George Armytage

George Armytage (1795–1862) was a farmer and pastoralist in Australia, builder of The Hermitage in Geelong, Victoria.

Early life (1795–1815) Armytage was born at Ticknall, Derbyshire, England in 1795, and was educated at schools in Yorkshire. He was the son of George Armytage (senior), who died in Australia in 1853, having emigrated at the age of 87. Armytage junior subsequently studied engineering in London until he was 20, when, on 28 February 1815, he sailed for Australia on the Hebe.

In 1818, he married Elizabeth Peters.

In 1826, he received a further grant of , and built upon it the first watermill in Tasmania. During this period Armytage was part of the Bagdad division of the Tasmanian police who were heavily involved in the Black War that resulted in the deaths of a possible 900 Indigenous Australians.

Port Phillip District (1835–1862) In 1835, Port Phillip District (later called Victoria) commenced to attract settlers; and in 1836 his eldest son Thomas visited the district, and camped on the Werribee River.

Squatter Charles Franks was employed by Armytage to secure land from Indigenous Australians. Franks, who used lead as a poison to kill Indigenous Australians, was later speared to death, alongside convict shepherd Thomas Flinders, by a member of the Wathaurung tribe while he was attempting to claim land in Geelong. A subsequent punitive expedition against local Aboriginals, the Mount Cottrell massacre, apparently served as "a warning to the natives not in the future to commit wanton excesses" against the British occupiers.

In 1847, Mr. Armytage proceeded to Victoria, and settled upon his son George Armytage's station at Ingleby, where his eldest son had died of typhus fever on 12 September 1842. In 1851, he settled at Geelong, and built "The Hermitage".

Death Armytage died of erysipelas in 1862, his widow surviving him until 1873.