LANCEY who? The name of Melbourne's founding father doesn't exactly skip to the lips of most Victorians. A survey to mark the capital's 173rd birthday this Saturday found that not one of 300 Melburnians aged 16 and over knew that master mariner Captain John Lancey first moored the Enterprize on the north bank of the Yarra River on August 30, 1835. It's a contentious debate, as shown by the numbers who suggested two other likely suspects — John Batman and publican John Pascoe Fawkner. Others veered wildly towards Captain James Cook, naturalist Charles Darwin and politician Edmund Barton, who was not born for another 14 years, and then in Sydney.

Answers to the question of when Melbourne was founded were even more obtuse, ranging from 1730, 40 years before Cook's landing, to 1920, 19 years after Federation. The survey, commissioned by the City of Melbourne, was not the first time we have flunked a pop quiz on significant events in the nation's history.