John Pascoe Fawkner (20 October 1792 – 4 September 1869) was an early Australian pioneer, businessman and politician of Melbourne, Australia. In 1835 he financed a party of free settlers from Van Diemen's Land (now called Tasmania), to sail to the mainland in his ship, Enterprize. Fawkner's party sailed to Port Phillip and up the Yarra River to found a settlement which became the city of Melbourne. Early years John Pascoe Fawkner was born near Cripplegate London in 1792 to John Fawkner (a metal refiner) and his wife Hannah née Pascoe, whose parents were Cornish. As a 10-year-old, he accompanied his convict father, who had been sentenced to fourteen years gaol for receiving stolen goods, being transported on HMS Calcutta, alongside his mother and younger sister Elizabeth, as part of a two ship fleet to establish a new British colony in Bass Strait in 1803. His reminiscences describe the time leading up to departure, the voyage and their arrival at Sullivan Bay, near modern-day Sorrento, the day before Fawkner turned 11. For several months the colony struggled to survive. There were some 27 convict escape attempts, including that of William Buckley: Lack of wood and fresh water eventually persuaded Lieutenant-Governor David Collins to abandon the colony in 1804 with the settlers and convicts departing for the new town of Hobart in Van Diemen's Land. In 1806 the family obtained a farm, upon which he worked without horses, without capital, and with scarcely any other appliances than a spade and a hoe. At eighteen years of age he apprenticed himself to a builder and a sawyer, and laboured for some years in a saw-pit. In Hobart the young Fawkner assisted his father (who had obtained a conditional pardon) in his bakery, timber business and brewery, taking charge of the bakery in Macquarie Street. In 1814 he fell into trouble, "aiding and abetting", in an attempted escape from Van Diemen's Land to South America, seven transported convicts; Antonio Martinio, Forteso De Santo, Patrick McCabe, Vissanso Boucherie, Antonio Janio, Montrose Johnson and William Green. The group secretly went to Recherche Bay to fell trees with which they built a lugger. When the lugger was completed, Fawkner was put ashore and made his way back to his farm. After sailing some distance out into the open ocean, the remaining men on the lugger returned to Van Diemen's Land because of leaks in the water