A charming prospect

On appearance, education and net worth, William Robertson might well have found a well-to-do British girl for his wife. Instead, he fell for a woman cut from the same colonial cloth.

William Robertson was born in Hobart, but like the sons of many upwardly mobile colonists was sent ‘home’ to be prepared for a gentlemanly life. Having graduated from Oxford in 1862, his next task was to secure a bride. Enter one Martha Mary Murphy, age nineteen. Martha was from a fabulously successful colonial family too. Her father, a brewer, had emigrated to Tasmania and then, like William’s father, availed himself of property in Victoria. William and Martha married in England in 1863 and their first child was born there in 1864. Another four children were born after they’d returned to Victoria. In 1874, William inherited The Hill, near Colac, one of several pastoral properties he managed in partnership with his brothers. A barrister and member of the Legislative Assembly, he was ‘much better fitted to shine in social life’, his obituary said, ‘being a man of amiable disposition and high private character’.