John Helder Wedge (1793 â 22 November 1872) was a surveyor, explorer and politician in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania, Australia).
Born 1793, Wedge was the second son of Charles Wedge of Shudy Camps, of Cambridgeshire, England. John Wedge learned the basics of surveying from his father.
The brothers arrived in Van Diemen's Land aboard the Heroine on the morning of 15 April 1824.
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. Wedge named the Yarra River on 13 September 1835.
In or soon after 1824, Wedge was granted a 1500-acre property which he called Leighland, 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.