It's amazing what you find when looking for something else.

You Yangs wrote that a daughter of John Batman had been buried on the Dennistoun pre-emptive right, Green Hills in the parish of Yangardook near Toolern Vale.I found this while checking the correct spelling of Dennistoun which was rendered as Dennistown on another copy of the map. Maybe true, maybe rumour, but I pasted the article in comments under my DICTIONARY HISTORY OF BULLA journal, just in case.

Not long after, I was reading Isaac Batey's memoirs of Sunbury district pioneers,just for fun. Isaac,unlike most historians, wrote about the little people as well as the big-wigs, and this article was about people who had worked for squatters. He mentioned that the Collyer brothers who had managed Green Hills had both married daughters of John Batman. On a scale of 1 to 10, the credibility of the claim about the grave near Toolern Vale had risen to about 9.99. No written history is going to be free of errors, sometimes because of incorrect assumptions (which in scientific method can be discovered fairly soon through experimentation), sometimes through quirks of memory, sometimes through accepting folklore as fact. In hundreds of hours spent reading Isaac's amazing articles,I have spotted only one error. He called the Lady of the Lake Hotel at Tullamarine the Lady of the Lady. Unfortunately this mistake was repeated in the Tullamarine Methodist Church centenary souvenir of 1970.That is the only reason that the credibility score did not rise to 10.

The following confirms his claim about the Collyer lads marrying John Batman's daughters. And what of Batman's sons? No children,they did not move to Gotham City! Read the article.

JOHN BATMAN. DESCENDANTS OF THE FOUNDER. UNPUBLISHED MEMORANDA.
The Broadford Courier and Reedy Creek Times (Broadford, Vic. : 1893 - 1916) Friday 17 April 1903 p 5 Article.

POSTSCRIPT, 11-8-2018.

This extract from the above article would seem to indicate that Eliza Batman who married William Collyer would be the most likely daughter of John to be buried at Greenhills, because nothing was known of what became of her.

"The details about the other daughters are very meagre. Eliza Batman (named after her mother) married a Mr William Collyer and Adelaide Batman, who married John Collyer, his brother, afterwards became, on the death of her husband, Mrs Bertram. Ellen Gray Batman, the only unmarried daughter, died at the early age of twenty."

ELIZA'S MARRIAGE.
EventMarriage Event registration number5071 Registration year1846
Personal information
Family nameBATMAN Given namesEliza SexFemale Spouse's family nameCOLLYER Spouse's given namesWilliam Daniel

ELIZA'S DEATH.
DEATH.
Died on the 24th November, 1862, at Kersewell, Lanarkshire, in Scotland, aged 37 years, Eliza,wife of William D. Collyer, Esq. of Cormiston, and formerly of Torrumbarry and Spring Plains in this colony. Mrs Collyer was a daughter of the late John Batman, Esq., and sister of Mrs Weire of Geelong. Friends will please to accept this
intimation. (P.2, Geelong Advertiser, 19-1-1863.)

If the burial at Greenhills was of a Batman girl, it could not have been Eliza (who died in Scotland) or Adelaide (who as seen below did not marry John Collyer until 1851 and remarried BEFORE 1862), so I searched for Ellen and found in DR. THOMPSON'S TESTIMONY
that Ellen had died in 1851. She died at Greenhills and could well have been buried in the historic grave.

MARRIED
On the 18th March, at the Green Hills, by the
Rev. Mr. Hall, John Collyer Esqr., of the Lower
Murray River to Adelaide, sixth daughter of the
late Mr. John Batman of Batmen's Hill. 874
DIED
On the 5th April, at the residence of William
Collyer Esqr., Green Hills, after a short illness,
aged 20 years, Ellen fifth daughter of the late Mr.
John Batman, of Batman's Hill. 873
(P.2, The Melbourne Daily News, 12-1-1851.)

P.P.S. I have searched my DICTIONARY HISTORY OF BULLA journal for the letter which made me believe that the Batman daughter being buried at Toolern Vale was only a rumour but I must not have published it.

This is the 1927 letter, which, as demonstrated by Ellen's death notice above, contains a serious error.

GRAVE OF THE PAST

In reference to Greenhills, the letter writer stated, "As time went on it was occupied by different owners in turn, among whom was a Mr Collier, whose wife was a daughter of John Batman. Miss Batman, another daughter of the famous old pioneer, lived at the station at the same time. The fact of these ladies, having resided there gave rise in after years to the belief that the lonely grave on the hillside is occupied by one of the Batman family, and apparently that belief still exists. None of the Batmans died on the Green Hills station; all are buried elsewhere." The writer then goes on to state with certainty that the grave was that of a young governess PROBABLY in the 1840's. He was probably the source of the alternate theory about who was buried there that naturally had to be included in the Shire of Melton's citation*, because at the time the research took place, there was no proof for either claim.

* HO124 - Grave, Ruin & Archaeological Site, Former Greenhills Pastoral Station
"Although the person whose remains lies in the grave is thought to have been a young woman who died in the
late 1840s or early 1850s, her identity remains a mystery. The oldest and most enduring story is that it contains the remains of a Miss Batman, one of John Batman's daughters; another that it was a governess, perhaps a Miss Bateman** (sic), who pined away waiting for her sailor love to return; another that it was a Miss Collier (sic], a friend or relative of an early station owner."
** There was a belief at one time that the surname was pronounced with a long a but this was dismissed by a son -in-law of John Batman.

The writer,(Mr Gilby?)provides no evidence of the young governess expressing a wish to be buried on the property before she died, when she died, what her name was, why later owners would allow her burial on the property, why she thought that burial there would ease her grief about her sailor boy and what emphatic knowledge he had about the burial places of every one of John Batman's daughters. Above all, he was wrong in stating that NONE OF THE BATMANS DIED ON THE GREEN HILLS STATION. The only demonstrable facts in his letter (see italics) probably came from those who believed that one of John Batman's daughters WAS buried there.

When (long ago)I was looking at the parish map, I noticed that one of the grantees when the Greenhills land was alienated was a Mr Snowball, a name I was hardly likely to forget. In trying to find mention of an advertisement for a governess in relation to the Dennistoun brothers or Greenhills, I stumbled upon a court case brought against the Crown by JOHN SNOWBALL which indicates that the run was alienated by 29-6-1853. If Ellen Batman was buried on the pre-emptive right, it was just in the nick of time. As the governess was young in as claimed-PROBABLY the 1840's-she would have had to die quite young to beat the deadline and surely that fact would have become part of the folklore (known, apparently, only to Mr Gilby!)

PERHAPS both theories are right and the person in the grave was a Miss Batman AND a governess.
William Collyer was married in 1846 and by 1850 he and Eliza may have had a child old enough to begin a little learning.
EventMarriage Event registration number5071 Registration year1846
Personal information
Family nameCOLLYER Given namesWilliam Daniel SexMale Spouse's family nameBATMAN Spouse's given namesEliza


John Batman's wife had started an affair with Batman's storeman and took off and, known as Mrs Willoughby, was murdered in 1852. After John's death in 1939, the children were put into the care of friends (such as John Aitken) and relatives. BATMAN'S TRAGIC END

Ellen was probably given a good education by her guardian, and at the age of about 19, might have been asked by her sister, Eliza, to help out at Green Hills as a nanny cum governess and provide companionship.She might even have become infatuated with a sailor boy who never returned from a voyage as in Mr Gilby's tale. It seems that somebody had told the heritage consultant that the name of the governess was Miss Bateman. If that governess was Ellen Batman, who was living on the property at the time of her death in 1851, it would explain how the bit about her dying wish got into the area's folklore.

Mr Gilby's dismissal of the common belief was prompted by his belief that no Batmans had died on the property. I wonder how he would have reacted if he'd read this in 1927.