For a short period the Melbourne townspeople tolerated Aboriginal people in their midst
– after all the native people and the immigrant were equally interesting to one another.
The establishment of new settlements involved both civil engineering and socialplanning. Roads, drainage, bridges and fords were to be constructed, business houses and domestic residences were to be established.
Commercial links between townships and their hinterlands were being forged and networks of communication were being developed.
The infrastructure associated with law and order was being developed.
Given these dynamics the presence of dispossessed local clans people was unworthy of concern, unless they began to stand in the way of the emerging spatial and social
organization.
The attitudes of civil authorities to the apparent spatial freedom of Aboriginal people are complex and in the 1840s these views were represented as the result of sensibilities that
dictated that it was ultimately in the best interests of the indigenous people to be removed from settlements.
Interaction with townspeople brought ‘evils’ such as alcohol abuse,increased mortality, prostitution, and the spread of infections including venereal disease,and injurious changes to diet.
Thomas advised Robinson that the changes in diet and
increased mortality rates made it desirable to induce all tribes peoples to avoid the settlement of Melbourne.
This sounds like the policy ASTC would like now to introduce.