 In 1849, Fyans was nominated as the inaugural Mayor of the Geelong Town Council.An early settler of Geelong, Alexander Thomson, for which the area of Thomson in East Geelong is named, settled on the Barwon River, and was Mayor of Geelong on five occasions from 1850 to 1858.Gold was discovered in nearby Ballarat in 1851, causing the Geelong population to grow to 23,000 people by the mid-1850s.