The views of the first Europeans to explore the coast off Ballina

From before 1788, the year authorities claimed the Australian continent on behalf of the British Crown, European discoverers and explorers imagined it to be lush and fertile.7 Later, several European navigators made closer observations of the coast off Ballina (later named), from either directly off the coast or when exploring the Richmond River and North Creek.

First, from on board the Endeavour when Captain James Cook navigated and mapped sections of the east coast in 1770 – he passed Ballina on Wednesday 16 May – amid a fresh gale and fine weather. Cook’s mission was to explore the entire east coast and so had no intention of scouting each of the many estuaries that spilled into the sea along it. When nearto the location of Ballina, however, Cook did observe the Bundjalung occupying their territory – between the Richmond River and Cape Byron he recorded ‘People and smook’ in various places.8

In 1799 and 1802, Matthew Flinders whose mission it was to circumnavigate the continent, also mapped the eastern coastline. Despite historians, to date, arguing that Flinders did not ‘discover’ the Richmond River he did record its location, as his map shows a gap where the mouth of the Richmond River lay; and he did the same at Evans Head in the case of the Evans River. He further noted that the land encompassing the Newrybar ridge was: ‘A woody rising country of pleasant appearance.’ Like Cook he also saw smoke rising from the fires of Bundjalung camps, south of the river mouth. While Flinders didn’t stop at the Richmond he anchored at Cape Byron and at Point Danger (Tweed Heads), where he made linear profile sketches of the landscape from the sea.9

The features that veiled the mouth of the Richmond did not attract Flinders’ attention in the same way other locations close by did. The nature of the scenery at Ballina, with its unassuming views of low hills (not mountain peaks), modest sea-facing rocky outcrops, and flat, sandy and alluvial floodplains, was of lesser interest. The European mindset of this time was drawn to noticing supposedly more remarkable landforms. Moreover, off Ballina the coastline was relatively straight and did not harbour sheltered bays in which to safely anchor, as was known of the coastline near-to Cape Byron and Point Danger from Cook’s records. From both of these secure vantage points also were pleasant or picturesque views of mountain peaks, of which Wollumbin, or Mount Warning as it was named by Cook, had, in the minds of Europeans, already gained the status of being among the colony’s most majestic natural features.

In 1823 John Oxley also sailed past the Richmond River enroute his mission to explore Moreton Bay (Brisbane), along the way he ‘discovered’ and named the Tweed River. Though he travelled to the Moreton Bay region to assess its usefulness as a penal settlement he also recorded the characteristics of the landscapes he passed, noting their suitability for settlement, or farming – which was of great interest to European settlers. The original vision that NSW would be annexed and developed as a selfsufficient penal colony was fading and a new picture was emerging of it being the land of opportunity for willing migrants.

Five years after Oxley, Henry John Rous sailed along the east coast in 1828. He has been widely celebrated as the first European to explore the Richmond River; he named both the river and the northern headland at its mouth (now part of the landscape referred to as Lighthouse Hill). Though Rous dubbed the northern headland ‘Lennox Head’ it was later

7 Richard White. Inventing Australia: images and identity 1688-1980, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1981. 8 Cook, James, and J. C. Beaglehole. The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery / Edited from the Original Manuscripts [by J. C. Beaglehole]. Volume 1, The Voyage of the Endeavour. Hakluyt Society, 317. 9 Flinders, Matthew, William Westall, and Robert Brown. A Voyage to Terra Australis: Undertaken for the Purpose of Completing the Discovery of That Vast Country, and Prosecuted in the Years 1801, 1802, and 1803, in His Majesty’s Ship the Investigator ... / by Matthew Flinders. London: G. and W. Nicol, 1814.

simply referred to as North Head, which fell out of use with the naming of the town of Ballina in the mid-1850s, after the town-site, as we know it today, was surveyed and laid out. And of course Lennox Head was adopted for the headland located just further north.10

Rous made the earliest sketch of the Richmond River and its junction with North Creek. He traversed the main river arm as far up as Broadwater and North Creek’s junction with Deadman’s Creek. Overall, the chart he made reflects his key concern to record and report on the navigability of the river and creek, and as a result the land’s suitability for settlement and farming. Aside from the soundings made, his sketch documents some of the vegetation that edged the river’s main arm and North Creek.

On the western bank of North Creek, near its mouth, he described the vegetation to be ‘Low and woody with Mangroves close to the Banks’. Higher upstream on the same side of the creek he noted ‘low land covered with long grass having the appearance of being flooded sometimes’. Close to the water, mangroves also lined the creek’s eastern bank, but on this side as well the vegetation altered as the land became elevated away from the creek – or as Rous wrote on his map, ‘hills well wooded’. 11 The mouth of both the river and the creek on Rous’ map also illustrate its natural form, differing significantly to how we see it today and which dates from after the construction of the first section of the breakwall in the late nineteenth century. In Rous’ words he wrote that at the river’s mouth:

“… you steer in due west between two sandbanks on which there is a heavy surf, … the entrance is wide, 12 feet on the bar at half flood and then 14 to 20 feet deep at the river mouth, with a constant strong ebb tide from 3 to 5 miles per hour midchannel … a sand bank projects from the inner shore line, narrowing the channel to about 300 yards – it then opens suddenly to an expanse of two miles with two dry sand banks in the centre, the main body running W by N ½ N then striking to the south west is a fine arm 24 feet deep, nearly a mile wide ….”12

Aside from the escaped convicts from Moreton Bay who passed through the region after the Moreton Bay Penal settlement was established in 1824 Europeans did not intentionally return to the Richmond for another fourteen years – but when they did North Creek was one of the areas where they settled.

10 Daley, Louise Tiffany. Men and a River: Richmond River District 1828-1895, MUP, 1966. 11 Rous, Henry John. Richmond River Soundings, Lennox Head [cartographic Material]., 27th August 1828, 1828 12 Wilton, C. Pleydell N. The Australian Quarterly Journal of Theology, Literature & Science., 1828, 353-354. Map made by Captain Henry Rous in 1828 of the Richmond River, from its mouth at Ballina to just past Wardell. Rous’ expedition oversaw journeys up North Creek and the River’s main arm, to make a record of the suitability of the land for European farming. State Library of NSW, Rous, Henry John. Richmond River Soundings, Lennox Head [Cartographic Material], 27 August 1828.