Black Creek News - 1831

The Sydney Monitor Wednesday 25 May 1831

THE LATE FLOOD AT HUNTER'S RIVER

To The Editor of the Sydney Monitor

Maitland,

13th May, 1831.

On Sunday the 1st instant the waters rose so fast as to cover the crops and fill the houses.

On Wednesday morning the flood was at its highest. Mr. Cox the publican's house was four feet deep on the ground-floor. Mr. Stone's was three feet deep. About a dozen of small settlers' huts have been washed away in the neighbourhood of Maitland alone. The damage done to great settlers is not so serious to them in its consequences, though considerable in itself, but scores of little settlers are ruined.

The rain penetrated a good many stacks, proving how badly they had been thatched. Mr. Coulson has lost a hundred bushels of wheat this way. The lands on the banks lately sown and the second crop of potatoes are both gone. All the stubble corn in the field' was three days under water. Mr. Campbell calculates on losing 500 bushels. This gentleman's hospitality and exertions in entertaining and relieving the' drenched traveller and the washed-out settler was most meritorious. He is a real gentleman. Mr. Yeomans also paid four men, free, to go about and pick up the settlers when the latter fired guns of distress. A cutter building by Mr. Yeomans was nearly sucked off the stocks. The native blacks say they never remember the flood so high.

Thus Mr. Monitor, your repeated prognostications are fulfilled in part. Time will show whether this flood is the first of two or three more. The old veteran soldier settlers at Maitland and the Wollombi are greatly injured. Mr. Wiseman jun. of the Inn there was very kind and hospitable; I mean exclusive of his obligations as an Innkeeper. I am a Native, Mr. Editor, and I beg to say, that Mr. Campbell was brought up in Australia; and as to Yeomans and young Wiseman they are both Natives. Mrs.Wiseman jun. is also a Native, and is esteemed as much as her husband. But Mr. Campbells one of the principal swells, and no native, his conduct has endeared him to all classes, the poor prisoner even not excluded.

Mr. Editor, I must now go to another subject. I had to pay 9s. the other day  to redeem a cow out of pound. She had committed no damage and the 9s. was merely the charge for the Gazette advertisements. The cow was worth 25s. at the present time. Thus Sir are we poor settlers made to support the Governor's paper, by the confiscation of our cattle under the name of poundage. The Impounding Act has often been described Sir by you, but its infernal effects are not half understood even by you. The Councilmen who passed it ought to be ashamed of themselves. They fit to make laws ! They are fit only to pass Acts to put down the press.

I wish you would suggest to Captain Dumaresq to build another family bridge over Black Creek. The loaded drays go through a great body of water in showery weather, and goods are spoiled annually to an amount which would build half a dozen bridges. .It is strange that when funds are made at the expense of thousands of pounds per mile to accommodate the family and other friends in their gigs and on their fine saddle horses, that a one-hundred-pound bridge cannot be built over a creek?  Why do not the Council pay attentions to things like these Mr. Editor in lieu of passing a lot of Acts such as those that decorate the Colonial Statute book?

The fact is, the Members do not understand their trade. They meet in secret, and mystery and' ignorance are displayed in all their proceedings. No wool, grain, pork, bacon, butter or cheese, beyond Maitland, can be shipped for Sydney, without crossing the Black Creek. And yet, while thousands upon thousands are expended on the road from the Hawkesbury, which can never be used for carrying produce, the Black Creek is left without a bridge for all the produce from Darlington and sixty miles-beyond to be immersed in. The curing of bacon is now much practised. The Rev. Richard Hill, Minister of St. James's, Sydney, has been up here curing a good deal of bacon, and better there is not in the country. Mr. Singleton alone crossed the Black Creek this year with a thousand bushels of wheat. And as the rains will prevail more or less the next three years, you may judge Sir of the loss in produce, and also in stores brought up from Sydney, which must ensue in rainy weather from want of a bridge. Hoping you will insert these particulars in your universally read if not universally subscribed to Journal.

I am your obedient servant,

JACK BLUNT, A NATIVE.

The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser THURSDAY", NOVEMBER 24, 1831.

You now start from Maitland for St. Patricks Plains. Being favoured with a fine morning, and the season of the year being between spring and summer; enjoying, moreover, the company of a lively and chatty fellow traveller, well versed in the history and topography of the districts through which you have to pass; it will be your own fault if the journey be not a pleasant one.

The road is condemned by the Surveyor General as a most bungling piece of workmanship, its line having been laid down with so stupid a disregard of scientific principles, as to bear no small resemblance to a ram's horn. But to the traveller who neither criticises by the laws of Macadam, nor is impatient to reach the end of his journey, but consults merely the comfort and recreation of the moment, it appears, in fair weather atl east, not only unexceptionable, but excellent.

Its surface is in general firm and even, seldom encumbered by steep ascents or precipitous declivities; though, as it is composed only of the native soil, which is for the most part a rich loam, in rainy seasons it must of necessity be somewhat disagreeable. You encounter two passes, however, formidable in all weathers, Black Creek and Mudie's Creek, each of considerable depth, and having steep and rugged banks, but neither of them provided with a bridge.

We crossed them, under the most favourable circumstances, and yet found them scarcely passable: what must they be after heavy rains? Not many weeks ago, a fatal accident occurred, which but too clearly proved the dangerousness of their condition. A dray, in crossing Mudie's Creek, was over-turned, and two females precipitated to the ground in the most violent manner, one of whom died of her wounds in the course of a few hours. The Executive Government conveyed to the proper quarter its desire that bridges should be forth-with erected, and the only reason we have heard assigned for non-compliance was, that the line of road was not worth mending', since it must ere long be superseded by a new one. The reason was good enough so far as applied to repairs on any large and expensive scale, but was hardly sufficient in reference to the erection of a couple of small bridges, which half a dozen men could accomplish in as many days, and the want of which endangers life and limb.

The chief officer of the road department has lately performed a tour in that part of the country, and we doubt not that when he came to see with his own eyes this serious obstruction to the King's highway, and the trifling expense at which it might he removed, his zeal for the public accommodation would lead him to take the necessary steps.