The Richmond River, before the walls
Have you ever wondered what the Richmond River was like before white settlement? Before the North and South Walls were constructed, and bridges built?
This illustration, while not being able to show the no doubt pristine beauty of the river, gives you a bit of an idea what Captain Henry Rous found when he sailed into the Richmond in August 1828.
The map was made by Captain Rous and can be found in the book, Across Three Bridges, written by Cliff Murray for the Ballina Council centenary in 1983.
Cliff was a long-time editor of the local daily, The Northern Star, and was a Ballina resident.
The entrance channel to the Richmond now lies between the walls. But back in 1828, it was further north, just before the Lighthouse Hill headland. Captain Rous has marked his entrance course on the map.
Another local historian, the late Glen Hall, wrote in Port of Richmond River that Captain Rous reported: “The entrance is wide, 12 feet (almost 4m) deep on the bar at half flood, and 14 to 20 feet deep at the mouth, with a constant strong ebb tide from 3 to 5 miles per hour in mid-channel, although there is a regular rise of 6 feet by an under flood.
“A sandbank projects from the inner south shore, narrowing the channel to about 300 yards. It then opens suddenly to an expanse of two miles with two dry sandbanks in the centre; the main body running west by north-west, then to the south-west in a fine arm, 24 feet deep, nearly a mile wide.”
Did Rous mistake North Creek for the main arm of the river? He gives this impression.
One can only imagine how dangerous it would have been entering the Richmond during a big sea back then. It’s no wonder that many a ship was lost. Even today there are reminders — a small remainder of the wreck of the Tomki can be seen just north of North Wall when conditions allow.
As Glen Hall points out, those early ships were sail-powered, so the captains and their crews who undertook the bar crossing would have been first-class sailors.
And it must be remembered that access to Ballina in the mid-1800s came only by sea — there was no Pacific Highway and no rail service back then. (I can forgive any readers of this who might now be thinking that we still don’t have an adequate road access — and the trains are long gone!).
* Cliff Murray and Glen Hall acknowledge the contributions of the Richmond River Historical Society in providing historical data.
June 20th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Interested in the ship called “Tomki” & “Electra” my Great Grandmother came to Coraki on these two ships,
Could you please tell me what happened to Tomki, how did she sink.
My family’s names were John & Bridget Jones, they had 13 children, which relyed on boats for transport to Lismore.