La Trobe Society History Month lecture explores Melbourne's first landholders

Melbourne's first landholders

The C J La Trobe Society will mark History Month with a lecture exploring the merchants, investors and other early landholders who took part in Melbourne's formative land sales.

Dr Liz Rushen AM will present Melbourne's Georgian Gentlemen: Landholders in Early Melbourne at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria on Wednesday 21 October 2026. The event runs from 5pm to 7pm, with refreshments included in the $30 admission price and guests welcome.

The lecture returns to 1 June 1837, when surveyor Robert Hoddle auctioned the first allotments in the newly surveyed Hoddle Grid, now central Melbourne. Those who acquired the land came from varied backgrounds, with merchants and investors among the buyers seeking opportunities in the rapidly developing settlement.

Rushen's research examines the people behind those transactions and the different paths their fortunes took. Some accumulated considerable wealth, while others faced insolvency, making the original allotments a window into the commercial ambitions, social networks and inequalities that shaped early colonial Melbourne.

Dr Liz Rushen and the Hoddle Grid

The subject draws on Rushen's work as curator of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria exhibition Hoddle Grid: The Great Land Grab. The exhibition examines 29 of the original sections offered in Melbourne's first public land sales and profiles purchasers ranging from former convicts and publicans to merchants and investors connected with international trade.

Rushen is a historian and widely published author whose roles have included Chair of the History Council of Victoria and Executive Director of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. She is a Research Associate in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University and serves on the editorial board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Hoddle Grid: The Great Land Grab opened at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria in March 2026 and runs until 11 November. Its focus extends beyond the buyers themselves to the development of the allotments and the changing buildings occupying those sites, placing the 1837 sales within the longer history of Melbourne's CBD.

The La Trobe Society lecture will be held at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, on the corner of William and A'Beckett streets in Melbourne. Admission is $30 and includes refreshments.