The great flood of 1820

Little is known about the flood of June 1820 on Hunter’s River, except that it was a big one. Had there been a flood gauge at Maitland at the time, it probably would have recorded a level nearly as high as was seen in the great flood of 1955. Long after the event Professor Cyril Renwick of the Hunter Valley Research Foundation at the then Newcastle University College assessed the 1820 flood as having peaked at about 12 metres AHD (Australia Height Datum or average sea level) at the site of the Belmore Bridge. This was virtually the same as the height recorded there in 1955.

Cyril Renwick

(University of Newcastle Cultural Collections)

Renwick estimated the heights of known floods at the Belmore Bridge for the years before the gauge was installed at the Bridge in 1867.

The impacts of the flood

Naturally the 1820 and 1955 floods were far from being equal in their human consequences. In 1820 there were probably only 30 to 40 people in Wallis Plains, on the site of today’s Maitland, including three soldiers whose job was to maintain law and order and provide security against escaped convict bushrangers and Aborigines in search of food. By 1955, about 8000 people lived on the floodplain in the area of today’s City of Maitland, many of them on the sites occupied by the first settlers, and virtually all were affected by the big flood of that year.

The tiny European population of 1820 was living on about 12 small holdings which had been granted less than two years before by Governor Lachlan Macquarie to ‘well-behaved’ ex-convicts and to John Eckford, a free man aged about 17 who was the son of a convict. Some of the settlers had wives and children.

Their holdings were about 30 acres (12 hectares) in size and situated between today’s Raworth and the present CBD of Maitland. They were farms whose produce was intended to help feed the growing population of the colony of New South Wales in both Sydney and Newcastle. The settlers, with convicts assigned to help them, cleared their holdings and grew crops of wheat, corn, potatoes and fruit. Several kept pigs, cattle and poultry as well. The surpluses they created were transported by river to Newcastle and then by sea to Sydney.

The occupants also built a few substantial buildings and a number of flimsy huts, and they saw two floods in 1819. One of those floods covered at least parts of all the farms, according to a later summary of its impacts by J. Jervis. But the 1820 flood was much bigger.

The damage done in 1820 must have been significant, both to habitations and crops, and livestock may have been lost. The only eye-witness account we have, by Eckford, had it nearly 40 years later that the water reached to the roof shingles of one of the four substantial huts that existed by then and the window sills of another. His assessment at an enquiry into Hunter River flooding was accepted as accurate by analysts of the area’s flood problem including E.O. Moriarty. Moriarty was in the 1860s the Public Works Engineer-in-Chief for Harbours and Rivers in New South Wales.

Much of what was to become High St would have been inundated, as would the area traversed by today’s Melbourne St. None of the farms would have been unaffected.

1955 flood level at the old Belmore Bridge.

(Jim Lucey photograph, University of Newcastle Living Histories)

The old Belmore Bridge did not exist in 1820, but the river reached virtually the same height in 1820 as it did in 1955.

There could have been no warning of the severity of the flood and little chance to protect farm equipment, livestock and personal belongings. Nevertheless, apparently, no settlers died. Much of the floodplain was still forested, despite the attentions of the cedar-getters since about 1804 and the recently-arrived settlers. A more thickly vegetated floodplain would have seen the flood pushed slightly higher but the velocity of flood flow (and thus presumably the quantum of damage to habitations, fences, pig sties and the like) would have been reduced.

The aftermath

The tiny settlement of Wallis Plains survived the flood and before long it had grown into a town despite experiencing at least another three substantial floods by 1832 along with some smaller ones. All were considerably smaller than the flood of 1820, but some inundated dwellings and business premises near what had become the Port of Maitland at the site of today’s Smyth Field. All the buildings of the time had dirt floors.

Despite the inconvenience and losses that resulted from the flood of 1820 and later inundations, life for the residents of Wallis Plains went on.
 
References

Jervis, J, ‘The genesis of settlement at Wallis Plains and the Maitlands’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 26, pp165-86.

Keys, Chas, ‘Our past: no loss of life, but the flood of 1820 was huge and devastating’, Maitland Mercury, 2 August 2020.

Moriarty, E.O., Report on the prevention of floods in the Hunter, Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, Sydney, 1869.

Renwick, Cyril, A survey of Maitland floods, unpublished Hunter Valley Research Foundation report, 1956.