The Squatters – the first settlers

It was not until 1839, eleven years after Capt. Rous had sailed into the Richmond River, that the first white men came to settle in the wide Richmond Valley. They were the two squatters, Clay and Stapleton, who drove their tired herds across the Richmond Range from the headwaters of the Clarence River at Tabulam and marked out the boundaries of a station which they named Cassino.

A squatter – a pastoralist or grazier – after taking out a lease or licence from the government, could occupy a large portion of Crown land and stock it with sheep or cattle. In 1839 the licence fee was ten pounds a year, plus a small charge for the number of stock carried. The land occupied was called a run or station.

Australian wool was selling for high prices in London and men from all walks of life came to N.S.W., and after purchasing sheep or cattle, set out from Sydney to establish stations on unclaimed Crown land. One group of these men pushed northwards along the Tablelands near a route which had been explored by Allan Cunningham who, in 1828, the year that Captain Rous came to the Richmond River via water, sighted the same river from the heights of Mount Lindesay in the McPherson Range.

Another group followed the bush track from Guyra to the Clarence River valley found by the convict, Richard Craig, but most of the squatters who came to the Richmond River valley followed the easier track from Tenterfield to Tabulam first cut by Thomas Hewitt, and then crossed the Richmond Range to Cassino or elsewhere. 

The main stations and their owners as listed in the Government Gazette of 1848 are shown hereunder —
Cassino — 30,720 acres, owner Clark Irving.
Runnymede — 128,000 acres, owner Ward Stephens.
Wooroowoolgen — 64,000 acres, originally called Stilton, owners Edward Hamilton and Alfred Denison.
Wyangarie — 3,200 acres, owner Wellington C. Bundock.
Dyraaba — 19,200 acres, owner W.C, Bundock for his brother Fred, Bundock.
Fairymount — 30,720 acres, owners C.H. Fawcett and Henry Mayne.
Tunstall — 16,200 acres, (the present Tuncester), owners Shaw and A.A. Leycester.
Lismore — 23,040 acres, owner William Wilson.

Some other stations and outstations taken up at that time were:— Roseberry, Unumgar, Ettrick, Yorkbrook, Bungawalbyn, Tuckombil, Stratheden, Blakebrook, Virginia, Ellangowan and Ellerby.

It was soon discovered that the country was not suitable for sheep. Fluke, footrot and other diseases broke out and decimated the flocks, and nearly ruined those squatters who had depended almost entirely upon them. Fortunately the rise in cattle prices with the advent of the gold diggings and the Crimean war enabled most of the graziers to switch to cattle.

BOILING DOWN SHEEP AND CATTLE FOR TALLOW

It cost over a thousand pounds to start a sheep station, and most of that money had been borrowed by the New South Wales squatters at a high rate of interest. Soon after they came to the Richmond River, there was a great financial depression and many of the Sydney banks closed. So great was the panic, that sheep sold for as little as 1/- or 1/6. To meet the emergency, a squatter from the Yass district, Henry O’Brien, assisted by his brother-in-law William Wilson of Lismore, introduced the Russian custom of boiling down his unsaleable sheep and cattle in large iron vats and extracting the fat, or tallow. This was packed in wooden casks, pressed down with a heavy weight and shipped to England where it was sold for about £3 a hundredweight and was used for making soap and candles. The price of sheep soon rose to 6/- a head and a good bullock was worth 50/-. The income from this new industry, plus the sale of hides, did much to save the colony from total bankruptcy. In 1847, 99,847 hundredweight of tallow was exported from the colony and earned over £11,181 for the squatters.

The first boiling-down plant on the Richmond River was built by C.H. Fawcett at Fairymount in 1846. Clark Irving opened a large plant at Tomki Station in 1847 and an elaborate series of steam vats was built at Tatham by the owners of Wooroowoolgen Station across the river. Tunstall and Lismore Stations also boiled down their unsaleable stock. During the Crimean War the price of tallow rose to £60 a ton, but boiling down was discontinued soon afterwards on the Richmond River, when better ways were found of disposing of surplus stock, and many head were sold to Queensland, or overlanded to Melbourne during the gold rushes.

Many stations changed hands as the years went by. During the financial depression, Cassino station was sold to Clark Irving, a wealthy financier, who in 1859 was elected as the first Member for the Clarence District which included the Richmond and Tweed River valleys. He named his holding Tomki, or Dumki, the aboriginal word for greedy, but the settlement at the Falls, which was one of the few places a bullock dray could cross the river in safety, retained the name of Cassino which was later changed to Casino.

Fairymount station, which was first owned by the well-known old Colonist, Sir John Jamison of Sydney and Regentville, was sold to Fawcett and Mayne for the very low price of ten shillings a head for cattle, all improvements given in, following Jamison’s death. A bitter boundary dispute between the great bushman, A.A. Leycester of Tunstall, and Ward Stephens of Runnymede, one of the founders of the Sydney Morning Herald, was taken to the courts in Sydney and finally to England, but the costs of the lawsuits were so high that both men were forced to sell their stations and the Disputed Plain was purchased in 1866 by the Armstrong family.

Among the distinguished squatters on the Richmond River was one of the owners of Wooroowoolgen Station, Edward Hamilton, who was appointed to the Legislative Council in 1832 by the Governor, Sir George Gipps. A prominent figure in the battle over the control of Crown Land, Hamilton took his stand on the Governor’s side and was recommended for the Order of Merit. On his return to England he became Colonial Agent for the Colony in London (1863).

Many of the squatters on the Richmond River lived on their properties most of the year, but some left their stations entirely in charge of overseers or managers, who later became land-owners on their own account. Henry Barnes, George Sparke and Donald Campbell were among the real pioneers of the pastoral industry.


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