At Naracoorte the "cockatooers" sold out, the number of farmer's homesteads diminished and the great grazing properties grew larger. This was not owing, except in a limited degree, to dummyism, but to the character of the soil surrounding Naracoorte. It was good grass country but would not stand many croppings, whereas farmers required land where he could grow wheat on year after year, and often without rest.
(Advertiser, 12 October 1875, p. 5.)

The founder of the town was Mr William Mackintosh who, at one time was the owner of a great part of the Hundred and, at various periods in his life, there passed through his possession a few of the richest squatting properties in the colony, including Moy Hall which, by 1880, carried 20,000 sheep on 20,000 acres and part of the Naracoorte station that sheared 25,000 sheep annually.

In about 1850 he named the village "Kincraig" after his birthplace in Scotland, and began the buildings in it by erecting a public house and a store. But it did not make much headway until 1852 when the gold escort made it one of their points of call and the Chinese passed through in such numbers that about 7,000 of them were recorded as honouring it by a visit during one year:
But times have changed since then. The almond-eyed Mongolian no longer troops through in battalions, but he stays by ones and twos and cultivates the gardens in such excellent style that all kinds of vegetables are now grown in the district, instead of being obtained from Mount Gambier.

As for the government town of Naracoorte, that was surveyed in 1859, the most unpardonable blundering took place when the site for a post office and courthouse was fixed at the very end of the new township, more than half a mile from the centre of business, The result of this folly was in the establishment of a second post and telegraph office in Kincraig. This building adjoined the store of Mr J.H. Cunningham who had a good deal to do with its establishment and who deserved the thanks of the community because 90 per cent of the letters were expected to go there against 10 per cent to the district post office:

Naracoorte was built in the middle of a sheep run and similar properties surrounded it on all sides and yet some of the people were not happy because they felt that these large estates were a drag on their wheels of progress. They thought of what the town could have been and quote the words of Oliver Goldsmith:
Ill fares that land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.

But there was really no need for despondency, for their town was second in importance in the South East and its sun had not set, nor was it likely to when the railway was completed to the Tatiara and the bulk of the wheat taken to Kingston direct. A large amount of land around Naracoorte was not good enough for remunerative wheat growing, unless some of it was used for that purpose by the capitalists who owned it. They were as fond of large profits as the farmer, or any one else, and the only reason why they did not cultivate it was because sheep farming was more profitable in the long run.

In 1868 the case of the proposed District Council of Narracoort (sic) is a striking illustration of the beauty of the implanted land system. On the one side could be seen a wealthy man who has been fortunate enough to secure the privilege of running large flocks of sheep for a long series of years over the whole surrounding country by which he realised universal profits, monopolising as he did the whole grass of the place, for his sheep ran up to the very doors of the townsfolk. On the other hand the population of the village was hemmed in and could barely keep a cow to milk, as during the greater part of the year the sheep left nothing for any other class of animal to exist upon.

The town owed its existence to the force of circumstances. In the course of years first a public house was built, then a blacksmith shop and other dwellings followed in rapid succession. Soon, the current of events made it appear that, in the centre of this run, nature had decreed that a town of some considerable importance must arise. Time went on and building after building was erected, each better than its predecessor, until the little scattered village of a few years previously began to show the symptoms of changing its character rapidly into a rising town.

By late 1868 it had four large stores and, of course, all this development could not take place without causing a demand for additional building allotments, which want Mr Magarey was not slow in supplying at the "moderate rate of about £30 an acre." In addition, he rented most of his land at good rentals. This suited the distant proprietor who, residing in Adelaide, drew a magnificent income from his run, sold his land which cost £1 an acre at thirty times the price, kept an overseer and a few men at 15 shillings a week - the sole occupants of an immense country, except the townspeople who were huddled together on land altogether insufficient for their requirements.

As time went on the increasing trade and population of the place caused the streets to be cut up; the black soil on which the solitary bullock once dragged its sluggish length along, became black mud of the most objectionable kind. The roads became impassable and some of the houses became almost cut off from approach by a sea of black mud in front. People wanted roads and footpaths made - the neighbours would not join in - "it can?t be done and mud reigns triumphant"- someone suggests a district council - a meeting is called - a unanimous vote is taken in its favour - not a voice is raised against it until one fine morning when a counter memorial appeared from Mr Magarey stating that he had bought some 2,000 acres of land near Naracoorte at upwards of £1 per acre and that if he was rated by the council it would make his sheep less remunerative. He failed to make any mention of having sold portion of a township at high prices which probably reimbursed the station for all the land bought originally.

It was then that the government had to decide whether sheep or men were to rule the country and whether the latter were to be denied the ordinary comforts of civilisation in order that the former could be made to pay a little better.

A visitor in 1866 has left us with a recollection of the style of horse coaches employed on mail runs and the men who engaged in the industry:

I ascended at the door of Rogers? Inn, Naracoorte, from a nondescript conveyance provided by Mr Rounsevell for the conveyance of HM mails from the South east to Adelaide. The vehicle - a square box on wheels - looked very clumsy and suggestive of aching bones and the couple of horses provided by the contractor were poor, rawboned, hungry looking brutes, who seemed to have very little go in them. The living occupants of the vehicle were the driver, a smart young fellow of considerable humour and good nature; the mail guard, not a bad fellow to travel with and myself. Another mail left at the same hour for Border Town.

Five years later it is apparent that the roads in the Naracoorte district were groaning under the injustice of the government in not repairing them and were "silently protesting against their unfair treatment by capsizing and bogging the farmers? drays, whilst some of our worthy citizens here upset the order of things by driving along the footpaths to avoid the roads, placing the lives of pedestrians in imminent danger." Other menaces included stray goats and pigs and, because the Police Act did not extend to that part of the colony, "any quantity of them are straying about and becoming a positive nuisance."

The first Naracoorte show was held on in August 1873 and nine months later the first report of larrikinism reported when:
A gang of youths assembled on the town bridge on a Sunday evening and made ?quite a disturbance? by using filthy and disgusting language. Not content with that they disturbed the worship of one congregation by ringing the bell during the service...

This was followed by an attack on a clock outside Mr Wheeler's shop and considered "part and parcel" of Naracoorte because its citizens were "so accustomed to its warning tones." Accordingly, when a vandal smashed it a public subscription was taken up and the sum of £10 presented to the proprietor, not only to recoup his loss but to show, also, "the estimation in which his endeavour to supply the town with a clock was held."

With the opening up of the land for agriculture the district was visited by many government employees two of whom recorded their impressions in 1875: :
The township is about 200 feet above sea level, situated on a small creek running seaward into the marshes passed through on the road. On an elevated timbered rise above the proposed [railway] terminus stands the new Presbyterian Church of art-union fame - a very fine building - and there are two banks... There is a flour mill, two good hotels, a large post and telegraph office and a number of good stores... The land however only patchy fair grazing country, alternating with agricultural land of middling quality and that as a rule purchased by the squatter. The district has been a stronghold for of the pastoral lessees and selectors have in various detached localities effected a lodgment with much trouble, the influence brought to bear in the matters of hindering agricultural settlement and favouring squatter monopoly, having been very strong. Within an area of some fifteen miles surrounding the township all the best land has been alienated mostly at the upset price to Messrs J. Robertson of Mosquito Plains station who owns 80,000 acres; Affleck about 30,000; T. Magarey, 20,000; W. Robertson of Moy Hall, 20,000; A. Smith of Hynam, 35,000 and so on...

The streets are wide and the township would have a cheerful look were it not, like the black fellow's campment, stuck down in a hollow by a creek.. It is said to be unhealthy in comparison with other towns in the colony and in summer time the heat is as oppressive as on the Adelaide plains. Centrally situated in a large pastoral district it necessarily has a considerable trade which latterly has been increased by the settlement of wheat growers who are fast exhausting their lands.

The government township has been a continual and futile effort on the part of successive administrations to divert the trade from the old township... Recently the Kincraigites have had to agitate against a fresh injustice in connection with the terminus of the railway which the government proposes to fix 25 chains away from the western boundary of Kincraig. The arrangement will not even suit Narracoorte for the site is some 15 or 16 chains south of the flour mill and store which are the only two business establishments at that location.

Farming in the neighbourhood of Naracoorte seems pretty certain to die out. We found no difference of opinion on this subject among all the residents of the district... The cockatooers are selling out, the number of agricultural homesteads diminishing and the great grazing properties growing larger. This is not owing, except in limited degree to dummying, but to the character of the soil which is sandy and comparatively poor. It is good grass country but will not stand many croppings... The country is very monotonous; undulating, but with each low range and valley exactly like the last passed over and the one immediately ahead. Not a single land mark appears in any direction for many miles; there is just the same unvarying succession of rises and flats, wooded with honeysuckle and sheaoak, with a few blackwoods, whitewoods and mimosas by way of variety.

At the same time the town suffered an epidemic of dysentery which caused many deaths among both children and adults and in nearly every house there were sufferers prompting a comment that "the religious bodies should institute a day of fasting and prayer and that the Almighty may be pleased to remove the affliction from us." However, a report to the local council suggested that the remedy might be with the citizens themselves when the following health hazards were taken into account:

1. The closet at the court house and telegraph office were close to the buildings and sent forth a most frightful stench. In winter it was filled with water from surface drainage and contained about 300 cubic feet of the most offensive matter. Five yards distant was a well into which much of this effluvia flowed.
2. The police horses were watered at this well and when a trough was filled and allowed to stand all night a nasty oily scum could be seen on the surface and the horses would not drink it.
3. 30 pigs or more were kept in a large yard and offal was lying about and the neighbours complained of offensive smells. Two deaths occurred in adjoining premises.
4. In the town there were six cottages which had the joint use of one cess pit and the surface drainage was similar to the court house. A well was situated 11 yards distant.
5. Not less than 500 cubic feet of faecal matter found its way into surface springs and these fed into the general water supply of the town - illness or death occurred in almost every house west of this point, etc., etc.

Accordingly, it was little wonder that the underground water of Naracoorte was thoroughly polluted and easy to understand why the people who used it - especially young children - were visited by the plague and "carried off wholesale". Comments from the Border Watch included one suggesting that the citizens of Naracoorte should "take it to heart that one-half the ills to which flesh is heir spring from foul air and bad water."

To these trials and tribulations Mr Thomas Hinckley offered the following remedy for dysentery:
Take four to six drops of spirits of camphor on a bit of sugar at intervals from 10 minutes to an hour or more - I was cured in a very short time... From my experience I still deem it to be one of the most valuable medicines for this class of disease.

As a matter of interest the death rate of Adelaide for the half-year ended 31 March 1875 was 34.8 per thousand - an amount of mortality almost unknown in any town in England and double that of the rest of the colony:

This high rate of mortality is said to be due solely to bad drainage and thus 500 persons are sent to their graves annually in the metropolis whose lives might be saved were the city kept as it ought to be... But the sad calamity at Naracoorte shows that it is necessary for small towns... to observe the laws of sanitation. If they do not the soil they are built upon gets charged with the filth they accumulate around them and eventually the source of water supply must get poisoned...

Religion was prosperous in Naracoorte and, by 1880, there were three churches and a fourth being erected for the Episcopalians. This was a far cry from 1856 when Governor MacDonnell visited Mosquito Plains where the Sabbath day was marked only by the appropriate religious services which each settler in the bush was obliged to hold within his own abode, there being no church or resident clergyman in the district. To alleviate this problem a liberal offer of Messrs H. and D. Jones guaranteed a salary of £100 to any minister of the Established Church appointed within the district.

There were three banks - National, South Australian and Commercial - the first named being "large and handsome enough for a city" - three hotels, three "country" stores, one wholesale store (Grice & Co.), a mill owned by Mr D. Simpson and the Herald newspaper office. The government school had 120 scholars and the scarcely less useful Institute, built at a cost of £2,000. Unfortunately, it was badly lighted and ventilated and the means of exit and entrance not what they might have been. Its library contained about 1,200 books and it boasted of about 100 subscribers.

The grandest building was the Presbyterian Churh, rumour suggesting that it was funded by an Art Union lottery and a writer in the local newspaper related this theory as fact, when it was pure fiction, or at least a half truth which, as Tennyson says, "is ever the blackest of lies." The facts were that the committee originally intended to raise £700 towards the cost by an art union, but wiser counsel prevailed and John Robertson and his brother paid off the whole sum.

The town had one white elephant in the form of its hospital built on a commanding site and in 1880 it was said:
Here it stands unoccupied and as a monument to the folly of those who built it. Its situation (although it is too far away from the town) is charming, its design is good and its construction a credit to the builder. But it is so big that all available funds have been absorbed in stone and mortar

Nomenclature

Mr Magarey says his father, who was at Naracoorte in 1861, was told by the natives that the name was Nanna-coorta and that this name was given to the public by the Press. Mr McIntosh says the word means "large waterhole''.' Correspondence held in the Public Records Office (SGO outward letter no. 222-1860), suggests that the creek on which the township is located was called Naracoorta by the Aborigines.

Town and Caves

It is apparent that the private town of "Kincraig" was also known by a corruption of an Aboriginal name for the local creek - "The village of Narricourt [sic], the property of McIntosh Brothers is romantically situated in a vale lying at the edge of these beautiful [Mosquito] plains... Adjacent to Mr McIntosh's residence a Government township is laid out..."- see
Register,
11 June 1859, page 2h and
9 June 1880 (supp.), page 2a,
Advertiser,

(Taken from an unpublished manuscript by Geoffrey H. Manning, titled A Social History of the Lower South East in the 19th Century)

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