March to November 1889 saw Victoria under the nominal rule of a man of whom most of us have never heard. When we read a list of Victorian governors we don't find him there.

The names of most of our governors are shown on our various maps in great numbers. His is not.
Yet he was probably the most successful diplomat and governor who ever served here.
He was born William Cleaver Francis Robinson at Rosmead, in Ireland, on January 14, 1834. His start in the world was as the fourth son of Admiral Hercules Robinson and that was probably why he attended the Royal Navy School at New Cross, in Surrey.
His big brother, another Hercules, was the Lieutenant Governor of St Kitts in 1855 when William joined the Colonial Service as his private secretary. In 1859 Hercules was appointed Governor of Hong Kong and William moved with him, developing a dislike of the humid climate that became relevant later in his life.
In 1862 William came out from his brother's shadow with an appointment in his own right when he was appointed as the Governor of Montserrat in the Caribbean. He married an Irish colleen, Olivia Edith Deane, daughter of a bishop.
She followed him to many appointments all around the world, sometimes in rugged places. He was made administrator of "Dominica" in 1865 but in May 1866 he moved to a much cooler climate as Governor and Commander in Chief of the Falkland Islands, which he described as "the fag end of the world".
In July 1870, he travelled back up the Atlantic to another cool spot as Governor of Prince Edward Island, at the time, about to become part of Canada. That happened in July 1873, and his position there was abolished, so he was sent down to the Leeward Islands, now a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George.
In January 1875 he got a posting to a warmer place. He was appointed Governor of Western Australia and spent nearly two years trying to obey a Colonial Office instruction to discourage the development of self-government. This did not make him popular, but being a Governor then was not about popularity.
From Perth he was sent to the Straits Settlements, which then included British North Borneo, parts of Malaya including Penang and Malacca, Brunei, Sarawak and Malaya. Singapore Island was still part of Malaya and that was Robinson's headquarters.
At his point he had been the governor of six colonies between 1862 and 1877, 15 years, and he seems to have been effective. His CMG was raised to KCMG, Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George. This made him a "Sir" for the first time.
He also got an unusual medal from the King of Siam (later to be Thailand) when he was sent there in 1877 to invest the King as a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George. The King presented Robinson with the award of a Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Siam.
He was next appointed Governor of Natal but his orders were changed before he travelled there. In April 1880 he was reappointed Governor of Western Australia, his eighth appointment. He did good work there though he had to work with an elected legislature whose members did not always agree with him. Apparently, in a Crown Colony the Governor has fairly unlimited power, but Western Australia was only one part of the colony.
He sent one of long letters to his superiors in London that his position needed a man "as patient as Job, as industrious as a Chinaman, and as ubiquitous as a provincial mayor in France." There was a side to Robinson that surprised me because it was a strange thing to find in a governor.
In 1883 he was appointed Governor of South Australia (ninth appointment) but the political system there was stable and advanced, so his role was mainly symbolic. This freed him to widen his pursuits and the Croweaters found that he was a competent composer of music, with a number of songs that became popular across Australia to his credit. He played both the violin and the piano (not at the same time) and is said to have had a good singing voice. He had come to SA with a name for having brought more people into Government House to be entertained than ever before.
Again, in an unlikely achievement for a governor he even wrote a comic opera which made it to the stage, albeit in Melbourne. He entered into the social life of Adelaide and helped, naturally, to organise the two jubilees in his time, that of the state in 1886 and that of Queen Victoria in 1887.
He was offered the Governorship of Hong Kong in 1877 but he'd been there as his brother's private secretary in 1857 and there was no way he was going back there. Had he accepted this would have been his tenth appointment – that honour fell to Victoria.
Sir George Ferguson Bowen, who'd been a very successful Governor of Queensland, was appointed to that role in Victoria and served from 30 July 1873 to 22 March 1879, but there was battle between the Legislative Council and the elected Legislative Assembly, Bowen's instructions from England were contradictory and he became unpopular with the upper classes. He was recalled in August 1878, meaning, more or less, sacked.
At that point the man who rarely appears in the lists of 'Governors" was moved from SA to Victoria.
Sir William Cleaver Francis Robinson, GCMG came to Victoria as an Acting Governor, and it is fair to say that didn't achieve a great deal before the appointment of the Most Honourable George Augustus Constantine Phipps, GCB, GCMG and a Privy Councillor, who just happened to be the Marquess of Normanby and was the start of a tradition of appointing aristocrats rather than proven Civil Servants, but that is another story.
It had been assumed that Robinson would assume the governorship permanently but home office politics cut him down. He was offered the Governorship of Mauritius but declined it and returned to England, only to be sent out Western Australia for a third term, his eleventh appointment, not counting at least two he'd declined. He was in WA to oversee the proper establishment of a democratic state government. He worked in London with the Colonial office and WA's representatives to write the state's constitution and he was warmly welcomed on his third arrival in Perth in October 1890. In March 1890 Robinson resigned went home to England.
There is more to the story of Sir William Francis Cleaver Robinson, GCMG but for the moment we'll leave it there as a brief reminder of the Governor "we never had, but did."