Long before the idea of Sea Change, thousands of Victorians fled city life for recreation, respite and new ventures in Queenscliffe. This long-awaited history, commissioned by the borough of Queenscliffe, at the treacherous promontory of Port Phillip Bay, covers the residents of the town of Queenscliff and the hamlet of Point Lonsdale. The Rip—the stretch of water between the heads of the bay where the combinations and concentrations of winds and tides make sea passages unpredictable—is deployed as both the background and foreground for the vicissitudes of settlement. Queenscliffe is a rich topic. Barry Hill covers Aboriginal possession and tragic dispossession, shipwrecks, escaped convicts, armed forts, grand buildings and the struggle to secure and maintain an unusual municipality.
With historical imagination Hill brings the past to life. For him, neither the pursuit of health nor pleasure provides the key to what was uniquely attractive about the locale. ‘Queenscliff was a Queen of Watering Places because her beauty contained the thrilling prospect of danger,’ Hill writes. His dramatic and compelling accounts of the work of the lifeboat crews, the pilot service and the fishermen are highlights. Surprisingly, the study of municipal endeavour is not centrally placed but subtly woven throughout. In 1863 the borough was proclaimed when half the population successfully petitioned the Colonial Secretary. The 183 citizens were publicans, boatmen, carters, shipping agents, a handful of fishermen and 26 Chinamen who lived out on the spit of Swan Bay. The council set to with a welter of civic duties that included the appointment of an Inspector of Nuisances, Dogs and Thistles. Hill notes that they were pleased with their choice of Constable Henry Goodenough and that the age of the by-law was now upon the town. Possibly not such a felicitous choice, as other historians have identified Goodenough as a paid informer and double agent at Eureka.
There are some wonderful asides. Hill’s recasting of the role of escaped convict William Buckley and his depiction of a fading, melancholic Alfred Deakin are fascinating. In a photograph Deakin appears rather chirpy as he bathes in his neck-to-knees. Hill writes: ‘The beach resort was a congregation, a social scene, the open-air habitat of what the most fashionable people called “congenial society” where you not only had to be dressed, but dressed accordingly.’ There are no comparable vignettes of women, who are described by Hill as being ‘in and out of the woodwork’. The