SAGAS OF THE EARLY DAYS
Courtesy of TROVE Northern Star, Saturday 2 November 1946
THIS IS THE FIRST of a series of articles to appear each Saturday, written by Mr. Windsor Lang. They deal with the development of the district, from the time the first ship battled through the wild bar at the river mouth to investigate the Richmond. Mr. Lang has coloured the historical facts with local references and interesting sidelines of the pioneers’ lives: He sees a glimpse of their past in a poem by Kendall with which he opens his “Sagas”;
A sky of wind! and while those fitful gusts
Are beating round the windows in the cold,
With sullen sobs of rain, behold! I shape
A settler’s story of the wild old times
One told by camp fires when the station drays
Were housed and hidden, many years ago;
While swarthy drivers smoked their pipes and drew,
And crowded round the friendly gleaming flame
That lured the dingo, howling, from his caves,
And brought sharp, sudden feet about the brakes. HENRY KENDALL.
THE RICHMOND RIVER was discovered, and its entrance crossed in August, 1828, by Captain (afterwards Admiral) Henry James Rous, whilst he was in command of the survey ship “H.M.S. Rainbow.”
To Captain Rous the estuary of the Richmond presented a totally different picture to the one which can be viewed at the spot today. Now the crossing is confined to the area between the two parallel stone walls of the breakwater. Beyond that crossing is a straight, regularly dredged channel, capable of accommodating craft of fair draught, and kept scoured by the natural flow of the river water, controlled by the inner training walls.
When Captain Rous in the “Rainbow” breasted the river bar, the northern waters of the wide estuary lapped the rocks near the site occupied by the building belonging to the Ballina Lighthouse and Lismore Surf Life Saving Club, and the northern bank of the river continued round the base of the higher ground that skirts Shaw’s Bay, past a point jutting out at East Ballina. This, I believe, was called Pilot Point by the early settlers. The river flowed near the spot where the kiosk stands today, past the place where the North Creek empties its waters into the Richmond, and by way of swampy foreshores to the present waterfront of the township of Ballina.
The low sandy dunes backing South Beach comprised the southern bank of the estuary. Behind those sand dunes the river formed an indentation known since 1854 as Mobbs’ Bay, although for a few years previously it had been called Brown’s Bay. Both Shaw’s Bay and Mobbs’ Bay figure largely in the story of the early settlement of the river, but I shall return to them later when dealing with the matter of shipping on the river.

The shores of Mobbs’ Bay continued as the southern bank of the river. Beyond the crossing, Captain Rous was confronted by a river-way shoaled by a succession of shifting sand banks. Thirty years earlier, in 1798, Captain Campbell, in command of the ship “Deptford,” when surveying the coast, had named this shoal Deptford – the title by which Ballina was first gazetted. To negotiate the narrow, winding passage between the treacherous sandbank’s accuracy of judgment, governed by first-class skill and seamanship, was demanded.
Having learned of the numerous disasters that overtook craft of lighter draught, attempting the crossing in the 40’s and 50’s, and even down to the 80’s of last century – at which latter period the natural scour of the river had been improved – I feel that the outstanding feat of seamanship performed by Captain Rous has not been sufficiently stressed in the different reports that I have read of that initial crossing.
THE TENOR of those reports was “He had to steer between sand-banks and haul the ship close to a rocky point on the north shore.” I take it that he had to warp the ship to the rocky point by means of a kedge anchor. I know that later masters with lesser craft had to use rowing boats and kedge anchors to warp their way into Shaw’s Bay, and later across the inner flats to Ballina. In point of fact the late Thomas Russell in writing the reminiscences of the late James Ainsworth, of Ballina – who arrived on the river in 1847, five years after the first comers – said that for some years most schooners did not proceed into the river beyond Shaw’s Bay.
Those which did so, first discharged their cargoes and ballast. Two exceptions were the “Anna Maria” and the “Louisa,” flat bottomed scows, whose light draught permitted them to essay the navigation of the winding channel four feet deep at high tide – that followed the base of the hill round Shaw’s Bay past Pilot Point, beside the South Beach, and up the river to Ballina. This passage provided a nightmare for skilled masters of smaller craft for years.
However, Captain Rous did negotiate the tortuous channel and was cheered when his ship sailed into “an expanse of water two miles wide with two dry sand banks in the center.” He explored the river for 17 miles to within the vicinity of the spot where Wardell (for some years called Blackwall) now stands. Here he found a north west branch (the Broadwater) extending for five miles, and ending in a low marshy jungle (the mouth of Tuckean Swamp).
Before leaving Captain Rous, I must submit the account of a further exploit of his, for knowledge of which I am indebted to an article by Dr. Stewart McKay, and which appeared in the “Northern Star” of October 18, 1944. This would seem to strengthen my conviction that he was both a resourceful and intrepid seaman.
“In 1830 Rous returned to England. He retired from the Navy, but returned to the sea in 1835 to perform an exploit comparable with the voyage Bligh made after the mutiny on the ‘Bounty.’ In command of the frigate ‘Pique,’ Rous sailed from Quebec to England. The frigate encountered a storm, and was driven on to a reef off the coast of Labrador. After 11 hours she was floated off the reef with sprung main-mast and fore-mast, and with three-quarters of the rudder missing. Rous sailed the vessel 1500 miles back to port, despite the fact that it had a leak which made two feet of water an hour.”
THE SCRUB that lined the river’s banks was left in all its primeval glory for another 14 years following the visit by the “Rainbow,” and the crossing of the bar was not again essayed until Captain Steele, in the schooner “Sally,” from the Clarence, crossed with the first of the cedar-getters, almost simultaneously with another party of cedar-getters, who had overlanded from the Clarence, and invaded the Richmond area at a point where Woodburn stands today. That was in 1842.
At this point in my story I should like to remark on two or three items that bear on the “first” settlement on the river.
About half a century ago I read an article on cedar-getters penned by the late Sir Thomas Ewing, a person held in high esteem by early settlers on the Richmond. Therein he wrote “More than half a century ago (now a century ago) the schooner ‘Northumberland’ from Sydney crossed the bar of a northern river and landed a band of pioneers – men who knew the bush, and had hewn the giant cedars to the south.”
The information content of that article indicated that the Richmond was that “northern river” because it described in some detail the general plan of action followed by the cedar-getters on the Richmond, which plan of action I have learned from contemporary writers.
The article held my interest as it dealt with a phase of Richmond River history of which I had heard so much from within my own family circle. I readily admit that Sir Thomas Ewing was highly qualified by reason of his special ability, as well as from his personal experiences, to write of those days and its people, but his mention of the schooner “Northumberland” has puzzled me over a number of years.
From other sources I gathered that the “Sally” brought the first cedar-getters to the Richmond. From various records I have obtained an imposing list of the schooners known to have visited the Richmond during the first decade after 1842, but “Northumberland” does not have a place on that list.
Again, Mr. Robert Leycester Dawson, in a paper read at Lismore before the Richmond River Historical Society, said “and it is traditional that seekers for it (cedar) in 1838 made their way from the ‘Big River’ (Clarence) to the Richmond a year or so before Clay and Stapleton, the first pioneers. There appears to be no positive proof that this was so, but it is not at all improbable.” In any case we have no record of any timber that came from their cutting operations.
PRIOR TO CAPTAIN ROUS’ crossing of the Richmond River bar, the “Sydney Gazette,” of December 1, 1825, reported that four runaway prisoners from Moreton Bay had arrived at Port Macquarie after a journey of five weeks.
“They gave a pleasing account of the country over which they had passed, and reported crossing no less than 60 streams, and that about 30 miles north of Trial Bay they had fallen in with a river as large as the Hastings.”
This stream was the Bellinger. It is obvious that some of the streams crossed must have been the head-waters of the Clarence and Richmond, as well as their tributaries. Therefore, they would have been well west of the “Big Scrub” cedar belt.
The overlanders from the Clarence who had contacted the river near Woodburn evidently gravitated towards the river mouth, and linked up with the “Sally’s” party at East Ballina settlement where rough shelters had been erected on ground sites held by the right of preemption – the timber getter’s license gave him permission to build huts. Steve King and Joe McGuire, two of the Woodburn band, certainly belonged to the original East Ballina community.
WEST BALLINA, or Ballina proper, was not settled until sometime later; after increased population improved shipping conditions, and increased shipping by boats of greater tonnage had made it expedient to do so. East Ballina was selected as the site for a settlement because the higher ground there was the most promising in the vicinity, and Shaw’s Bay could be utilised as a depot for the landing of stores, and for the subsequent shipment of cedar. Added to this a small stream of fresh water, fed from a nearby spring, was within easy access. It was certainly preferable to the low mangrove covered banks around Mobbs’ Bay – although eventually Mobbs’ Bay did become a depot for the receipt of both inward and forward cargoes. West Ballina was an extensive, lightly covered flat with ribs, or ridges, of heavy box and gum trees. This flat was dotted with patches of thick brush and ti-tree swamps choked with cutting-grass.
NEXT WEEK: Ballina’s progress – early settlers – the life of the cedar-getters.