Indented Head is a small coastal township located on the Bellarine Peninsula, east of Geelong, in the Australian state of Victoria. The town lies on the coast of the Port Phillip bay between the towns of Portarlington and St Leonards.
History
Early European exploration
Indented Head was named by the explorer Matthew Flinders in April 1802 when he observed the shape of the Bellarine Peninsula coastline from the summit of Arthurs Seat, across Port Phillip. For many years the name Indented Head was applied to the whole of the Bellarine Peninsula. Flinders was at that time in the process of completing the first circumnavigation of Australia, undertaken between December 1801 and June 1803, making a detailed survey of the coastline for the British government, sailing aboard the.
The Batman expedition encounters local Wathaurong (Aboriginal) people and William Buckley
In 1835, the Tasmanian colonist John Batman set up his base camp for the land speculation company Port Phillip Association at Indented Head while he returned to Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land) to collect his family and additional provisions. He left the small base camp in the care of his ex-convict servants William Todd and Gumm, and 5 Aboriginal members of his party named Bullett, Bungett, Old Bull, Pigeon and Joe the Marine. Some of these Aboriginal people had been brought from Sydney to Tasmania by Batman, who employed them in his bounty hunting 'roving parties' rounding up Tasmanian Aboriginal people in the island's north-east in the late 1820s.
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