Yamba Yesteryear’s by John McNamara Research Officer, Port of Yamba Historical Society.

The first residents of the area for many thousands of years belonged to the Yaygir, Yuraygir or Yaegl tribe for whom the Yuraygir National Park was named.
It was not until mid-1838 that the schooner Susan arrived with a party of twelve pairs of sawyers. Eventually logging camps were set up all along the banks of the Clarence River cutting and exporting the valuable red cedar to Sydney. Cedar getters’ licences were imposed by the Government in 1839, but it did not permit them to settle on the land. “Conservation” was unknown, and the cedar was thoughtlessly plundered so that within twenty years it was almost all gone.
Small landholders were hampered in taking up land due to lack of capital, but in 1861 the Sir John Robertson ‘Free Selection Act’ was passed. This allowed free selection before survey for 40 to 320 acres, the price being £1 per acre with a deposit of one quarter of the purchase price. The selector had to reside on the land and add improvements to the value of £1 per acre. Town and country lots were sold at Crown Land Auctions. Opening day for Free Selection on the Clarence was 07 January 1862. River front blocks averaging 60 acres in size were rapidly selected by farmers. Many Scottish, Irish and German settlers were attracted by free immigration schemes and the land was soon taken up on the Lower Clarence.
The first crop grown in quantity was maize, being a great demand in those days of horse transport. The selector’s first task on his new farm was to clear the dense scrub by felling the trees and cutting down the undergrowth. Corn and pumpkins were grown in the rich soil. The bagged grain was then carried to the nearest wharf and brought 50 shillings a bushel in Sydney.
Sugar cane was first grown near Grafton about 1857 and after several varieties were tested, the rich alluvial flats, high annual rainfall and absence of frost were found to be ideal for cane growing on the Lower Clarence. By the end of the century there had been about 60 privately owned mills established on the Clarence River stretching from Carrs Creek to Goodwood Island, but many had shut down by the early 1900s due to the 1890s depression causing a fall in sugar prices.
Most early settlers kept a few cows for their own use. Milk was set out in large pans and the cream was skimmed off for butter making for home use and for sale in nearby towns.
As sugar prices declined, dairying was the main activity on the Lower Clarence. The first butter factory had opened at Ulmarra in early 1892. Palmers Island Co-operative Dairy Company creamery was opened in 1897 but converted to a butter factory in 1903. The decline in the price of butter relative to the cost of production forced the majority of dairy farmers into sugar growing or beef production.
District Surveyor, William Albert Braylesford Greaves designed and laid out the town of Lawrence in 1861. In May 1862, the Surveyor-General Alister Mclean visited the Clarence and instructed Greaves to lay out the town of Rocky Mouth, so named by the presence of rocks at the entrance to the South Arm at the southern end of Woodford Island. Greaves adopted the name Maclean for the village in honour of the Surveyor-General. However, Rocky Mouth continued to in common use until, and even after, the Post Office and other Government Departments adopted “Maclean” in 1885 for official use.
McLean also authorised Greaves to lay out the towns of Clarence River Heads (unofficially called “Yamba, Woolli Woolli, Wooli, Woolii or Woolli”) and Iluka in anticipation of the Clarence Entrance Breakwater Works. By September 1862, hundreds of workers were camped in tents behind Pilot Hill. Clarence River Heads was officially proclaimed as “Yamba” in 1885.
Parliamentarian John Connell Laycock was probably the first man to settle at Clarence River Heads who was not attached to the pilot crew (which had arrived in 1854), obviously recognizing the business opportunities arising from the sudden population growth.
In about April 1960, by taking out a series of mortgages over his extensive landholdings in Sydney and Brisbane, he purchased land in Castlereagh and King Streets, Sydney, upon which the Prince of Wales Theatre (the largest in Australia) and other buildings stood (part of the site where the Theatre Royal now stands), for £30,000.
Disaster struck on 3 October 1860 when a fire broke out in an adjoining bakery, which practically destroyed Laycock’s theatre and adjoining buildings and resulted in the death of two persons and serious injury to others. The buildings were insufficiently insured and as income from the property ceased, he was unable to meet his monetary commitments being forced to auction all of his mortgaged properties.
He no doubt became aware of the pending harbour works at the Clarence River entrance during his parliamentary sessions and was first recorded as arriving from Sydney on 29 January 1862 with his family to settle in the small township. He bought several town allotments at the first Government Land Sales held at Grafton Court House on 09 May 1864. He established a vegetable garden (at the site of present-day Uniting Caroona Hostel) and a slaughterhouse at Iluka.
On 10 November 1864 he suffered defeat for re-election for his Sydney seat of Central Cumberland but gained pre-selection for the Legislative Assembly as the Member for The Clarence on the retirement of its first Member, Clark Irving.
Laycock left Clarence River Heads in 1874 and purchased Glenreagh Station, 28 miles from Grafton on the Orara River, between Grafton and Coffs Harbour. He resided in Villiers Street, Grafton in his later years and was a frequent contributor to the Clarence and Richmond Examiner newspaper.