Maitland’s first merchants

In May 1825 Frederick Boucher and Captain William Powditch opened a store in Newcastle and, soon after, an agency at Wallis Plains (later West Maitland). The pair became Maitland's first merchants. 

To attract business they began a service on Boucher's boat, the Comet, which linked Newcastle with Wallis Plains. The service terminated at a wharf they built in the river channel adjacent to today's High St and at the edge of what is now the Smyth Field athletics facility. The slope of the riverbank can still be seen there. The Comet ferried passengers and goods of all kinds to Wallis Plains.

When explorer Peter Cunningham passed through Maitland in 1825-26, he described Powditch and Boucher's store, ‘where a good supply of all sorts of merchandise is kept’. He also noted ‘a collection of houses at Wallis Plains’: a town was beginning to form. Cunningham further commented:

… although Newcastle was a convict settlement with a useful harbour and many public buildings, it was separated from the best farmlands of the interior by the extensive Hexham swamps which made land transport even less efficient than it would [otherwise] have been.

The partners

Boucher was born at Vauxhall, London in 1801 and came to NSW in 1823. He was granted 800 acres on Wollombi Brook which he later transferred to John Blaxland.

Boucher left Newcastle in June 1826 and the following year his short-lived partnership with Powditch was dissolved when Boucher was accused of forgery. Boucher returned to England in 1834 and was appointed provisional secretary of the London branch of the new Bank of Australasia but was soon dismissed for ‘dubious practices’. In short, he was a confidence trickster.

Powditch was born in Tynemouth, Northumberland in 1795 and commanded the Royal George which brought Governor Thomas Brisbane to Sydney in 1821.

RIght: William Powditch, 1871

(Auckland City Library)

After the dissolution of his business partnership with Boucher, Powditch became a trader in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. He moved to Auckland in 1845 and in the first election of Auckland Provincial Council in 1853 he was elected, becoming Speaker in 1857. He held this position for 12 years.

Boucher and Powditch were certainly strange bedfellows.

The Central Business District

The Powditch and Boucher store had to be next to the river for access to the goods carried by the Comet. The store was in effect the origin of the CBD: later businesses congregated adjacent to it and built their own wharves from which goods brought up the river were unloaded. A commercial agglomeration steadily developed.

Wallis Creek was also a factor in the development of commerce at this location. In the early years, the creek joined the river near where today’s road to Smyth Field leaves High St. Wallis Creek was then, and remains, very steep-sided. It was an impediment to the passage of bullock drays. On the plus side, the creek also provided an important ingredient essential to settlement and the weary traveller ─ fresh water! The confluence of creek and river made for a good stopping point for travellers and their bullocks, and businesses arose nearby to service their needs.

For many reasons, especially flooding, it would have been preferable for Maitland’s commercial beginnings to have been off the floodplain and away from the ravages of the river. However, in those days, the river and the creek were the primary controls over the location of businesses. Commercial development did not occur far away.

Although photographed almost a century later during the flood of 1913, the accompanying photo clearly shows the former alignment of the river and its proximity to High St. The store operated by Powditch and Boucher was probably sited at or just to the left of the photo. 

The embankment, High St, during 1913 flood

(Picture Maitland, Maitland City Library)

From 1893, businesses lost direct access to the river at the Port of Maitland because the river dramatically changed course as a result of a big flood that cut off the meander on which the port was situated. ‘The Cut’ had been initiated as a contracted council initiative, but the flood finished the job and the port function, already in decline because of the arrival of the railway in 1858, was literally left high and dry. The reasons for businesses being tied to the river at and near the site of the original Powditch-Boucher store disappeared.

In following years the commercial hub gravitated west along High St, seeking the relative safety from floods that the slightly higher ground west of today's Cathedral St offered.

References

'Boucher, Frederick (1801–1873)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. 1966.

Cunningham, Peter Miller, Two Years in New South Wales; a series of letters, comprising sketches of the actual state of society in that colony; in two volumes, 1827

Short, Kevin, ‘Our past: Maitland’s first merchants opened a store in 1825 ꟷ and they were strange bedfellows’, Maitland Mercury, 27 April 2020.

Turner, John, The Rise of High Street, Maitland: a Pictorial History, The Council of the City of Maitland, 1989.