Lachlan Macquarie and Maitland
Lachlan Macquarie, the fifth Governor of New South Wales, arrived in the colony late in 1809 after a long career in the British Army which he served in several parts of the world. He was to play a major part in the initial settlement by Europeans in the Maitland area, giving the orders to establish small farming settlements at Paterson’s Plains and Wallis Plains. These communities began to take shape in 1812 and 1818 respectively.
Governor Lachlan Macquarie
photograph of a portrait
Macquarie’s goals
Macquarie’s orders were harbingers of substantial reform as far as land settlement, economic development and the social order were concerned. The opening up of the Sydney Basin for farming had been dominated by military officers and free settlers with some emancipists being given small holdings, but these first Hunter Valley settlements were based very largely on serving convicts. Macquarie sought to transform the colony from a prison to a commercially-based society, with convicts, emancipists and free settlers alike to be the agents of the change. In what became the Maitland area, convicts from the penal station at Newcastle were given land to farm along with a degree of freedom for being ‘well behaved’ and doing good work as timber-cutters or in other jobs.
This, Macquarie thought, would give them redemption and a new chance at life. Marrying, having ‘legitimate’ children, attending prayers and having some independence in their lives would encourage the same desirable outcomes: all these things would be civilising influences. There was much humanity in Macquarie’s approach to convict management. He was ahead of others in positions of authority in early New South Wales, earlier land grants in the Sydney Basin having excluded serving convicts.
The innovations Macquarie introduced saw him lose favour with some powerful people in the colony, notably John Macarthur and the Rev Samuel Marsden. Macarthur and other members of the colonial elite were not in favour of convicts being given opportunities to better their situations: in their view, convicts were to be punished, and for life. Macquarie considered that, once they had proved themselves worthy, convicts should be allowed back into society at whatever level they had forfeited on being transported.
The new settlements
Macquarie’s first visit to Paterson’s Plains was in late 1811 with Lieutenant Thomas Skottowe, Commandant of the penal station at Newcastle. During or soon after the visit he decreed that a small number of free men and ‘reliable’ convicts be provided with plots of partly-cleared land on either side of the Paterson River between today’s Woodville and Paterson. Seven years later Macquarie returned with Captain James Wallis (a later Commandant at Newcastle) and noted with satisfaction the progress that had been made in clearing and farming the land.
From Paterson’s Plains, Macquarie walked overland with Wallis and other men to the Hunter River. There, finding further cultivable land (some of it probably partly cleared by timber-getters) he ordered that the formula on which Paterson’s Plains had been based be repeated at Wallis Plains. This new settlement too was to be based largely on serving convicts.
The first five men to take up holdings at Paterson’s Plains, each of 30-40 acres over which they had no title, were four convicts and a free man. Their allotments were not even surveyed, which soon caused some disputation between neighbours. The first harvest was brought in during 1813 and the surplus sent to Newcastle and Sydney: the commercial economy was taking shape and the first successful farming by Europeans outside the Sydney Basin had been established.
Over the following eight years five more convicts were allowed holdings at Paterson’s Plains and grants were made to three additional free men including Newcastle’s Anglican priest (the Rev George Middleton). Counting the glebe granted to Middleton, there were 12 holdings at Paterson’s Plains by 1821.
The Wallis Plains settlement, occupied in 1818 and 1819, appears to have comprised ten convicts, a colonial-born youth who was free and a former British army soldier. As at Paterson’s Plains the convicts were not initially granted title over the holdings they were to farm, but some achieved ownership in later years.
These settlements became Macquarie’s legacy in the Maitland area. Interestingly, given his determination to establish towns in the valley of the Hawkesbury River above what he thought (wrongly, as it turned out in most cases) was the reach of floods, the two Hunter settlements he initiated were susceptible to flooding. There is no evidence that Macquarie was aware of this when he made his decisions, but he probably should have been given that Europeans in the area previously had commented on flood debris high up in trees. Macquarie, of course, would not have anticipated that Wallis Plains would become the site of a substantial regional town over the next few decades. It was to grow to importance despite being frequently plagued by flooding some of which was very severe in its consequences.
References
Hunter, Cynthia, Bound for Wallis Plains: Maitland’s Convict Settlers, Maitland City Council, Maitland, 2012.
Keys, Chas, ‘Our past: how Lachlan Macquarie gave land to well behaved convicts’, Maitland Mercury, 21 June 2020.
McLachlan, N D, ‘Macquarie, Lachlan (1962-1824)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 2, 1967
