Township Significance Statement (Part 2)
SMITHFIELD TOWNSHIP (1876-1879)
REDFORD ROAD, BARRON, QUEENSLAND 4878.
Statement of Cultural Heritage Significance
© Phoenix 2021
This statement of cultural significance was prepared by Dr Dave Phoenix in 2021 in accordance with the ICOMOS Burra Charter (1999) and the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection’s guidelines for assessing cultural heritage significance.
Part 2:
History:
Historical Context
The port of Cairns was declared in October 1876 after Bill Smith and Sub-Inspector Alexander Douglas Douglas found separate tracks from the Hodgkinson goldfield down the Lamb Range to Trinity Bay. Two separate encampments formed at Cairns/Trinity Bay, but the tea-tree swamps and sand dunes offered little feed for the packers’ horses, and they preferred to camp in the open forest at the foot of the range near the Barron River. A rudimentary packers’ camp of thirty or forty dwellings formed at the Barron at Kamerunga where the Douglas and Smith’s Tracks crossed the river.
On 22 November 1876, government surveyor Frederick Horatio Warner decided to lay out a township at the Barron. He was shown a suitable site in the dense rainforest on the northern bank by Charles Hugh Macdonald, northern inspector of roads, where the land was 20 feet above the river. Warner laid out five streets and two town blocks with 20 allotments in each block. Mining Warden Howard St. George visited the site and christened the new township ‘Smithfield’ in honour of Bill Smith. The township was gazetted on 15 December 1876 and the first land sales were held on 15 February 1877. The land sales were so successful that surveyor Arthur Chamberlin was sent to lay out an additional street and another forty allotments. These were offered for sale on 29 May 1877.
The road from Smithfield to Cairns was soft and sandy and passed through numerous swampy sections, so packers coming down the Douglas Track preferred to load up at the Barron and avoid the difficult journey into Cairns. As a result, cargo unloaded from ships at the Cairns wharves was quickly trans-shipped into smaller paddle-steamers like William Bairstow Ingham’s P.S. Louisa and P.S. Fitzroy, which could carry around 20 tons and could navigate the shallow sand-bars on the Barron. Two wharves were built at the high sandy bank at Smithfield and Messrs. Craig & Co. and Edward John Nolan & Co. erected receiving stores and warehouses.
During the first half of 1877 Smithfield’s population grew until it rivalled Cairns. Smithfield had a post office, police station, auction house, bakery, butcher, blacksmith, farrier, saddlery store, canvas and tent-maker, drapery, restaurant, numerous stores and hotels, a billiard room, and fruit and vegetable shops run by Chinese market gardeners. Harris Hynes Solomon built a wooden tramway along the main street so that goods could be transported by horse-wagon from the wharves to the businesses. James Sparge was appointed tramway proprietor and he moved 30 to 40 tons of goods a day to the various stores along Macdonald Street.
Another track over the Lamb Range was discovered and named Macmillan’s Track after Archibald Campbell Macmillan of Bowen, Engineer of Roads for the Northern Division. Packers began favouring this track over the Smith and Douglas Tracks and Macdonald’s road-crew began working to turn it into a dray road. Macmillan’s Track passed close to Smithfield township (along what is now the Brinsmead-Kamerunga Road at Caravonica). Several businesses moved up to Macmillan’s Track to service passing traffic and they established a separate settlement at Smithfield No. 2, where Caravonica State School now stands. This settlement became known as West Smithfield, and businesses there included Clifton & Aplin’s store which was one of the largest stores in northern Queensland, Kennedy & de Fraine’s store, the Golden Age Hotel, the Victorian Hotel and Frith’s Hotel.
Macmillan’s Track opened for wheeled vehicles on 16 August 1877 and a telegraph line was built alongside the road from Cairns to Smithfield and then over the range to Thornborough. Expecting further growth, surveyor Warner was instructed to lay out a second town with 79 additional allotments along the dray road at West Smithfield.
Although £9,000 had been spent building Macmillan’s ‘government dray road’ it had several steep pinches which were difficult for bullock wagons to negotiate. To make matters worse, explorer Christie Palmerston had found an easier track which came out on the coast north of Cairns near the Mowbray River. Several hundred people moved up to the new track, established a settlement at Port Douglas and began clearing Palmerston’s ‘Bump Track’ to make it suitable for wagons.
Smithfield continued to be an important packers’ town through the early part of 1878, but as the year progressed both Cairns and Smithfield began to decline as more businesses moved up to Port Douglas. By the end of 1878 there were only a handful of businesses still trading at Smithfield and the government road crew were instructed to stop maintaining Macmillan’s dray road and move up to Port Douglas and concentrate their efforts on the Bump Track.
Smithfield township was abandoned in early 1879, and the place become overgrown with vegetation. In 1880 a grass fire destroyed several of the remaining buildings. Several Smithfield residents stayed in the area and took up farming, growing maize or breeding pack-donkeys. The paddle-steamers that once hauled goods to the township began to take rafts of cedar logs down the river. The area around the Barron became a quiet rural backwater until 1887 when construction began on the second section of the Cairns to Kuranda railway line from Redlynch.
In 1923, Sybil Orger Reed purchased a lease over part of the Smithfield township and planted sugar cane. The rest of the township leases were purchased in 1926 by Thomas Bannister Moore who also planted cane. The township leases are now held by Pioneer North Queensland Pty. Ltd. who have a licence to dig up the site as part of their Barron Sands sand extraction business. Currently (2018) the township is sub-leased as a cane farm.
Smithfield Floods:
Several authors have claimed that Smithfield township was destroyed by a catastrophic flood coming down the Barron River one wet season, but this is not the case. Smithfield’s first wet season was in early 1877 and heavy rain resulted in widespread flooding of the areas around the town. The Barron flooded and Smithfield was isolated, but the town did not suffer inundation.
The following year a Category 3 or Severe Category 4 Tropical cyclone crossed the coast and caused significant damage to Cairns and Smithfield. Again, there was extensive flooding in the area, but the Smithfield township was not inundated.
By March 1879 the township of Smithfield was virtually abandoned. Businesses at West Smithfield were still trading however, and at the end of the month the Barron flooded and a large amount of water passed along the paleo-channel which ran alongside Macmillan’s Track. West Smithfield suffered considerable damage. Frith’s hotel was washed into the side of Clifton & Aplin’s store, which filled with five or six feet of water before it washed off its stumps. All the stock was destroyed and bottles which had been washed out of the store were found several years later near Avondale Creek and at the head of Richters Creek, indicating the route the floodwaters took. The abandoned buildings in Smithfield township did not suffer any damage.
Smithfield Murder-Suicide:
Smithfield was shaken by a murder-suicide in 1877. Old Bill Smith, after whom the town was named, ran the Pioneer Hotel on Macdonald Street. He was heavily in debt to several storekeepers and merchants. On Boxing Day 1877 the township held a race meeting and Smith had a booth at the racecourse. He soon ran out of stock and Robert Jackson Craig of Craig & Co. refused to extend his credit. Smith went home and began drinking. Later that afternoon Smith approached Craig in his store and asked him to come to his hotel where he would “settle with him”. Craig assumed Smith was about to pay his debts, but on reaching the hotel Craig produced a revolver and fired twice, hitting Craig once in the chest. Craig ran outside and Smith fired twice more. Craig managed to stagger to his store where he collapsed and died. Smith turned the revolver on himself and shot himself once in the chest. Smith died on the verandah of his hotel.
The next day Cairns police magistrate William Matthew Mowbray held an inquest (Queensland State Archives Item ID2724309, Inquest file) and found that Smith murdered Craig then committed suicide, but he could not establish a motive for the tragedy. Craig’s funeral was held in Cairns. It was well attended as he was a well-respected businessman. He was buried in the McLeod Street Pioneer Cemetery. Smith was interred in an unmarked grave outside the Smithfield township.
Smithfield Cemetery, CEM.90, R.76:
Smithfield township is closely linked to the nearby Smithfield Cemetery, which is recognised by Cairns Regional Council as a site of Non-Indigenous Cultural History.
Go to ⇒ Part 3.