John Helder Wedge

John Helder Wedge (1793 – 22 November 1872) was a surveyor, explorer and politician in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania, Australia).

Early life Born 1793, Wedge was the second son of Charles Wedge of Shudy Camps, of Cambridgeshire, England.

Port Phillip District John Helder Wedge's property, sketched in 1836, the year after the European settlement of nearby Melbourne Wedge arrived the site of Melbourne on 2 September 1835, where he discovered members of a party organised by John Pascoe Fawkner. Wedge was against the forceful removal of Fawkner's party. later known as Leighlands, situated on the South Esk River, south of the town of Perth, in the Norfolk Plains district of Tasmania. He subsequently developed the property into a large sheep farm, building a house which was completed between 1830 and 1833.

Leighland passed on the death of John Helder Wedge to his nephew Thomas Wedge, and on his death in 1880 eventually went out of the Wedge family, and, following its acquisition by Alfred Youl, has since been in the Youl family. The old homestead was burnt down in the 1950s.