Myall Creek Station (c. 1834 - )

Myall Creek Station, situated several kilometres west of present-day Inverell on the north-western slopes of the New England tablelands, was first taken up as a pastoral run some time between 1834 and 1837. Its first official occupant was Henry Dangar, of Neotsfield, near Singleton, a highly successful pastoralist who had acquired over 300,000 acres of land during the ‘squatting invasion’ of northern New South Wales in the 1830s. It was also the site of the infamous Myall Creek Massacre in 1838, when a group of assigned servants rounded up 28 Aboriginal men, women and children on Dangar’s property and slaughtered them in the nearby scrub. Seven of the murderers were subsequently hanged for their part in the massacre. Myall Creek, which covered an area of about 48,000 acres, was initially used as a cattle station, but by 1848 the property had been converted to a sheep run. It then carried 8,000 sheep and 1,280 head of cattle. It was the largest of Dangar’s many holdings in the Hunter Valley, Scone, Liverpool Plains and New England regions. When Dangar died in 1861, the property passed into the hands of his eldest son, William John, who controlled it until the early-1890s. When he too died, Myall Creek Station was purchased by Telford McKenzie Young and Charles McKenzie Young. The station, although reduced to about 10,000 acres by free selection, was a very successful one for the Young brothers. In 1901, Myall Creek shore 100,000 sheep. A new homestead was built in 1905, but when Telford Young died the following year, the property was sold to James Donaldson, of Little Plain. It passed through several hands before coming into the possession of William McIlrath, who introduced and developed the now-famous ‘Windsor’ Hereford stud at Myall Creek Station.

Full Note:

Related Bodies:

Related People:
Henry Dangar [UNE Archives]

References:
EC Rowland, The Life and Times of Henry Dangar (Sydney: Privately Published, 1953); Golden Horizens: Supplement to the Inverell Times (28 February 1972); Robyn Saunders, ‘A History of the Myall Creek Area’, Unpublished Manuscript, 1978, Historical Resources Centre, University of New England Regional Archives.

Related People

• Dangar, Henry (1796 - 1861)