Much has been written of the British settling Australia in the late 18^th century. A brief precis follows here to introduce how settlers came to be in this study area:

The first area to be settled was in what is now known as Sydney, New South Wales. As the population grew, not only was more land needed for agricultural pursuits to provide for the colony, but those with an adventurous nature were keen to discover what else there was to find. Maitland (contemporary name), to the north west of Sydney was one of these areas found as it has a navigable river, the Hunter, accessible from the ocean. As water for agriculture and grazing was imperative, interest grew in waterways off the Hunter, the Paterson River and Williams River.¹¹ Towns established along each, inhabited by free settlers, inentured felons, and reformed felons. The demand for and ready source of timber was another influencing factor for travel further afield; many varieties of gum trees, box, cedar, pines, oaks, to name a few, along with variable density undergrowth on much of the countryside grew in environment friendly areas. Surveyors were hard pressed to keep up with the explorers!

Navigation on the Williams River was possible to a point where the town of Clarence Town grew. Upriver from there another settlement developed, where many red cedar trees were discovered, along with fertile alluvial lands near the river. The township, Dungog, was gazetted in 1838; a Court of Petty Sessions opened in 1833, a post office in 1834, along with inns, stores and private residences.

Travel along the Paterson River, and then overland also reached Dungog. Grants of land, often 2,560 acres (or four-square miles; 10.4 square kilometers) were awarded to, amongst others, affluent settlers; one such (English) gentleman who also came to also have land in Thalaba, John Hooke. The land was worked by the grantees, their assigned convicts and free settlers. Their crops and cattle for market were overlanded, and also onto waiting craft at Clarence Town. Logs for timber were floated down the Williams River. In 1847, the Hookes started a cattle boiling down works for farmers in the district. The resultant fat was used to make soap and candles.

Therefore, to reach Thalaba, one travelled from the main inhabited area of Maitland along increasingly bumpy tracks designated as roads, to Dungog, and then across the Williams River, when not in flood. Or one travelled to Clarence Town (on the same side of the river as Dungog), the navigation head of the Williams River, and cross the river at the southern end of the Parish.

A few years prior to Dungog’s settlement, the government decided designated areas to lease by settlers were necessary to fund the Church of England and their schools.¹² A Letters Patent was created on 9 March 1826 for those areas called ‘Church and School Estates’. The Parish of Thalaba was one of the designated Church and School Estates to be leased. Bureaucratic mismanagement resulted in dissolution of the Corporation, and the Clergy and School Lands Act in 1834 appointed agents to manage leasing the designated lands. Leases, of varying timeframes, were won by public auction.

From 1861, the Crown Lands Alienation Act was created, whereby a ‘Conditional Purchase’ of land yet to be surveyed could be purchased, with a number of requirements to be fulfilled over time, or loss of the land would result. Conditional Purchases of initially one year, then 7, 14 and 21 years were found in Thalaba, as well as ‘Settlement Leases’. Settlement leases were of 28 years, then 40 years were created in the 1895 Crown Lands Act. They were for agriculture or grazing properties, and again, other restrictions and requirements existed for the lease holder to fulfill. They could be converted to a Conditional Purchase at a later date (Crown Lands Act 1908). When conditions were met, the holder could apply for a Certificate of Conformity, as the next step to gain clear title of the property. Another leasing management change occurred on 31 December 1882, when all lands and generated revenues were transferred to the Government of NSW.¹³

Thalaba was slow to grow given it was initially virgin forest, only accessed by native Australians, and a growing number of bushrangers who were often escaped convicts. The first auction to lease land in the Parish was advertised in the Government Gazette in December 1831.¹⁴ By the 1841 NSW Census for Thalaba listed landholder Benjamin Marsh (Snr; arrived in New South Wales from England in 1829), wife, six children, and three domestic servants; landholder John Mackay, wife, four children, and six domestic servants (Scotsman, via Prince Edward Island, Canada, to New South Wales in 1839); and shepherd John Steward, his wife and daughter. Not until the 10 October 1845 was the first lease, an Occupation Lease, purchased by Angus Cameron.¹⁵ Further leases by families who were ultimately in Thalaba for many years, include William Walker (1847), the Irishman Fitzgerald (1849) and next door, Benjamin Marsh (1849). They had to acquire materials for, then build homes, and clear land to grow food for themselves and their stock.

The closest town to Thalaba, on the same side of the Williams River, is Stroud. However, it was a tortuous, mountainous way for the most part of 17 miles (27 kilometers) on today’s roads. Whereas the town Dungog was only across the river; if it was fordable. Opportunely, the way over the river at Dungog was by a fallen tree, that somehow came to be called ‘Carr’s Log’. The Fitzgerald children accessed it to walk to school in Dungog. A section was cut out of it and bridged by a plank, to allow timbergetters’ cedar logs to float down to Clarence Town.¹⁶ A little further downstream was ‘Gordons Log’.

Finally, in 1872 Benjamin Marsh and brothers, and their tenants built the first bridge over the Williams River, ‘Thalaba bridge’,¹⁷ at the southern end of the Parish. This newspaper article also included the detail, “Messrs Marsh Brothers have for the last 25 years (~ 1847) rented nearly twenty square miles (12,800 acres) of government land, have erected a school house, put up fences, improved the district” (p. 24). Two years later, a bridge over the Williams River, called the ‘Cooreei bridge’ was built next to the growing town of Dungog. The road that continued on form the bridge in the opposite direction went to Stroud and Gloucester. The bridge was only wide enough for one bullock dray to cross, with difficulty.¹⁸ For all those inhabitants of Thalaba, going into their local town, Dungog, for all the services not in the Parish, was often treacherous.

From 1872 on, portions of land in the Parish of Thalaba were alienated from the Crown and individuals purchased title to properties in Thalaba. Conditional Purchases and Settlement Leases continued. Charles Tonks, a publican in Dungog, was the purchaser of Portion 1, 202 acres 3 roods, ex road, but conveyed the Certificate of Title to John Hooke in January 1877.¹⁹ By 1880, the Parish map shows 58 land portions, 18 without landholders’ names.²⁰ By 1903, there were 63 portions, all with landholders’ names.²¹ As in the population data section, inhabitant numbers grew, then declined (allowing children were not included in electoral rolls): 1891, n = 307; 1901, n = 284; and electoral rolls – 1903, n = 136; 1913, n= 110; 1917 and 1921, n = 132.

Within those years, timber getting; agricultural pursuits of the common crops including wheat then maize, tobacco and lucerne; horse breeding, dairying, and cattle grazing were established. Bullocks were used for ploughing and transporting produce to market. The Thalaba Baptist Church, and school were constructed. A post office was there as late as 1913 when the Country party member addressed electors.²² The road system slowly improved over time, from “mud, ruts, and gullies, endangering both life and limb”,²³ allowing residents, and transport of their crops easier access to Dungog, Clarence Town and Stroud.

Weather events of drought and floods were a major influencing factor for this rural community. Crops and stock either lacked life sustaining water, or were flooded. Battering storms, with winds and hail also caused immense damage; one in 1899 was of note. Barns were flattened, roofs were lifted off homes and contents destroyed, crops were flattened and trees uprooted, farming equipment was relocated; no human lives were lost.²⁴ In this study’s time period, severe floods occurred in 1840, 1857, 1860 – 1868, 1874, 1893 and 1911.

As a result, sadly, in 1867 the Benjamin Marsh involved in building Thalaba bridge went into voluntary sequestration,

1. I am forced to sequester my estate for the benefit of my creditors owing to the failure of my crop and of the crops generally in the district where I reside.
2. The parties indebted to me are unable to pay me owing to the failure of their crops and I land in the same position to my own creditors, had the crops in the district been good the last year I should have been in a position to pay all my creditors in full.²⁵

Not only was the Marsh family affected, but those he owed monies to, amongst others, the doctor for accouchement of his son’s birth in 1865; services by another Thalaba local name, Mr Bruyn; purchase of liniments, potions, powders etc; tobacco; and flour and grinding from John Walker; and others.

The farmers also endured the opposite extreme, drought and inadequate rainfall. Some crops and stock survived; their owners were sorely tested. The focus of land use changed over time and the local infrastructure grew to meet the need. Wade’s steam run corn mill was built at Cooreei in 1878, toward the northern end of the parish. It functioned until moving to Sydney in 1902.²⁶

The Hooke Brothers came to the fore again when the dairy industry became popular in the district. They built the first butter factory at Wirragulla, across the Williams River from Thalaba.²⁷

Like others in New South Wales and further afield, Thalaba residents endured the 1890s economic depression, their young men going to the Boer War, and then the First World War.