Manilla

History

The junction of the Manilla and Namoi Rivers known as 'Maneela', was for generations, a camping ground for the local Indigenous people, members of the large Kamilaroi (Gamilaraay) tribes of northwestern New South Wales. Thomas Florance led the first British surveying expedition to the region in 1827. The local Aboriginal clan rolled boulders from the hills onto Florance's encampment, whose men then fired upon them. Another skirmish occurred resulting in one of the surveying team being wounded by a spear and Florance shooting an Aboriginal man. In 1832, Henry Dangar and Sir William Edward Parry conducted further surveying for the Australian Agricultural Company and camped on what is now the present site of the Manilla township. They found several Aboriginal families living there. Around 1836, British pastoral squatters arrived in the area looking to establish large sheep and cattle stations on so-called crown land for the small leasehold fee of £10 per annum. Three massive properties were soon established in the Manilla region: Greenhatches formed by Joseph Greenhatch on behalf of Sydney businessman Charles Smith; Dinawirindi formed by Otto Baldwin; and Cuerindi formed by Thomas Simpson Hall and his brothers. Conflict in the area between the colonists and the resident Aboriginal population resulted in the government sending a large detachment of New South Wales Mounted Police under the command of Major James Nunn to the region in early 1838. Nunn's force captured around 100 Aboriginal people just to the west of what is now Manilla, with fifteen taken prisoner and one being shot dead. Frontier conflict in the immediate vicinity appears to have ended after Nunn's operation, who proceeded north-west with his men, later perpetrating the Waterloo Creek massacre. During…