Charles Ebden

Charles Hotson Ebden (1811 – 28 October 1867) was an Australian pastoralist and politician, a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, the Victorian Legislative Council and the Victorian Legislative Assembly.

Ebden was born in 1811 at the Cape of Good Hope in the Cape Colony, the son of merchant and banker John Bardwell Ebden and his wife Antoinetta. He was educated in England and also in Karlsruhe in the German Confederation.

As a young man Ebden made several trips between the Cape and the Australian colonies, before settling in Sydney, New South Wales in 1832 and establishing a merchant business. After accumulating sufficient capital, he moved into pastoralism, and by early 1835 was among those pastoralists introducing cattle to the southern parts of New South Wales. He established a run at Tarcutta Creek, before his stockman, William Wyse, commenced two more runs straddling the Murray River: Mungabareena, near what is now Albury, New South Wales, and Bonegilla, near what is now Bonegilla, Victoria, making Ebden the first pastoralist to send cattle across the Murray.

Ebden hired Charles Bonney midway through 1836 to manage the stations on the Murray, but soon sent Bonney to search for an overland cattle route to Melbourne and the other settled parts of the Port Phillip District. The Ovens River was in flood during Bonney's first attempt, and he was unable to find a way across, but a second attempt was commenced on 25 December 1836. Some accounts place Ebden with Bonney on this second journey, which was completed on 7 January when the party arrived in Melbourne, just days behind John Gardiner, Joseph Hawdon and John Hepburn, the first to bring cattle overland from New South Wales.

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