At the base of Mullaley Mountain beside the Black Stump Way (Mullaley to Tambar Springs and Coolah Road), the John Oxley Monument pays tribute to explorer Oxley’s traversing the Gunnedah district and his naming of the Liverpool Plains – a vast area of black soil to the east and southeast of Mullaley, according to Visit NSW.
On August 27, 1818, he and his party crossed Bowen’s Rivulet (now Cox’s Creek) approximately 3km southwest of where the monument is located and by mid-October they reached the mouth of the Hastings River and named Port Macquarie. They named the Liverpool Plains after the then Prime Minister of England (1770-1828) Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.
Explorer, John Oxley.
Oxley, a surveyor-general, played an important part in the exploration of eastern Australia and also helped open up Van Diemen’s Land, now known as Tasmania.
The Oxley Rock plaque inscription reads: “This stone was erected to honour (John Oxley) and reminds us of the courage of all explorers and pioneers. May all who pass this way give a thought to ‘the tracks of those vanishing horsemen, on a path covered over by time, their glory all gone … still their echoes live on here … in the beat of my rhyme’.”
