'The New Township, Barron River' [newspaper report]

I [Police Magistrate, Howard St. George] concluded my last communication – dated from Cairns, 21st instant [December 1877] – by stating that Mr. Surveyor Warner purposed going up here on the following day to lay off this township, and that I intended to avail myself of the opportunity of paying the locality a visit at the same time, so as to be enabled to inform you exactly how the land lies and of the latest information about the road.

According to arrangement we started at 10 a.m. on the day named, on board the steam tender Fitzroy, lately purchased by Mr. Ingham, to assist in meeting the growing requirements of the port, in lightering steamers, and carrying passengers to and fro between this river [Barron] and Cairns. Howard St. George, Esq., Police Magistrate, was also a passenger.

The first stoppage made was at this landing, where the river bank is higher than at any other point of the navigable portion of the river, and the skipper of the boat having promised to remain half-an-hour, the Police Magistrate, with Mr. Warner and others, started off by the track cut by the road party to reconnoitre the position of the proposed new township here. Mr. McDonald, road overseer, being met with, reported favorably on the new track as far as his party had penetrated through the scrub.

Mr. St. George and Mr. Warner then returned to the river, and proceeded a mile higher up, to where old Bill Smith was camped, and having taken that now celebrated citizen on board, the party returned to this place, where the ceremony of christening the new township was gone through. Mr. St. George, after a few neatly turned eulogistic sentences complimentary to Mr. Smith's praiseworthy perseverance in endeavoring to discover a short and practicable road to the Hodgkinson, gave the name of "Smithfield" to the new township (this will probably be altered to Smithville, as more appropriate). However, this public recognition - although very inadequate - of old Bill's services was favorably received by those present, and Smith's health, as also prosperity to the new town, were drunk in copious draughts of champagne and soda. Mr. St. George returned to Cairns in the evening.

The following morning Mr. Warner took the field. This is only his third day here, and the amount of work he has already gone through proves him to be a most energetic surveyor. He had never visited this portion of the river before, and already we have two lines of street pegged off in sixty-six feet allotments. There are two landings about five chains apart, and a reserve two chains wide has been laid off along the river bank, from which the two main streets, starting opposite the landings, run for a distance of ten chains, through thick scrub abounding in good timber for building purposes, to a pocket of open forest-land, after crossing which the new track enters another belt of scrub, on the other side of which is a large extent of good well-grassed country, which is now the favorite turning-out ground for horses, great numbers of which are running there.

The road-party, who for some time past have been cutting through the scrub up the spur along which the proposed dray track will be made, have not yet effected a junction with the level country beyond the range, but if no unforeseen difficulty intervenes between that and this, all parties are agreed that a small outlay will be sufficient to make an excellent dray-road from this town to the Hodgkinson goldfield. At present, of course, there is no traffic by the new route, but during the week about eighty horses have come down via the existing pack-tracks.

The present state of which may be imagined from the fact that Mr. J. Byers (Byers and Little) left Thornborough at 3 p.m. on Thursday, and arrived here at the same hour the following day (yesterday), and only travelled thirteen hours out of the twenty-four, and six hours before leaving he started off two men with twenty-six horses, and they arrived here safe this (Saturday) afternoon. These horses will be packed with general store goods, and will proceed by the new dray road, if it is opened within the next few days.

Messrs. Craig and Co. have established a store at one of the landings here, and Mr. Nolan (late of Cardwell) at the other; there are also a number of shanties, but I cannot say that they are doing a roaring trade.

The Barron River debouches into Trinity Bay, about five miles north-west from the port of Cairns. It appears to me, whether rightly or wrongly, that this river entering the bay at a right angle to the ebb and flow of the waters of Trinity Inlet, is the cause of the formation of what is called the harbor-bar, over which large steamers can only come when the tide is in. There is a bar at the mouth of the river, with only about 2 feet of water at the ebb, and 9 or 10 feet at flood tide. Inside this, however, there is a depth of five fathoms, and the stream is about 200 yards wide, and is navigable for about eleven miles, i.e., a mile above the township, at which point the pack-tracks used to cross the river en route for Cairns, and where a number of people had located in anticipation of a township being formed there. Those persons have nearly all shifted to this place.

From the above it will be seen that Smithville or Smithfield is situate about ten miles by the river course, which is rather tortuous, up the river, and I should say that any craft that can cross the bar would find sufficient water as far as this landing, where Mr. Ingham's steamers visit daily, and discharge their cargoes on a sandy beach, at the foot of a high-nearly perpendicular-bank.

A few miles higher up the river are falls, which, from the description I received from a sawyer who saw them when exploring for timber, for grandeur and picturesque beauty, I should say are unsurpassed by anything of the kind yet discovered in Australia. My informant describes the scene as an immense volume of water falling over a rocky precipice, with a sheer descent of over one hundred feet, on either side of which rise lofty rocky bluffs. It would appear from the above that, like the Herbert, the Barron must take its rise between the main and coast ranges, cutting its way, as does the Herbert, through the coast range. It is a pity that this grand natural feature in the land of our adoption is at present almost inaccessible to lovers of the sublime, the approach to it being attended with great risk to life and limb, part of the journey having to be made over precipitous rocks, and through the branches and down the trunks of trees.