|
Port Macquarie, Population 33700, (398km North of Sydney). Originally a penal colony in 1821.
Open to free settlers from the 1830s then experienced a boom and set course to its current position as a premier holiday destination.
|
|
|
Lieutenant John Oxley (Surveyor-General for the Colony, 1818) and the Governor, Lachlan Macquarie, had the first say as far as the destiny of Port Macquarie was concerned.
“We pitched our tent upon a beautiful point of land’’ (Town Beach foreshore), Oxley recorded in his diary on arrival here on October 8, 1818.
But soon the beautiful and peaceful nature of this part of the Colony was to change, with a town growing around a stockade and a gaol.
The first contingent of officers and convicts left Sydney on March 18, 1821, in three sailing ships - “The Prince Regent”-” Mermaid and Lady Nelson” - and didn’t arrive until the evening of April 17 and 18. Headwinds caused a stay of several days in Port Stephens, and high seas when they arrived at Tacking Point caused the expedition to run for shelter at Trial Bay.
Governor Macquarie came in November, 1821 and decided among other things that the church of St. Thomas (1824-27) should be built. The church is still in use today.
Government buildings included Government House, a Gaol,
Asylum, Military Barracks, Provision Stores and the like. Convicts built a second Gaol on Gaol Hill and it was demolished finally in 1920.
Free settlers began to arrive in 1830, the town proper was surveyed and laid out in 1831. Extensions to the planned town were made in 1840.
Population in 1833 was 550. Transportation of convicts ceased in 1840.
Reinactments of Penial Colony Days
|
|
