AustLit

This article 'examine(s) three elements that were posited by Melbourne's early surveyors and incompatible with the development of a city invested in post-Enlightenment commitments to the rational and orderly division of space: the indigenous population, the extant landscape and the poor.' Ferguson draws on a range of texts, from the writings of colonial surveyor Thomas Mitchell to autobiographies and memoirs of early residents of Melbourne to demonstrate 'the irrationality - the almost mythical foundations - of the city' (par. 2).