physical status not available right now. We will update John Batman's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

John Batman (21 January 1801 – 6 May 1839) was an Australian grazier, entrepreneur, and explorer.

He lived in the north-east of Van Diemen's Land Colony in the 1820s and later as a leading member of the Port Phillip Association, aiming for a new settlement there.

He is best known for his contributions to the establishment of the Yarra River, which would have morphed into the city of Melbourne, the new Colony of Victoria's capital and one of Australia's most significant towns. Batman is a controversial figure in Van Diemen's Land and Victoria due to his interactions with Aboriginal peoples.

Batman was a "rogue, thief, deceitful, and liar, a murderer of blacks and the vilest man I've ever known," according to John Glover, who lived in Van Diemen's Land in 1835, and he has continued to discuss it as a point of considerable historical curiosity and debate. The colonial government in New South Wales did not recognise the treaty as an instrument, blanket, and food in exchange for thousands of hectares of property stretching from Melbourne to Geelong.

Though his proposed deal was exploitative, Batman's treaty remains the only attempt by a European to engage Australian Aboriginals in a formal or political manner rather than simply claiming property outright.

Early life

On the ship Ganges, Batman's English parents, William and Mary Bat(e)man, arrived in Sydney in 1797. William had been taken to the Colony of New South Wales for obtaining stolen salt (a precursor to making gunpowder), but Mary and their children Maria and Robert accompanied him as a free passenger. John, the couple's second son, was born in 1801 at Rosehill, Parramatta, today a suburb of Sydney, but at the time one of the first farming contracts of the colony was established.

William started a timber-yard business that flourished, and he owned numerous buildings and the Duke of Wellington hotel licence in Church Street, Paramatta, Paramatta, which was also listed as a tourist attraction. William changed Bateman's surname to hopefully escape convict stigma in 1810. William died in 1834 and Mary in 1840.

Later life

At the western end of Collins Street, Batman and his family landed at what became known as Batman's Hill. In April 1836, he built a house at the base of the hill in Tasmania and brought his wife, former convict Elizabeth Callaghan, and their seven children to Melbourne. In November 1837, John Watson's son, John, was born in November 1837.

Batman's health soon declined after 1835, when syphilis had disfigured and crippled him, leaving him in constant pain. He was unable to walk and was forced to abandon squatting and enter into trading and investment by the end of 1837, but his finances were greatly reduced by his reliance on delegating work to others. As the disease eroded his nose, he became ill at night, causing him to wear a bandage to mask his ruined face. Batman was cared for by his Aboriginal servants, who carried him about in a wicker perambulator in his last months of his life.

Following Batman's death on May 6, 1839, his widow and family departed from the house at Batman's Hill, and the government had requisitioned the house for administrative offices. Batman's will, which was created in 1837, was out of date at his death, as a majority of the funds bequeathed to his children had already been sold. Eliza Batman, Batman's former clerk who had remarried in 1841 to Batman's former clerk, William Willoughby, had only been left £5 in the will by her bewildered first husband, who had only been widowed for years. Even after Batman's heir-at-law, John Dutton, drowned in the Yarra River in 1845, the investigation ate what was left of Batman's estate.

Source