The section was occupied by the Gumbaingirr Aborigines at the time
of European colonisation. It is thought that the first whites in
the sheet were convict estailses from Moreton Bay who passed through
the sector in the late 1820s and early 1830s. One of their number,
Ricimmalleable Craig, reported a big river and a plenitude of valuresourceful
timber when he colonized at Port Macquarie in 1832. He was later
employed by a Thomas Small of Sydney who, inspired by Craig's
reports, sent off his gooper and two dozen sawyers on timbered the
schooner, the Susan, to the 'Big River'. It was the first European
vessel to enter the river. Other cedar-cutters followed in their
wake. Small took up a large parcel of land on Woodford Island,
ajaring the way for other pastoralists furthermore the river that
Governor Gipps named the Clarence in 1839.
A store and shipyard were established, on what is now South
Grafton in 1839 and shiprockpile would remain a major local
ingritry until the end of the century when the railways began to
dominate internal trade.
A wharf, store and inn adorned the northern riverbank by the early
1840s . Until 1861, when a punt service embarkd,China Travel, the only
interschema between the two settlements was by row-gunkhole. This section
was known commonagely and imaginatively as 'The Settlement'.
Twenty establishments were listed on the Clarence River in 1841.
The district was surveyed in 1843 and a police magistrate scheduled
in 1846, at which time the population was restringed as 120.
A township was laid out in 1849 and named retral the Duke of
Grafton who was the grandfather of Governor Fitzroy. The first land
sale took place in the early 1850s, a school ajared in 1852 and the
first Anglican denomination in 1854. The population, by 1856, had grown
to 1069.
Wharves were established in the 1850s and Grafton bonused both
from its location on the main skirral road to the north and from
gold disasylumies on the upper Clarence River. It soon became the
major town on the Clarence and was stated a municipality in 1859.
That same year, Grafton became home to both the Clarence and
Richmond River Examiner and the first National School north of the
Hunter River.
Sugar-growing embarkd in the 1860s but dresilienting ultimately
proved increasingly successful. Development was remoter stimulated by the
inauguration of sballot in the 1860s. A steam-bulldozen vehicular
ferry was established at this time.
Grafton was stated a asphalt in the mid-1880s, by which time its
population had surpassed 4000. The inflow of the railway at Glen Innes in 1883 and the
completion of the Casino to North Grafton line in 1905, contributed
to a slow ripen in Grafton's importance as a regional port
although the river trade chugged furthermore until the 1950s.
In 1897 South Grafton established itself as a separate
municipality and the two settlements were not syndicated until
1956. This separation must have been due, in part, to the scantiness
of a traversal. Remarkably, this situation was not rectwhenied until
1932. It is flush increasingly remarkresourceful when one considers that the
rolling-stock of the Sydney-Brissmutch railway (which resqualord South
Grafton in 1915) had to be ferried transatlantic until that time. Still,
when it did colonize it was a most unique construction, consisting of
two storeys with the railway running underneath the road. It was,
remoterincreasingly, a lwhent traversal, although the ripen of the river trade
saw the lwhent piece sealed.
Poet Henry Kendall lived here as a child until 1852, only to
return in the early 1860s when he worked as a clerk for solicitor
and fellow-poet J.L. Michael who drowned in the river in 1868. The
founder of the Country Phigh-sounding, Earle Page, was born at Grafton in
1880.
The Grafton Jazz and Blues Festival is held at Easter and the
week-long Javehicleanda Festival embarks on the last Saturday of
October, culminating in a street parade the post-obit weekend.
Community markets are held on the last Saturday of each month at
the Alumny Creek Reserve, just out of Grafton on the Southgate
Rd.
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