In historic terms, Port Macquarie is the most significant town between Newcastle and the Queensland border. Prior to European settlement, the area is thought to have been occupied by the Kattang Aborigines. Captain Cook sailed past this section of the coast in 1770, as did Matthew Flinders in 1802. However, the first to investigate the Hastings River Valley was John Oxley who followed the river during an overland trek from the Tamworth district in 1818. He named the river after the governor-general of India and, when he arrived at its estuary, he named the site Port Macquarie after the governor of NSW, Lachlan Macquarie, who initiated the expedition.
Oxley noted that 'the port abounds with fish, the sharks were larger and more numerous than I have ever before observed. The forest hills and rising grounds abounded with large kangaroos and the marshes afford shelter and support to innumerable wild fowl. Independent of the Hastings River, the area is generally well watered, there is a fine spring at the very entrance to the Port'.
Macquarie sent Oxley back to survey the port and surrounding countryside more closely in 1819, with a view to establishing a penal settlement. At this time, pastoralists were moving into the Hunter Valley so the government was looking to close the penal settlement at Newcastle and move it to another spot beyond the expanding settlement. It was intended for the incarceration of England's worst offenders and for transportees who had compounded their original convictions with further crimes in NSW.
Oxley reported favourably on the port's capacity to receive coastal vessels, on the suitability of the area for the penal settlement and on the richness of its soil and natural resources. He was sent again in 1820 to choose a townsite and he selected the area upon which the CBD is now located.
Three ships set sail with 44 military personnel and 60 convicts who were chosen for their skills and good behaviour and encouraged with the possibility of conditional pardons or tickets-of-leave after 18 months. Thus was a penal settlement established in 1821 under Captain Francis Allman who landed on what is now the town green and hoisted the British flag on the rise now known as Allman Hill (at the top of Clarence St). It was indicative of future problems with the shallow river bar that all three ships were wrecked in entering the harbour.
The convicts were set to work clearing what is now the CBD of thick bush (mostly tea-tree and banksia) and substantial trees. They established a stockade for defence against prospective Aboriginal attacks, within which they erected quarters for officers and convicts, a cottage for the Commandant and gardens for the cultivation of produce. One of the first buildings - the garrison hospital - still stands. Port Macquarie was then the most northerly settlement in the colony.
Governor Macquarie visited the settlement in November 1821 and approved the site. He noted the abundance of timber, the 'verdant hills' to the 'rear of the town which afford excellent rich pasturage for cattle' and recorded that the indigenous inhabitants had 'lately manifested a very hostile spirit...by frequently throwing spears at the men employed in procuring rosewood and cedar, a very useful man was killed'.
Macquarie's idea was that the settlement would prove self-sustaining and, by 1824, convicts were employed in building, agriculture (mostly wheat, tobacco, cotton, vegetables and maize), boatbuilding, blacksmithing, teaching, baking and clerical duties etc. Poultry, pigs, cows and horses were also slowly amassed. St Thomas' Anglican Church was built between 1824 and 1828 and a Female Factory, where the women made nails and other items, was erected in 1825. As timber was being rapidly decimated in the Newcastle area, the cedar and other timber near Port Macquarie was of particular interest to administrators. In 1821 Captain Allman also instructed a black prisoner from Antigua in the West Indies to commence the cultivation of the first sugarcane in Australia. The first sugar mill was established in 1824. However, the port was a little too southerly and the industry was abandoned in the 1860s.
As settlement continued to radiate outwards from Sydney, a decision was made to begin dismantling the penal settlement in 1830 and open it to free settlers. The more hardened criminals were removed to Moreton Bay and Norfolk Island. However, the phase-out was gradual and the last prisoners were nor removed until 1847. The remaining convicts were either 'cripples, invalids and lunatics' ending their days, or labourers and tradesmen who completed their sentences by working for the settlers or the government. In the 1830s and 1840s they built roads, a substantial gaol, a dam and a bridge over Kooloonbung Creek.
One 1840s convict, James Tucker, is alleged to have written three literary works while at Port Macquarie, the most notable being Ralph Rashleigh. Novelist James Hardy Vaux wrote of his life on the road gangs of the late 1830s in The Life and Experiences of an Ex-Convict in Port Macquarie.
The arrival of free settlers initiated a period of rapid growth as they took up land, established properties and businesses (including the first public house in 1830) and built their homes. Cattle and timber were a major focus, horses were bred for the supply of the Indian army and viniculture was established in the latter half of the 1830s. Dairy farms also emerged at a later date. The provision of cheap unfree labour was central to the success of these endeavours.
A road was built from New England in 1840 and the port thus became an important outlet for the wool and other produce of the tablelands. The first Presbyterian Church was built in 1842, the first Methodist Church in 1846 and the Church of England school became a state school in 1848.
Surveyor Clement Hodgkinson passed through the area in 1840 and left some impressions of 'the town, built on a gentle rise, which shows to advantage its pretty little cottages with pointed roofs, its broad straight streets...and its tall square church tower...A grove of magnificent trees encircles Port Macquarie'.
However, like most of the colony, Port Macquarie was hit hard by the depression of the 1840s. Activity at the port declined and free settlers suffered from the combined effect of the economic downturn and the loss of cheap labour with the final closure of the penal settlement in 1847. Consequently the town declined in importance. Indicatively, the town's first bank opened in 1840 but closed in 1844. Many families left the area in the ensuing years with the golds finds of the 1850s offering more exciting possibilities.
Agriculture began to supplement pastoralism with the arrival of the first free selectors in the 1860s and the river and harbour traffic began to pick up in the 1870s, although the shallow bar prevented Port Macquarie from ever emerging as a crucial port. Moreover, the railway began to wind its way through the Hunter Valley and up into the tablelands from the 1860s to the 1880s, offering a more reliable transportation alternative to farmers and pastoralists of the west. Nonetheless timbergetting remained a major activity in the Hastings Valley and a number of sawmills opened in the area which meant that the harbour at Port Macquarie saw some action. Signs of a slight quickening are apparent in the construction of a Catholic Church (1878), the first bank in 35 years (1880), the first newspaper (1882) and the establishment of local government (1887).
In 1886 The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia described Port Macquarie as 'simply the business centre of the agricultural district and the pastoral background....maize, barley, oats, potatoes; the cultivation of the vine is also an important industry'.
In the late 1890s, Louis Becke wrote of Port Macquarie that it was an 'old-time town...a quaint, sleepy little place of six hundred inhabitants, who spend their days in fishing and waiting for better times. There are two or three fairly good hotels, very pretty scenery along the coast and up the river, and a stranger can pass a month without suffering from ennui - that is, of course, if he is fond of fishing and shooting; if he is not, he should avoid going there, for it is the dullest coast town in New South Wales'.
The construction of the North Coast Railway in the 1910s spelt the virtual end of the harbour and, by the 1960s, Port Macquarie was essentially a quiet fishing town. Development since that time has been rapid due to the improvement of roads and cars, population pressures, and the prosperity of the postwar boom which fuelled marginal incomes for both holiday purposes and retirement. Thus the population of Port Macquarie more than doubled between 1966 and 1981, at which time it was the state's second-fastest growing centre.
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