General Sir Richard Bourke, an Irish-born British…

General Sir Richard Bourke, an Irish-born British Army officer who has served as Governor of New South Wales from 1831, declares the city today known as Melbourne the administrative capital of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales, and will commission the first plan for the Hoddle Grid, named after its designer, in 1837.

Later in 1836 the settlement is named Melbourne after the British Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, who resides in the village of Melbourne in Derbyshire. (Melbourne is today the second most populous city in Australia and the capital of Victoria.)

English colonist, farmer, and businessman John Batman, a leading member of the Port Phillip Association, had been one of the first settlers of the Melbourne area, having in May and June 1835 explored the area that is now central and northern Melbourne.

Batman, after negotiated a transaction for six hundred thousand acres (twenty-four hundred square kilometers) of land from eight Wurundjeri chiefs, had selected a site on the northern bank of the Yarra River, declaring that "this will be the place for a village", and returned to Launceston in Van Diemen's Land.

However, by the time a settlement party from the Association arrived to establish the new village, a separate group led by John Pascoe Fawkner had already arrived aboard the Enterprize and established a settlement at the same location, on August 30, 1835.

The two groups ultimately agreed to share the settlement.

Batman's Treaty with the Aborigines is annulled by the New South Wales government (then governing all of eastern mainland Australia), which compensated the Association.

Although this meant the settlers were now trespassing on Crown land, the government had reluctantly accepted the settlers' fait accompli and allowed the town (known at first by various names, including 'Bearbrass') to remain.