Rileys Hill

In 1850 a schooner, Colin Bohn commanded by Captain William Riley, had run aground on a sandbank in the Richmond River. They had to wait a few weeks until a king tide would refloat the ship and Captain Riley had made it his custom to enjoy the view every afternoon from the top of an adjacent hill. The hill became known as “Riley’s Hill”, and the name was, in time, adopted for the locality generally.
The area was sparsely populated by cedar-getter’s camps and as the land was cleared, farmers moved in to take full advantage of the rich soil. Sugar cane grew in abundance to feed the Broadwater Mill a few miles down the river.

By the mid 1800s the situation at the river mouth had become critical. Around 120 ships had founded or sunk trying to navigate the treacherous ‘bar’. The politicians could no longer ignore public pressure with the loss of valuable trading goods and tragic loss of life. It still took until 1889 for the government to agree and fund a breakwall with basaltic rocks to be sourced from a purpose-built quarry at Riley’s Hill.

In 1891, with the opening of the quarry, many families moved to the area and a sizeable village came into existence. A post office, church, shops and school soon followed.

The Quarry

The rock was moved by a 30 ton steam travelling derrick crane to the wharf, where it was loaded into punts by a specially designed 20 ton steam derrick crane. There were three sets of three punts and one tug. In 1899 an additional two 10 ton cranes were installed at the quarry, also an air compressor to operate the drill. The following year two concrete powder magazines were built.
Total tons extracted from 1891 to 1897 was 542,842 tons and the quarry was excavated to 40 metres below the water level.
By 1900, 133 men were employed at the quarry and 110 children enrolled at the school.

In 1911 sufficient rock for the Ballina breakwater construction had been supplied and when the quarry flooded, totally filling up the 40m below ground level excavations, all the machinery and equipment at the bottom of the quarry could not be removed economically. The quarry closed and, for a while, it became a popular swimming hole for the locals.

rileys hill quarry
The quarry as a swimming hole

The Dry Dock

With the river traffic a constant flow of steamers, droghers, tugs and ferries, the need for a dry dock to service the many government boats became evident. Building began in 1894 and it was officially opened in 1901.

It was excavated directly out of solid rock (which was taken to the Ballina breakwall) and lined with concrete, then closed off from the river by a pair of large gates which allowed ships with a draught of 3 metres to enter at high tide. Closure of the gates, effected by steel cables worked by hand-cranked winches was followed by the pumping out of the dock using high capacity centrifugal pumps. Originally steam operated, these pumps were converted to electrical operation in the early 1930s. Once most of the water was removed from the dry dock, smaller scavenger pumps, operating from sumps within the dock, kept the working area dry. 

South of the dock entrance, wooden docks were used to unload coal for both the pump boilers and the steam shovels which operated in the large quarry nearby. Stone and coal were transported along a tramway. In addition to the steam pumps, the pump shed housed a forge for heating rivets which were passed out through the open doors to riveters working on the ship in the dock, together with the lathes, milling machinery and air compressors necessary to repair the small steamers and ferries serviced in the dock. 

An ongoing problem in the operation of the dock was to keep silt brought down by the river from blocking the dock entrance, so significant removal of spoil was necessary every three to four years.

The dock continued as a significant operation until the end of the 1940’s when the highway had been improved sufficiently to allow all weather truck traffic. This completed the demise of the coastal steamer traffic and the construction of the bridge at Wardell in the early 1960’s removed the remaining large vehicular ferry servicing the Pacific Highway. As bridges at Coraki and Woodburn replaced smaller car ferries and cane was no longer transported by barge, the dry dock work fell off dramatically. The dock was finally closed in the early 1990s and established as a heritage site.

It served a very useful and valuable purpose for nearly 100 years.

Rileys Hill dry dock
Rileys Hill dry dock

River Towns