Ah, Dungog: A Brief Survey of its Charming Houses & Historic Buildings

Dungog’s origins perhaps begin with timber cutters seeking cedar up the Williams River (then the River William). By 1825 Robert Dawson had named the Barrington area, while surveyor Thomas Florance named the Chichester River in 1827. Two years later George Boyle White explored the sources of the Allyn and Williams Rivers. Grants along the Williams followed to men such as Duncan Mackay, John Verge, James Dowling (later Chief Justice of NSW) and others, who, with their assigned convicts, began clearing land and building houses around a district that was by the early 1830s centred on a small settlement first known as Upper William. With a Court of Petty Sessions in 1833 and gazetted in 1838 as the village of Dungog (a local Gringai word), it had a court house, lockup and an increasing number of inns, shops and houses.