William Head, of the parish of Gondhurst, Kent, and Sarah Ellis, of Etchingham, Sussex, were married at Etchingham on 24th April 1838. They sailed for Australia in the schooner 'William Metcalfe' from Plymouth. Neither of them had ever seen London and neither ever returned to England to visit the Empire's capital. Their destination when they set out on their travels was Sydney and they arrived the
re on 31st August 1838. At this point, the whole course of the life of the young couple had mapped out for themselves was altered. They had never heard of Port Phillip. What has since become the great city of Melbourne had then hardly begun existence. They did not know that such a man as John Gardiner lived; much less that he had made the long trip overland from Sydney, and had determined to make his home in what was then known as Port Phillip. But John Gardiner's pioneering travels which affected the destinies of William and Sarah Head, and which, incidentally, gave to Victoria one of the first of many sturdy, hard-working families that have played a major part in developing the State from the wilderness it was in those days, to the important part of the Commonwealth and the Empire that it is today. On 1st January 1839, under engagement to John Gardiner, after whom Gardiner's creek was named, William and Sarah arrived in Victoria. They landed at the junction of Gardiner's creek and the Yarra river which is now home to Scotch College. A memorial cairn in the grounds of the college marks the landing.
