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Colonial Times
New England's Colonial Period, and with it the period of recorded history, began in 1770. The region was opened up by explorers over a number of years until settlement began in 1821. Much of New England was initially outside the area of legal settlement, with authority vested in the Commissioners for Crown Lands. By the late 1840s, settlement was opened up, and many of the small communities began to grow.
Over the next sixty years, New England grew from a small outpost of sheep graziers and timber getters to a settled and civilised land with towns, farms and most importantly, railways, linking the various communities to Sydney and the rest of the Empire.
- Discovery
- First Settlement
- Towns and Cities
Discovery
In 1768 Lieutenant James Cook was sent from England on an expedition to the Pacific Ocean to (among other things) search of the postulated continent of Terra Australis. He sighted the south-eastern corner of the Australian continent on 20 April 1770. In doing so, he was to be the first documented European expedition to reach the eastern coastline. He continued sailing northwards along the east coast, charting and naming many features along the way. He identified many of the rivers and valleys of New England as he sailed, but little else is recorded of his travels along New England's coastline.
After Matthew Flinders in 1802, large scale exploration of the region did not occur again until 1818, when John Oxley and his men explored the rich and fertile plains, which they named the Liverpool Plains. Continuing east, they discovered the Peel River, near the present site of Tamworth. Continuing further east they crossed the Great Dividing Range and came upon the Hastings River. Following it to its mouth, they discovered that it flowed into the sea at a spot which they named Port Macquarie in honour of the governor.
First Settlement
In 1787 the First Fleet of eleven ships and about 1350 people under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip setsail for Botany Bay. On arrival, Botany Bay was considered unsuitable and a landing was made at the nearby Sydney Cove. Settlement began with convicts sent to New South Wales sentenced to seven or fourteen years' penal servitude, or for the term of their natural lives. Upon arrival in a penal colony, convicts would be assigned to various kinds of work. While the early attempts at settlement nearly failed, by 1800 the colony was well established, and attempts were now made to settle eslewhere on the continent.
New England remaied unsettled until Governor Macquarie orderd the establishment of a penal settlement in the Hastings Valley in 1821. Port Macquarie was never a large settlement on the scale of Sydney, Newcastle or Van Diemens Land, but the establishment of the colony marked the first inroad made by Europeans into New England. Over the next few years, settlements sprang up all over the region beginning with Armidale and then Grafton.
Settlement in and around Armidale began in 1835 when two brothers from the Isle of Jersey took up the major grazing runs that would later become Saumarez Station. In 1839, The New South Wales Government appointed a Commissioner for Crown Lands for the New England District and placed George James Macdonald in charge of 33,800 square kilometres of crown lands. Macdonald established his office on the present site of Macdonald Park in East Armidale. In his first census return for the New England District on 30 September 1839, Macdonald listed the names of thirty-seven stations and their license holders and recorded a total of 422 people, 10 of whom were females and 209 of whom were convicts. Two tribal Aboriginal groups lived in the area at the time of the census.
An escaped convict, Richard Craig discovered Grafton area in 1831. For a pardon and £100 he brought a party of cedar getters on the cutter Prince George to log stands of the Australian Red Cedar
tree. The stories of the huge cedar stands spread and John Small arrived on the Susan in 1838 and first occupied land on Woodford Island. 'The Settlement' as Grafton was first known as was established shortly after. Craig was also famous for opening a route from the Clarence Valley to the tablelands along what became known as Craig's Line. Today, the A5 trunk road follows this route.
Timber getters were also the first to settle in the Korff's Harbour area in 1841. In the early years the area was visited by up to 450 ships a year until the Carywell was wrecked in 1865. A lighthouse was built in 1878 after the town was gazetted as Coffs Harbour in 1861.
| Timeline of New England History | ||
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| Preceded by: Pre-History |
Colonial Times 1821 - 1900 |
Succeeded by: Proudly Australian |
| History of New England | ||
| Timeline: Pre-History · Colonial Times · Proudly Australian · Winds of Change · Shadows of Dissent · Civil War Transitional Government · New Found Nation · Toil and Trouble · Five Day War · Engagement To Europe · Recent Times |
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| Topics: Military · New State Movement | ||
