Pages 9 - 77 (1600kb) - Eurobodalla Shire Council

EUROBODALLA ABORIGINAL CULTURAL HERITAGE STUDY
South Coast NSW
first Crown Lands Commissioner for the District, took up his position in1839. 33 One
of the duties of the Crown Lands Commissioners was the provision of an annual
report on the status of the Aboriginal people within their region. These reports are an
important source of information on Aboriginal life in the 1840s and ‘50s. Although
the boundary of the area Lambie covered formally lay at the Moruya River it is
evident in his reports and associated census details that he was dealing with
Aboriginal people throughout the Eurobodalla area.
The late 1820s saw European settlement begin to be established in the area to the
north and south of the Eurobodalla region, in the Bega Valley and Twofold Bay in the
south and the Illawarra and Shoalhaven to the north. Europeans also began to settle in
the Monaro tablelands in this period, the town of Braidwood developing as a regional
centre with 85 non-Indigenous people living there by 1828. 34
In 1828 Surveyor Florence surveyed the coastal area from Sydney to Moruya; he
reported a deserted hut and stockyards on Runnyford Creek near Bateman’s Bay. 35
Clearly there had already been some pastoral activity in the region, however, it was
scattered and very limited in nature. In the late 1820s a small number of pastoralists
and settlers began to move into the area. Throughout the 1830s the extent of European
settlement steadily grew. Much of the movement of people and stock into the area
came down from the tablelands via Braidwood and Araluen while others came by
sea. 36 Throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century the sea was the
focus of south coast settlement with settlers relying on it for the majority of their
transport needs.
By 1830 there were a number of major landholders in the district, including William
Morris at Murramarang, Thompson at Bateman’s Bay, Captain Raine at Mt.
Dromedary and Francis Flanagan and John Hawdon at Moruya. 37 In 1833 a drought
led the settlers in the Braidwood area to look for further pastures. In the following
year John Jauncey, on behalf of the Curlewis brothers of Braidwood, selected the area
around Tilba Tilba, from Corunna Lake south to Wallaga Lake and to Mt Dromedary
in the west. Two Aboriginal brothers Tom and Dick Toole had led him there. Jauncey
named the property ‘Tolbedilbo’, which is said by some to be a local word for windy.
The name Tilba Tilba appears to have derived from ‘Tolbedilbo’. 38
The first European settler in the Wagonga Inlet area was Francis Hunt, he took up
land in 1839 on the south of the inlet. Thomas Forster acquired the land in 1849 and it
became known as ‘Noorooma’. Forster added land throughout the 1850s and at one
stage was said to have held land from the inlet down to Wallaga Lake. 39 The Bodalla
area was taken up by John Hawdon, who already held land in the Moruya area, in the
mid 1830s as he was expanding his land holdings throughout the district. 40 In an
33 Alan Andrews, Earliest Monaro and Burragorang: 1790 to 1840, Tabletop Press, 1998, p.121.
34 Gwenda Happ, SE Region Draft Document Resources, version of report edited by Annie Blackwell,
NSW NPWS, C-1316, chapter 2.
35 Frank Johnson, Where Highways Meet: A History of Bateman’s Bay and the Valleys of the Clyde and
Tomakin River Valleys, Clyde River & Batemans Bay Historical Society, 1980, pp.24-25.
36 Gibbney, op.cit., pp.21-28. ; Happ, op.cit., chapter 2.
37 Gibbney, op.cit., pp.21-28.
38 Laurelle Pacey & Norm Hoyer, Tilba Times, self-published, Narooma, 1995, p.2.
39 Laurelle Pacey, Narooma’s Past: steamers, sawmills and salmon, self-published, Narooma, 2001, p.7.
; Laurelle Pacey, The Story of Wagonga Inlet, self-published, Narooma, 1990, p.4.
40 Gibbney, op.cit., pp.21-28. ; Bayley, op.cit., 14-17.
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