QLDPort & river
Smithfield
A river port that lasted barely two years.
1876Township laid out at the Barron River landing
WHAT STARTED IT
Smithfield was laid out in November 1876 at a landing on the Barron River where the bank stood higher than anywhere else on its navigable reach, about ten miles upstream from the mouth. Steamers could unload there, and a track being cut up the range promised a short dray road to the Hodgkinson goldfield.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
Stores, hotels and shanties sprang up, but the town faded fast; on Boxing Day 1877 publican Bill Smith, after whom it was named, shot storekeeper Robert Craig and then himself. The river flooded the low site every wet season, and in March 1879 it broke its banks and swept buildings away, after which the township was abandoned.
TURNING POINTS
1876Police magistrate Howard St George names the new township Smithfield after prospector Bill Smith, as the surveyor pegs out its streets.
1877On 26 December Bill Smith shoots storekeeper Robert Craig and then himself.
1878A storm on 8 March blows a house into the river and wrecks hotels and stores.
1879On 28 March the Barron breaks its banks and floods Smithfield, carrying away a hotel and shifting a store sixty yards.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
Only a lonely cemetery near the river marks the old township. The name lives on in the modern northern-beaches suburb of Smithfield, home to about 6,700 people in 2021.