Barraba Station v Barraba Creek Station. What's the difference?

History Notes

I am often asked where was Barraba Creek Station and sometimes I find that Barraba Station is being confused with Barraba Creek station so here are a few lines which may clear the matter up.

In the 1848 Government Gazette (and in the first volume of Early Settlers in the Nandewars) there is a list of stations/settlers for the Liverpool Plains district, L T. Armitage was in charge of Barraba Station and Esther Hughes was in charge of country to the west of the settlement which became Barraba.

On the south side of both these stations was a station known as Barraba in 1848 which is the only one listed in the Government Gazette in 1837 as Barraba Plains.  John Hoskisson was in charge of approximately 76,800 acres and estimated that he could run 2,000 cattle. To avoid confusion John's station soon became Barraba Creek Station on the south bank of Barraba Creek.

John was an absentee landowner as were the other landowners at that time - Armitage (Barraba Station), Hughes (Barraba), Cox (Burindi) etc. They visited their stations at irregular intervals!!

Before continuing Barraba Creek's later history we should find out a bit more about John Hoskisson. He was the third child of Thomas and Sarah Hoskisson (nee Pigg) of Windsor, NSW. Sadly, his father was murdered just a few weeks before he was born in 1799. Left alone with three small children, Sarah remarried to Thomas Upton and John went to Sydney to live with his hotel owning godfather, Jesse Mocook. It was here that he learnt to handle money - he was paid to lead his godfather's patron's horses to water at the Tankstream. Later he bought a wheelbarrow and sold wood for 18 pence a load. When Jesse Mocock died he left his house and property to John Hoskisson.

With the passing of his godfather, John had money. He came back out to the Hawkesbury and took up farming. In 1818 he married Sarah Freebody and it was not very long before the young couple were successful farm owners with three employees. John then started to look for land further afield and although he could neither read nor write, he was a very able businessman. He built the Barraba Hotel in Windsor, as we found out sometime ago, and took on properties such as Barraba Creek and Yaggaba to name a couple of four or five in northern New South Wales.

John and Sarah Hoskisson lived in Cornwallis, Windsor -on the river flats - and must have experienced some terrible floods without any fatalities. They had 11 children - Thomas, John, James and Samuel and seven daughters who married into the Holland, Moore, Cross, Blackman, Wood and Miller families.