Macquarie Harbour

“ Furious gales and sudden tempests affright the natives of the coast. Navigation is dangerous, and the entrance to the “Hell's Gates” of Macquarie Harbour—at the time of which we are writing (1833) , in the height of its ill-fame as a convict settlement—is only to be attempted in calm weather. The sea-line is marked with wrecks. The sunken rocks are dismally named after the vessels they have destroyed. The air is chill and moist, the soil prolific only in prickly undergrowth and noxious weeds, while foetid exhalations from swamp and fen cling close to the humid, spongy ground. ”

“ Two of the chief rivers of New South Wales are the Lachlan and Macquarie. Port Macquarie was a rural convict settlement established shortly before he left the colony. There are Macquarie County, Marshes, and Plains, and the Lachlan district. Macquarie Place and Macquarie Street are in Sydney. Tasmania has Macquarie Harbour, and the town thereon, Macquarie Plains, and Macquarie River. Macquarie Island, south of Tasmania, was discovered in 1811. ”

“ He formed one of the second party who absconded from Macquarie Harbour (1822) . They had planned their escape with considerable skill: one was a sailor, and able to direct their course: they possessed themselves of a boat, and proposed to capture the vessel of the pilot, then laden for town. It was the custom, when a prisoner was missing, to kindle signal fires along the coast, thus giving notice to the sentinels: to prevent such information, the absconders poured water on the embers kept in readiness. ”

“ The little paddocks, interspersed among the buildings and lofty-paled fences, that give the whole island the look of a fortified place, vie in verdure with English meadows.—The capacity of the country about Macquarie Harbour, for cultivation, does not however appear to be great. Such lands as are sufficiently clear to admit of being ploughed, are peaty and wet ”

“ Governor to Major Baylee, the commandant of the Penal Settlement, at Macquarie Harbour; and other necessary arrangements having been made for our passage on board the Government brig Tamar, we embarked, after dining with the senior colonial chaplain, William Bedford, and his family, from whom we received much kind attention during our sojourn in V. D. Land. The vessel not sailing till the 10th, we spent the evening at the house of Nathaniel Turner, the Wesleyan Minister stationed at Hobart Town, in company with John Allen Manton, a Wesleyan Missionary, also proceeding to Macquarie Harbour. ”

“ From Mauritius he sailed east and south, and did not sight the West Australian coast at all, his course trending so much to the south that instead he crossed the great Australian Bight [47] and first saw land off the west coast of Tasmania, in the vicinity of what is now known as Macquarie Harbour. He at once conferred on this land the name of Anthonij Van Diemen, the Governor-General of the Dutch Indies, and the principal promoter of this exploring expedition. He overlooked the passage to the north (Bass's Strait) , and directed his course southwards. ”

“ Account of Macquarie Harbour, by T. G. Lempriere, Esq., A.D.C.G., pp. 17, 107, 200. Tasmania: Henry Dowling. London: John Murray, 1846.
"Van Diemen's Land Anniversary and Hobart Town Almanac, 1831." Account of Macquarie Harbour, by James Ross, p.262. Hobart Town: James Ross, 1832. ”

“ The second gale arose when the boats had made the coast, and were off a spot known as Point Plomer, near Port Macquarie. Here they again lay-to, but were driven to the south, the next place that land was sighted being off the Camden Haven river. From this place they steered north towards Tacking Point, as some of those on board, from previous experience of the coast, knew [Pg 88] where they were. On arrival at the Boat Harbour, the boats being too large to enter, the pilot boat brought a few of the shipwrecked persons in at a time till they were all safely landed. ”

“ The construction of the charts of the preceding voyage, together with the equipment of the vessel, fully occupied me until the month of December; when, having some time to spare before we could leave Port Jackson on our second voyage to the north coast, in consequence of its being the time when the westerly monsoon prevails, I acquainted His Excellency the Governor, of my intention of surveying the entrance of Macquarie Harbour, which had lately been discovered on the western coast of Van Diemen’s Land. To make my visit there as useful aa possible to the colony, a passage was offered to Mr. ”

“ There are however other anchorages that might be resorted to in the event of being thrown upon a lee shore, which are equally good with Port Hunter, Shoal Bay, and Glass House Bay.
There is an anchorage behind Black Head to the north of Point Stevens which Lieutenant Oxley discovered to be an island; Port Macquarie also affords shelter for small vessels; and on the north side of Smoky Cape there is good shelter from southerly or south-easterly winds: but the whole of these, excepting Broken Bay, are only attainable by small vessels. A large ship must keep an offing ”

“ The country, therefore, through which the Macquarie would have to flow during the remainder of its course of 1700 miles, in order to gain the N.W. coast, would not be a gradually inclined plain, but for the most part a dead level, and the fact of its failure is a sufficient proof in itself how short the course of a river so circumstanced must necessarily be. ”

“ Eighteen hours' run by steamer from Sydney is the Hastings River, on the southern bank of which, a mile from the bar, is the old-time town of Port Macquarie, a quaint, sleepy little place of six hundred inhabitants, who spend their days in fishing and sleeping and waiting for better times. ”

“ All the goods out of the vessel were afterwards open to public view in a large store, and some of the cannon balls and other material which belonged to the yacht yet remain in Port Macquarie. The white men from the yacht afterwards spent a good deal of their time at Lake Innes, where they engaged in sporting and other pursuits. ”

“ It would be as presumptuous as useless to speculate on the probable termination of the Macquarie River, when a few months will (it is to be hoped) decide the long disputed point, whether Australia, with a surface nearly as extensive as Europe, is, from its geological formation, destitute of rivers, either terminating in interior seas, or having their estuaries on the coast. ”

“ It is the characteristic of the streams falling westerly from the eastern, or coast ranges, to maintain a breadth of channel and a rapidity of current more immediately near their sources, that ill accords with their diminished size, and the sluggish flow of their waters in the more depressed interior. In truth, neither the Macquarie nor the Castlereagh can strictly be considered as permanent rivers. The last particularly is nothing more than a mountain torrent. The Macquarie, although it at length ceased to run, kept up the appearance of a river to the very marshes ”

“ There are various other localities, indeed, on the east coast, to the northward of Port Macquarie, which is situated on the thirty-first parallel of south latitude, that would probably be found equally eligible for such settlements, as well to the southward as to the northward of Moreton Bay; there being navigable rivers, with a large extent of eligible land on their banks, in both directions. ”

“ A bridge across the Macquarie has long been a desideratum. This river, although in common seasons fordable, and in dry seasons scarcely fluent, is liable, after heavy falls of rain in the mountains, to rise suddenly to a great height, and cut off the communication between the public buildings on the one side, and the peopled suburbs and great road from Sydney on the other. The country beyond the Macquarie affords excellent sheep-pasturage, the hills consisting chiefly of granite. ”

“ To those remarkable parts of the north-west coast above referred to in the parallel of 16 degrees south, the Macquarie river, which rises in lat. 33 degrees, and under the meridian of 150 degrees east, would have a course of 2045 statute miles throughout, while the elevation of its source, being 3500 feet above the level of the sea as shown by the barometer, would give its waters an average descent of twenty inches to the mile, supposing the bed of the river to be an inclined plane. ”

“ The marsh of the Macquarie is nothing more than an ordinary marsh or swamp in another country. However large a space it covers, it is no more than a concavity or basin for the reception of the waters of the river itself, nor has it any influence whatever on the country to the westward of it, in respect to inundation; the general features of the latter being a regular alternation of plain and brush. These facts are in themselves sufficient to give a fresh interest to the interior of the Australian continent, and to increase its importance. ”

“ A grove of magnificent trees encircles Port Macquarie, and extends along the banks of the river; whilst turning to the west and north-west, the eye embraces a wide extent of forest country, and can trace, among the mountain ranges, the windings of the valley through which the river Wilson flows; Mount Caoulapatamba being sufficiently near to enable one to distinguish every tree on its grassy declivities, whilst the distant ranges at the MacLeay river, and the huge frowning mountain at the back of Cogo, are half dissolved in blue ether. ”

“ At a distance of about twenty-eight miles below Mount Harris, the flat-lands commence, and there the Macquarie itself ceases to be a river, having no banks, or continued channel, by which to prevent the dispersion of its waters when they rise in rainy seasons. The surface of those flats, however, has not one continued dip, but presents a succession of levels and inclinations, with each a detached lagoon-like channel, hemmed in on all sides by high reeds which catch the waters as they spread ”

“ Details of population, accounts of expenditure, judicial reports, all had to be copied in duplicate or triplicate and transmitted to the Colonial Office.
In the first year of Macquarie's rule, the means of conveyance were very irregular. By the most direct routes, by the Cape of Good Hope or Rio Janeiro, the voyage occupied from four to eight months. But many of the ships touching at Sydney returned to England by way of India or were bound for the whale-fisheries in the South Seas. ”

“ On the 19th February, 1816, the Traveller, an American schooner carrying teas and other merchandise, arrived at Port Jackson bearing a clearance in proper order from Canton. She was the first American ship which had visited Sydney since the conclusion of peace, and Macquarie gave her permission to unload her cargo. He was absent from Sydney for a few days, and when he returned on the 29th February, he found that the unloading had been stopped and the schooner seized as a lawful prize under the Navigation Act by the Rev. Mr. Vale and W. H. Moore. ”

“ The care with which I had noted every change that took place in the Macquarie, from Wellington Valley downwards, enabled me, in some measure, to account for its present features. I was led to conclude that the waters of the river being so small in body, excepting in times of flood, and flowing for so many miles through a level country without receiving any tributary to support their first impulse, became too sluggish, long ere they reached the marshes, to cleave through so formidable a barrier ”

“ If the sanguine hopes to which the discovery of this river (the Macquarie) has given birth, should be realised, and it should be found to empty itself into the ocean on the north-west coast, which is the only part of this vast island that has not been accurately surveyed, in what mighty conceptions of the future greatness and power of this colony, may we not reasonably indulge? The nearest distance from the point at which Mr. Oxley left off, to any part of the western coast, is very little short of two thousand miles. ”

“ The absence of Bligh from the colony prevented his restoration being literally carried out, but Macquarie issued proclamations which served the purpose, and restored all the officials who had been put out by the rebels. Macquarie soon made himself popular with the colonists, and the best proof of his success is the fact that he governed the colony for twelve years, and his administration, though an important epoch in its history, cannot be gone into here as he was not a naval man. ”

“ Early in 1821 Macquarie made a tour of Van Diemen's Land, and on his return to Sydney was received, as he had been in 1812 with an address of welcome and a general illumination of the town. [84] Soon afterwards he started on his last progress through New South Wales, and it was while he was absent that Brisbane arrived at Port Jackson. On the 21st of November Macquarie returned to headquarters, and Sydney saw the spectacle of "Their Excellencies" riding through the streets together. ”

“ It must not however be imagined, from the foregoing observations, that I consider the coast country, north of Port Macquarie, superior to other parts of the colony for agricultural and pastoral pursuits, or other ordinary colonial occupations, unless vineyards. For it is too mountainous, densely wooded, and swampy, to be so good as many other parts for sheep, and wheat and potatoes do not grow there so well as in the extreme southern districts. ”

“ CHAPTER II. SURVEYOR EVANS'S DISCOVERY OF THE LACHLAN AND MACQUARIE RIVERS AND THE BATHURST PLAINS.
Delighted with the success which had rewarded the Blue Mountain enterprise, Governor Macquarie took prompt action in following up this conquest over nature's barrier. A new and very capable man was now ready to enter the field. ”