Port Philip Bay for over 20,000 years before white settlement. Their mythology preserves the history of the flooding of Port Phillip Bay 10,000 years ago, and its period of drying and retreat 2,800–1,000 years ago. Visible evidence of their shell middens and hand-dug wells remain along the cliffs of Beaumaris, but by the 1850s most withdrew to the Mordialloc Aboriginal Reserve established in 1852, and after the 1860s, to Coranderrk. European settlement One of the first white settlers was James Bickford Moysey in 1845, who, along with several other local settlers had Welsh roots, and he gave the name 'Beaumaris' to his pastoral run after the Welsh Town of Beaumaris (Welsh: Biwmares) on the Isle of Anglesey in the Menai Strait, called 'beaux marais' by Norman-French builders of the castle there, a name which translates as "beautiful marshes". Moysey eventually purchased 32 hectares for his farm. There is a monument on the foreshore opposite the hotel where Moysey had built a house. Beaumaris cemetery The first Cheltenham settlers, Stephen and Mary Ann Charman, donated land in 1854 that was the first cemetery of the area, established in the churchyard of the small timber Wesleyan Church at the western corner of what is now Balcombe Road and Bickford Court. There, two of the Charman's own babies were buried in 1855 and 1859. Soon reaching capacity, this small cemetery operated for only 11 years with the last known burial in 1866. Other faiths traveled to Brighton to bury their dead. The church building on the site was sold in 1893 and moved to Langwarrin and the land turned over to grazing. In 1954 the Moorabbin Council, faced with growing population and ramping land values, granted a permit to the Methodist Church to subdivide the land. Everest Le Page, Moorabbin Councillor and Cheltenham resident, believing that the previous burial sites may not have been relocated following the closure of the church, argued unsuccessfully against sub-division and seven lots of land were sold and houses built there. Researcher Shirley Joy was unable to find evidence in 1998 that the church burials at the site had been relocated prior to the subdivision and development of the land Responding to her efforts Mayor of Bayside, Cr Graeme Disney, had a commemorative bronze plaque set into the footpath at the corner of Balcombe Road and Bickford Court, Beaumaris. Establishment of the suburb Current day Beaumaris covers two