Introduction to the McKinnon’s Spring Research

© Copyright Geoffrey Svenson 2022
last updated 3rd August 2024

The Central West pages which follow all relate to the outcome of research into a scatter of artifacts that caught  my eye one Saturday afternoon in  2004. (See “About this Site”)

We named the land involved McKinnons Spring – a consolidation of four blocks, the first of which was taken up in 1862. Others followed in 1886, 1890 and 1924, while associated road reserves were acquired in the 2000s – and the overall conclusion regarding those artifacts is that they relate mostly to events which occurred after 1885. However it was also concluded that the European history of the land over which the scatter was dispersed dates back to at least 1823.

The block taken up in 1862 was originally surveyed  in 1858 as Country Lot 40 in the County of Wellington but the applicant did not proceed with the purchase and in 1862 it was put to auction at the Lands Office in Orange. Country Lot 40 was then purchased by Donald McKinnon and subsequently became Lot 10 of DP 756888 in the Parish of Larras Lake. Hence McKinnon in the name we adopted for the blocks. The reference to a Spring derives from the 1858 survey which noted the presence of a quite large spring on the block involved. That survey also recorded that the land had been ‘applied for by William Coomber’…

Curiosity about the above-mentioned snippet of information opened up the whole can of worms that is laid out in these pages…

The core question … (Who was William Coomber and which of the occupation sites that could be seen on the blocks was the remnants of the Welcome Inn)…arose when the advertisement reproduced below was found…

Initial research found several persons named William Coomber were in the Colony of New South Wales  at key dates, one of whom proved to be he who had applied for the land subsequently purchased by Donald McKinnon.  William Coomber’s story is presented in the page that bears his name. That page flows into another that tells the story of Donald McKinnon, his wife Catherine and their involvement with William Coomber. Their stories will later be extended to two other people whose names were associated with early history of the blocks – Samuel George Gerrish and Charles Frederick Lance, together with a little about Dalton Brothers, merchants, flour-millers and general exploiters of their clientele in the true 19th Century tradition…

The outcome of this time-consuming and multi-faceted research has been to expose a very incomplete, almost shadowy trail of several lives, bringing into focus aspects of life for everyday people – those who worked the land or who were intimately involved with those who did – the store owners, inn-keepers, labourers, carriers, and general towns-people. Some were old enough to have lived in London during the last quarter of the 18^th Century, but the key to understanding them is to remember they all lived in 19^th century New South Wales during times of immense change. An exception to the shadowy trails of peoples’ lives is that of William Coomber. Although also incomplete, from 1839 to around 1874 the record is surprisingly clear, and especially so from 1840 to 1860.

Another part of the research, undertaken to more clearly understand where William Coomber might have built his “Welcome Inn, on Caloola Creek” involved a story that commenced in 1823 when Pierce “Percy” Simpson was appointed Commandant of an outpost of Empire – the convict settlement at Wellington Valley – and was instructed to find a shorter route than that then in use between Bathurst and the valley. The shorter route he presented to his masters was always referred to as Simpson’s Marked Line and establishing the path it followed became critical to understanding where William Coomber might, in 1857, have built his Welcome Inn -somewhere along Caleula (or as per is 1857 announcement – “Caloola”) Creek.

Fortunately, Coomber’s 1857 announcement of the Welcome Inn did include the intelligence that it was located on a Caloola Creek, half way between Orange and Stoney (sic) Creek. Logically, it would need to have been on a road, and Percy’s marked line became a likely candidate if its route could be tied to a watercourse called Caloola Creek. Thus evolved the stories of William Coomber and Donald McKinnon, and how, between 1857 and 1862, their names came to be linked to the same piece of land.  Once that relationship had been established – and there was one dating back to 1840  – there came a question about the location of a “Welcome Inn” licensed in 1862 to Donald McKinnon. The problem here of course, was that five years before, William Coomber had advertised his becoming mine host at a new hotel by the same name – the Welcome Inn – on Caloola Creek. That Coomber had suggested the route from Orange to Wellington by way of his Welcome Inn was 11 miles shorter than the other then in use was a critical clue. But, both Country Lot 40, originally applied for by William Coomber in 1857 or 1858, and Country Lot 27, purchased in 1854 by Donald McKinnon, were on Caleula Creek. And so the search commenced for a site that would potentially qualify as the location of a Welcome Inn on a road to Stony (or Stoney) Creek by way of Caloola (Caleula, Calula ¹ These are alternate spellings used on the maps and plans sighted during this research. ) Creek and on either Country Lot 27 or Country Lot 40.  If there was no road then the chances of there being an hotel on the land were, it might be thought, reasonably slim… But if a road that led to Stony Creek was found on both, the problem became even more complex. Fortunately, although there was another “Caloola Creek” around 90 kilometers away on the far side of Bathurst, it could easily be eliminated as a potential site, it being nowhere near Orange, and definitely not on any road that led to the Stony Creek diggings.

Ultimately, the only candidate for a road to Stony Creek in the late 1850s did turn out to be Percy’s marked line, but even then deciding which route it actually took in 1857 was quite an exercise… The story of that research is given a separate page – “Simpson’s marked line” – but quite critically, the outcome was to conclude that Percy’s line did traverse Country Lot 40 – or at least it did so in 1851. However, by the time the Welcome Inn was built in 1857 things were very likely in a state of flux – the Australian Gold Rushes had been in progress for six years and roads – or at least routes to be followed – were subject to rapid change. It was decided to take that in our stride and continue as best we could. Then, on 7th December 2022 a plan of survey was located in the Mitchell Library’s collections which confirmed that by 1863 at least one of the routes being used between Orange and Wellington passed Kater’s Mill ² Kater’s Mill site is on the eastern side of the Burrendong Way not far from the Kerrs Creek road , meaning that by then the ‘road to Mr Kater’s’ noted in Mitchell’s 1851 Field Book had become as much an option for the site of the Welcome Inn as Simpson’s marked line. So, having gone to all the trouble of determining that Simpsons Line traversed Country Lot 40, it became possible that by 1863 a route that traversed Country Lot 27 and on to the site of Kater’s Mill might have been the site of the Welcome Inn. The 1863 plan (reproduced below) confirms that by then the route to Kater’s Mill noted by Thomas Mitchell in 1851 continued beyond the mill towards Wellington, quite probably joining Percy’s line in the vicinity of “Curriguran” ³ now the village of “Kerrs Creek”. Interestingly it is necessary to introduce the caveat that William Coomber’s original premises were still more likely to have been on the land he applied for in 1857…

Along the way another enigma that begged for resolution reared its ugly head – the Parish of Larras Lake, and the origins of that name.

The explanations of the name found in the historical record and the reasons for its attribution to a land district (a PARISH) were not at all convincing…and there is a locality on the Mitchell Highway between Molong and Wellington that bears the intriguing name of Larras Lee… That one also called out for attention, just because it was there and possibly part of the story…

In summary, to keep things at least a little manageable, the outcome of this multi-faceted search has been torn into its component parts, some of which are still a work in progress. Even those parts that have been put together might be called preliminary versions, while those intended to present the involvement of Samuel Gerrish and Charles Lance remain “Under Development” . However, the stories of Larras Lake, Percy Simpson’s Marked Line, William Coomber & the Welcome Inn on Caleula Creek, and Donald and Catherine McKinnon can be accessed here or via CONTENTS in the menu bar above.

The story of Larras Lake is a substantial tale of its own and is further subdivided into individual topics. The subdivided topics can be accessed individually via the CONTENTS page or as a continuum starting here with a Larras Lake link.

• 1
  These are alternate spellings used on the maps and plans sighted during this research.
• 2
  Kater’s Mill site is on the eastern side of the Burrendong Way not far from the Kerrs Creek road
• 3
  now the village of “Kerrs Creek”