thumb|Depiction of early Geelong as a small collection of houses and paddocks by the bay In March 1836, three squatters, David Fisher, James Strachan, and George Russell, arrived on Caledonia and settled the area. Geelong was first surveyed by Assistant Surveyor W. H. Smythe three weeks after Melbourne, and was gazetted as a town on 10 October 1838. There was already a church, hotel, store, wool store, and 82 houses, and the town population was 545. By 1841, the first wool had been sent to England and a regular steamer service was running between Geelong and Melbourne. Captain Foster Fyans was commissioned as the local Police Magistrate in 1837 and established himself on the Barwon River at the site of the area of present-day Fyansford. Fyans arranged the first muster of the Indigenous population and 275 Aboriginal people were found to be living in the area. Fyans distributed blankets, sugar and flour to these people but soon ordered his soldiers to "click their triggers" at them when a lack of blankets caused anger. Fyans constructed a breakwater to improve the water supply to the city by preventing the salty lower reaches from mixing with fresh water and pooling water. In 1839, Charles Sievwright, the newly appointed Assistant Protector of Aborigines (for the western district) sets up camp on the Barwon River near Fyans ford.
thumb|Depiction of early Geelong as a small collection of houses and paddocks by the bay In March 1836, three squatters, David Fisher, James Strachan, and George Russell, arrived on Caledonia and settled the area. Geelong was first surveyed by Assistant Surveyor W. H. Smythe three weeks after Melbourne, and was gazetted as a town on 10 October 1838. There was already a church, hotel, store, wool store, and 82 houses, and the town population was 545. By 1841, the first wool had been sent to England and a regular steamer service was running between Geelong and Melbourne. Captain Foster Fyans was commissioned as the local Police Magistrate in 1837 and established himself on the Barwon River at the site of the area of present-day Fyansford. Fyans arranged the first muster of the Indigenous population and 275 Aboriginal people were found to be living in the area. Fyans distributed blankets, sugar and flour to these people but soon ordered his soldiers to "click their triggers" at them when a lack of blankets caused anger. Fyans constructed a breakwater to improve the water supply to the city by preventing the salty lower reaches from mixing with fresh water and pooling water. In 1839, Charles Sievwright, the newly appointed Assistant Protector of Aborigines (for the western district) sets up camp on the Barwon River near Fyans ford.