THE EUROPEAN history of Valla is indeed an interesting one. From an impenetrable scrub of immense blackbutt timber and lawyer vines, the settlers of Valla needed endless hard labour and fortitude to survive.
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A previous article details the determination of Marmaduke England as a pioneer of Valla but his journey to the area was on the recommendation of the Buchanans who took up a selection at Deep Creek in 1870.
At the time the area was called the parish of Valley Valley and the Buchanans were isolated there until England's arrival in 1875.
Andrew and Nathaniel Buchanan were not youngsters when they selected at Deep Creek, both of them being in their 40s. They had arrived in NSW from Ireland as children of Lieutenant Charles Henry Buchanan and his wife, Annie, nee White.
The Buchanans and their four sons settled at Rimbanda in New England in 1839. In 1849, Nathaniel and Andrew joined the "forty-niners", the name given to those who travelled to the California gold rush fields, along with their brother Frank.
They must not have had any success in the gold fields because they worked their passages back in a ship called a windjammer, which is a three-masted sailing vessel.
Before leaving for California, the three brothers had a station on the New England Tablelands. On return they found through either fraud or mismanagement they were no longer owners of it.
In the years before they settled at Deep Creek they likely worked as drovers and station managers, initiating friendships all over eastern Australia which later shaped their lives.
By 1870 Andrew and Nathaniel were at Deep Creek to raise cattle and maize. Nathaniel had met explorer William Landsborough in the droving years and with him discovered wide tracts of pastoral country near present day Longreach.
The pull of further adventures in exploration saw him leave Deep Creek in 1873 with his wife Katherine. Nathaniel's ensuing story has been well documented as "the least rewarded of Australian explorers" and a "luckless pioneer".
More tales of Nathaniel and his extraordinary journeys can be found in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
The first Buchanan house was built of slabs and bark and stood on the banks of Deep Creek. Travel to Kempsey was by way of a bridle track through the dense scrub. There were sufficient supplies of fish, goats, fowls, vegetables and maize. Tea and sugar were luxuries.
Andrew and his wife raised eight children with son, George Nathaniel Buchanan, being the first European child to be born at Valla in 1873.
An interesting tale of this time is the method of mail delivery at Valla. A mailbox was nailed to a tree on the north side of Valla beach and the delivery was left there by a horseman riding along the beaches. Andrew Buchanan collected the mail there by rowing a boat down Deep Creek and the area was long known as Letterbox beach.
When Marmaduke England, his wife Anne and seven children arrived in 1875 they stayed with the Buchanans until they built their own primitive shelter just a mile upstream.
The friendship between the two men arose from their meeting at New England and an equality of background and education. Their two wives cemented the life-long friendship, acting as midwives for each other's birthing.
The next arrivals were the Greers and the Ainsworths, which made the foundation of a closely knit community.
Andrew's choice of staying on the Nambucca saw him overshadowed by his brothers' successes.
Nathaniel was famous for his exploration in North Queensland and the Northern Territory. At the age of 63 he accepted a commission from the South Australia Government to attempt to find a stock route from there to North Queensland. Although the route was eventually found impractical, the Buchanan Hills remain as his namesake.
Their brother William was a famed pastoralist, stock breeder and businessman and on his death in 1911 left an estate valued at almost 300,000 pounds. When Andrew died intestate in 1909, his estate of 58 acres at Deep Creek was valued at 750 pounds.
Andrew and his wife Sarah Elizabeth are buried at the Nambucca Cemetery.
This writer acknowledges the Gumbaynggirr people as the original custodians of this land and pays respect to their elders past, present and emerging. This article was sourced from the records of the Nambucca Headland museum.
