"Well, captain, you may know something about a ship, but I'll be blowed if you know anything about a horse."
That observation was not entered in any report, but the sergeant was fined 2 pounds for "insolence and insubordination." The sum of 60,899 pounds was voted for police services in 1844, and Captain Smith was paid out of it. All the revenue went to Sydney, and very little of it found its way to Melbourne, so that Mr. Latrobe's Government was sometimes deprived of the necessaries of life.
Alberton was gazetted as a place for holding Courts of Petty Sessions, and Messrs. John Reeve and John King were appointed Justices of the Peace for the new district.
Then Michael Shannon met James Reading on the Port Albert Road, robbed him of two orders for money and a certificate of freedom, and made his way to Melbourne. There he was arrested, and remanded by the bench to the new court at Alberton. But there was no court there, no lock-up, and no police; and Mr. Latrobe, with tears in his eyes, said he had no cash whatever to spend on Michael Shannon.
The public journals denounced Gippsland, and said it was full of irregularities. Therefore, on September 13th, 1843, Charles J. Tyers was appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands for the district. He endeavoured to make his way overland to the scene of his future labours, but the mountains were discharging the accumulated waters of the winter and spring rainfall, every watercourse was full, and the marshes were impassable.
The commissioner waited, and then made a fresh start with six men and four baggage horses. Midway between Dandenong and the Bunyip he passed the hut of Big Mat, a new settler from Melbourne, and obtained from him some information about the best route to follow. It began to rain heavily, and it was difficult to ford the swollen creeks before arriving at the Big Hill. At Shady Creek there was nothing for the horses to eat, and beyond it the ground became treacherous and full of crabholes. At the Moe the backwater was found to be fully a quarter of a mile wide, encumbered with dead logs and scrub, and no safe place for crossing the creek could be found. During the night the famishing horses tore open with their teeth the packages containing the provisions, and before morning all that was left of the flour, tea, and sugar was trodden into the muddy soil and hopelessly lost; not an ounce of food could be collected. There was no game to be seen; every bird and beast seemed to have fled from the desolate ranges. Mr. Tyers had been for many years a naval instructor on board a man-of-war, understood navigation and surveying, and, it is to be presumed, knew the distance he had travelled and the course to be followed in returning to Port Philip; but there were valleys filled with impenetrable scrub, creeks often too deep to ford, and boundless morasses, so that the journey was made crooked with continual deviations. If a black boy like McMillan's Friday had accompanied the expedition, his native instinct would, at such a time, have been worth all the science in the world.