More Horton Valley History
History Notes
A wonderful reaction to last week’s notes. How nice it is to find so many people keeping in touch for all these years. A big thank you to those who made the topic suggestion.
This week I am still working on the Horton Valley as the result of an enquiry to one of our members. There are a couple of history articles available. In June 1908 The Town & Country Journal recorded the journey of a reporter visiting one of the proposed routes for the railway extension from Barraba north to join up with the Moree to Warialda extension.
The reporter was accompanied by a Barraba citizen to the Horton village who handed him over to James Smith, owner of Oakvale, a property of 2300 acres about one and a half miles out of the village of Upper Horton.
The visitor remarked on visiting Gainer’s Hotel and seeing the Horton River winding down the valley “like a silver ribbon” with homesteads dotted here and there.
The next morning James Smith drove him down to Eulourie to meet Mr King. Here there were tales of mail coming down from Piedmont once a month in the early days and now four times a week was better but could be improved. Growing wheat was near impossible to get it out to market but a railway would improve that. Stock for sale had to be driven out of the valley on horseback.
Across the river at The Plain, they met up with Frank Mack who was growing wheat and shipping it 36 miles to Gravesend and paying 2 shillings per bag of wheat for freight. This price was hardly worthwhile, and Mr Mack was thinking of a change to lucerne.
Unfortunately, this is where the magazine has been torn but I imagine there was plenty of support from the valley farmers for the railway.
The second source of history is a past resident who wrote down his memoirs of growing up in the Horton Valley with his mother and step-father at the beginning of the 20th Century – it is very long and contains lots of names of former residents – there are references to the early Caroda Post Office floods, early farming machinery, early residents and properties.