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THE HUNTER FIFTY YEARS AGO.
(T0 the Editor of the Maitland Mercury.)
SIB -The following extract from a letter, received
the other evening, from an octogenarian, resident at
present in Nelson, New Zealand, and who formerly
resided in this quarter, may probably amuse some of
your many readers. If you think so, please insert.
" The very old hands at Dungog are now getting
few. I first passed over what is now Dungog in
April. 1832, when the ground was covered with ti-
tree, about four feet high. There are great towns
now, where tbere was not a house then, and some
not even surveyed when you carne. At Morpeth
there was not a house, and it was known by the name
of "The Green Hills,"" or the "St. Michael;" the
old bulk [?hulk] being shingled in, and moored in that river,
as a store ship. Not a house at Hinton; Miller the
boat builder, was squatted down on the forest, which
stille (sic) bears his name. Not a house at " Raymond's
Terrace," Seaham, Clarence Town, or Dungog. One
solitary settler on the Manning River, Mr. Wynter,
who had a grant tbere, and bad been Secretary to
some admiral, I think Admiral Lord Howe. He
was a plain man and a Magistrate, and frequently
visited Port Macquarie. I visited Buladelah
and Kempsey, on the Macleay River, before
there was the sign of a house, and con-
sequently I knew much of the district. Raymond
Terrace took its name from the drunken surveyor
who laid it out. He was there eight or nine months
drunk, and people thought he would never move, so
called it Raymond's Terrace. The Paterson township
was then called the " Old Banks," and was the end
of the world, on that river. Paterson is years older
than Maitland, which was at that time called the.
" New Banks," or " Wallace's Plains," after the man
who discovered them. It took its name from Sir
George Maitland, at that time Under Secretary for
the Colonies, and M.P. for the Borough of Whit-
church, in Hampshire, England."-Yours truly,
SENEX,
Dungog, 9th Feb., 1885.
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