Mauritius In 1810, Swanston was a member of an expedition which obtained the political overthrow of
Mauritius and was appointed to survey the island.
India In May 1814, Swanston left England and returned to duty in India via
Scutari and
Baghdad, a distance of 3000 km on horseback in 48 days. In September 1817, he was ordered to raise 1000 men for the Poona Auxiliary Horse brigade and was appointed commander. In command of these troops, he was involved in several actions and was wounded three times. In the aftermath to the
Battle of Koregaon in 1818, he captured Trimbakji Dengle, a Marathi leader on whose head the British had placed a price of £10,000. In January 1819, Swanston was promoted captain, but within a year lost his command because of great reductions in the army. In 1821, he was offered the position of assistant quartermaster-general of the army but declined, accepting instead the office of military paymaster in the provinces of
Travancore and
Tinnevelly a position he held for six years. In September 1828, he was granted a year's leave to
Van Diemen's Land on account of ill health.
Australia Swanston arrived at
Hobart Town in
HMS Success on 4 January 1829 with his wife Georgina (née Sherson) and their 6 children. Although on leave, he soon purchased 'Fenton Forest' an estate on the
Styx River. He also bought several other properties of over 3000 acres (12 km²). He returned briefly to India in 1830 at the expiration of his leave, where he resigned his military commission and returned to Van Diemen's Land in May 1831. In November 1831, he was appointed managing director of the Derwent Bank, which had recently been established as a partnership predominantly by supporters of the government. He was also nominated a member of the
Tasmanian Legislative Council in 1832. He soon bought a controlling interest in the Derwent Bank, and under his control the enterprise prospered attracting large amounts of overseas capital for investment at high rates of interest. He was responsible for introducing the overdraft system to Australian banking in 1834, in which year he established the Derwent Savings Bank. In addition to banking, he conducted an import-export business for commodities such as tea, rum and wool. On behalf of many officers and officials in India, he invested money in Van Diemen's Land in mortgages and bank shares. In 1835, a group of Hobart investors, including Swanston, formed the
Port Phillip Association to explore and acquire land in
Port Phillip District (present-day Victoria). Swanston acted as the syndicate's banker. In 1835,
John Batman's expedition landed at Port Phillip and claimed to have bought 600,000 acres (2400 km²) including the future sites of
Melbourne and
Geelong under a document called
Batman's treaty. Recognition of the title to this land was refused by the government in
Sydney and
London despite strenuous claims by the Association of its legality. The Port Phillip Association was granted compensation of £7,000, allowed as a reduction on the purchase price of land bought by the association in Melbourne at public auction. Most of the members of the Association sold their entitlements to Swanston. He changed the name of the Association to the Derwent Company before dissolving it in 1842. In 1841, Swanston had converted the Derwent Bank into a mortgage bank, but as the economic depression of the 1840s deepened, the flow of overseas capital to the bank greatly diminished, the value of the land over which the bank held mortgages dropped and the price of wool fell and debtors to the bank found difficulty in meeting interest payments. He managed to keep the bank going for another five years; but was then forced to resign and the Derwent Bank went into liquidation. His personal liabilities were estimated at £104,375. He became a bankrupt and settled with his creditors at 10 shillings in the pound. In 1844, Swanston, in partnership with his son-in-law Edward Willis, began trading as a grazier and merchant in
Geelong, Victoria. They controlled several properties in western
Victoria totaling over 150,000 acres (600 km²). In 1850, he left Australia and sailed for America but stayed only briefly. Departing California to return to Australia, he died on 5 September on board "Raven" and was buried at sea. ==Legacy==