William Blandowski arrived in Australia in 1849. He visited Adelaide, South Australia, parts of the New South Wales coast, and successfully mined for gold in Victoria where he settled.
In December 1853, at the invitation of the lieutenant-governor of Victoria, Charles La Trobe, Blandowski submitted a detailed 'Memorandum' of six pages on a 'Museum of Practical Geology'. Subsequently a Museum of Natural History was created in Melbourne and Blandowski was the first officer appointed to its staff as government zoologist in April, 1854. In June, 1854, he was one of eight men who founded the Philosophical Society of Victoria.
In 1856 Blandowski was drawn into a disagreement with Professor Frederick McCoy, paleontologist to the Geological Survey of Victoria. Blandowski opposed McCoy's transferring of the collections of the National Museum to the University of Melbourne.
In December, 1856 Blandowski was appointed by a Victorian government committee to lead an expedition 'to investigate the natural history of the region at the junction of the Darling and Murray Rivers'. The expedition was successful but on his return to Melbourne in 1857, Blandowski did not resume his duties at the Museum of Natural History. He presented his 'Preliminary Report on Recent Discoveries in Natural History on the Lower Murray' to the Philosophical Society on 2 September, 1857, but the report included nineteen new species of fish named, unflatteringly, after members of the Victorian government committee. Relationships with his peers deteriorated and he was involved in further clashes with McCoy. He was ordered by the Victorian government to return the specimens, drawings and manuscripts from the expedition and was accused in the Melbourne press of retaining them for his own use. After being threatened with legal action he left Australia on 17 March, 1859.
Source: L. K. Paszkowski, 'Blandowski, William (1822 - 1878)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 3, Melbourne University Press, 1969, pp 182-183.
