Early European settlement on the Nambucca River in the 1860s was made principally by sawyers who chose land fronting the waterways. The sawyers needed to transport their cedar to markets and the lack of roads and dense rainforest lining the rivers ruled out carriage overland. By selecting on waterways accessible to ships, transport was literally at their doorstep.
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Later influences on land selection were the closeness of bridle paths. These are trails worn by people riding horses and bullock carts. You can only assume ships brought the first settlers and then bridle trails were gradually eked out between settlements reaching as far as Kempsey.
The site of what was to become the town of Macksville grew out of it being a popular crossing point of the Nambucca River. It was known as Nambucca Central. In comparison Nambucca Heads grew around arriving ships and supplying the mill labourers who resided there. Bowraville had its early founding as a service centre for the surrounding selectors.
An earlier article on David and Eliza Welsh, who pioneered the Talarm area, notes them arriving at Nambucca Central in 1868. The settlement at the time consisted only of a few huts. The residents depended on ships coming to Nambucca Heads for supplies. Even after twenty-one years since the Welsh's arrival the population of Macksville had grown to only just over one hundred.
Mail to the towns was brought from Kempsey on horseback and later by mail coach.
Since the arrival of Europeans many Australian rivers have become wider and deeper due to agriculture, stock grazing and development that erodes river banks. This writer thinks it is likely the Nambucca River at Macksville was narrower, shallower and more navigable then, especially at low tide.
Early selectors around Macksville included Nicholas Borger, Adam Unterheiner and Joseph Koenig. These families were Germanic in origin and one can imagine their language would have been a common means of communication in the district.
Macksville could have been eclipsed if government plans for the town of Wilson had gone ahead in 1865. The location for Wilson was chosen and mapped out when German born surveyor, Ernest Herborn, reserved land for a township on the site between Blackbutt Creek and Taylors Arm where the Nambucca Rivers branches to the north and south. The site was not popular due to problems of access and the swampy and flood prone land. All that remains is the cemetery at Blackbutt. The Wilson Bridge is the only reminder as it was to connect Bowraville to Wilson
Thomas Boulton was a migrant who came to the colony as a child. He selected land downstream of the current centre of Macksville. It was a prime position where the first punt went across the river and the road from Kempsey ran. Here he opened the first hotel calling it the Nambuccra in 1882.
Even in the early days land purchases were taken up by speculators. William Hughes, an Englishman, was the first to select on the site of the future village in 1865. The land passed through several hands and ended up owned by Nambucca Heads pilot William Whaites. In 1887 Whaites converted the land to freehold and subdivided it.
Another early investor was Father Patrick MacGuinnes of Kempsey and Louisa McKay. Sales of subdivisions were slow but Louisa's husband Angus McKay perhaps changed the tide by establishing a store, a blacksmith's shop and a bakery as well as his residence in the town.
Joseph Hall was an early resident who had several occupations on the river including farmer, shopkeeper, boarding house owner and postmaster. His son-in-law Hugh McNally was a cordial manufacturer who established the Star Hotel in Hall's boarding house in 1885. It was the first hotel in the village. When Phillip McAteer held the Star's licence in 1900 it underwent extensive renovations.
Any account of the history of Macksville would not be complete without an examination of how it got its name.
An old document at the Headland Museum states: - "A general store was opened by Mr Angus McKay in Princess Street. The holding of the Hall family passed into the hands of Mr Hugh McNally. He and Angus McKay made a joint subdivision as the two farms were adjoining. Hence the name of Macksville."
There is also the suggestion that Father Patrick MacGuinnes with his extensive land holdings was a third "Mac" that contributed to the name. In any case the first recording of the name was its use in an advertisement for the McKay subdivision in 1887.
This writer would like to acknowledge the Gumbaynggirr nation as the original custodians of the Nambucca Valley and pays respect to their elders past present and emerging.
This article was written from the book Valley of the Crooked River by Norma Townsend and the records of the Nambucca Headland Museum.
