C. Ganly

William Drummond Mercer (W.D.) was born at Benares, India in 1796 to a captain in the East India Company (EIC) but subsequently grew up in Scotland following the untimely death of his father in a duel. He was raised and educated in Scotland by his mother, who passed away when he was 15. Then at the age of 16, in 1813, he joined the British Army where he promptly went to Canada.

 

By the time he was 30 he was a major in the British Army and by age 40 he was again back in India where he sold out his commission and, together with his cousin George Duncan Mercer, boarded a ship for Van Diemen’s Land on his way to Port Phillip and New South Wales.

 

In early 1838, he was in Geelong with his cousin where, under the guidance of his uncle George Dempster Mercer, he began his stint as a landowner, squatter, pastoralist, Member of Parliament, and influential settler. In 1851, having achieved what he set out to in Australia, he headed off on a voyage of discovery taking the “long way home” with some squatter colleagues. This saw him, amongst other things, cross Panama many years before there was a canal and make his way across the U.S.A. before returning home to Scotland.

 

Once home he married his cousin, George Dempster’s daughter, Anne and together they had two children and set about creating a greater legacy in Scotland. It is no ordinary or simple story and one that is important not only for the people of Geelong, Victoria, and Australia but also for Perth and Scotland.

 

Possibly what is so interesting and fascinating about W.D.’s story is how and why he came to be in Australia and what he achieved while he was here. He not only agitated for but actively petitioned for the separation of Victoria (or Australia Felix as it was then known) from New South Wales. In 1851, as a member for Port Phillip, he was a member of the last Legislative Council in Sydney that put an end to convict transportation to Australia and that ultimately approved separation. W.D. also played a key role in the cutting of a channel through the bar that had cut Corio Bay off from larger ships thereby opening up Geelong to greater shipping access and he assisted in the establishing of a breakwater near Geelong that secured freshwater for the newly established town.

 

W.D. was no ordinary Scot and he had no ordinary life.