​Hoddle, Robert, first Surveyor-General of Victoria, laid out the site of the present city of Melbourne in 1837, two years after the ground had been purchased by Batman from the aborigines. He presided as Government auctioneer at the first Government land sale on June 1st, 1837, when half-acre allotments in Melbourne fetched from £18 to £78, considered at the time a very high price. Mr. Hoddle retired on a pension in 1856, and died in 1881.