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Casino
Pleasant country town on the banks of the Richmond River
Located 726 km north of Sydney and 228 km south of Brisbane,
Casino is a pleasant country town on the Richmond River. It
has a large number of interesting historic buildings. It is
also a major service centre for the rich pasture lands which
surround it. The annual rainfall is 1107 mm.
Prior to European settlement the Casino district was part
of the lands inhabited by the Bundjalung Aborigines. It is
unclear how many of the group lived around Casino although
one report, dating from 1840, talks about a gathering of a
'mob of wild blacks numbering five hundred or upwards'. The
Bundjalung spread across the area and their territory
reached as far north as Toowoomba and included the
modern-day towns of Tenterfield and Warwick. One of the
annual rituals of the Bundjalung people was the movement to
the coast during the winter months when the mullet were
plentiful. The inland peoples from around Casino brought
black bean seeds with them to trade for the fish.
The first European to discover the mouth of the Richmond
River was Captain Henry John Rous who in 1828 identified the
mouth of the river as he sailed along the coast from Sydney
Town to Moreton Bay. Rous entered the river and sailed about
20 miles (32 km) up river. He subsequently named the river
Richmond after the fifth Duke of Richmond. Later that year
the explorer Allan Cunningham reached the river by land.
Remarkably no one in Sydney seemed terribly interested and
it wasn't until 1838 that a group of cedar cutters entered
the lower Richmond Valley. It was around this time that
Henry Clay and George Stapleton took up land along the
Richmond River. Stapleton had cut a path down to the coast
from Glen Innes and, with Clay, he purchased cattle. The two
men eventually reached the Richmond Valley where they
claimed 30,000 acres. They named their property 'Cassino'
which was named after the beautiful town of Monte Cassino in
Italy.
By 1842 cedar cutters were in the lower reaches of the
Richmond Valley near Pelican Creek. Over the next decade the
whole of the valley was settled and by 1849 there were more
than 20 squatters and a significant number of cedar-cutters
who were shipping their timber to Sydney.
The first evidence of a settlement (the beginnings of a
town) occurs at a place known as 'The Falls' in the early
1850s. It is known that Petty Sessions were being held in
the valley as early as 1847 and that a postmaster was
employed in early 1849. By 1853 Assistant Surveyor W. Darke
had surveyed a site for a village and that same year both a
General Store and a Hotel - the Durham Ox Inn - were built
in what is now Richmond Street. Later that year a policeman
arrived in 'The Falls' and the following year a bark hut was
built which became the Court House.
In 1855 the Surveyor General, Sir Thomas Mitchell,
declared the need for a town in the valley with suburban
allotments and a proper subdivision. This was the site of
'The Falls' which was renamed Casino. Why the spelling was
changed from Cassino no one knows? It was in 1855 that the
town was officially gazetted.
By 1857 a private school had been opened (it catered for
15 students) on the bank of the Richmond River near where
the Irving Bridge stands. A doctor arrived two years later
and in the same year (1859) a second hotel, Tattersalls, was
opened.
In 1861 the town saw the opening of the first Public
School and the population had grown to a point where there
was a mail delivery once a week. Still this was hardly a
thriving country town. Robert Dawson, who arrived in the
area in 1870, described it as 'a drab little village though
there were some buildings of fair pretensions' and observed
that 'roads were almost non-existent, only rough bush tracks
being available' and that 'nowhere on the Richmond were
there any banks, churches, newspapers or telegraph lines'.
The next few years were to see this rather sad village
turned into a town. In June 1870 the Commercial Banking
Company of Sydney established a local branch. By December of
that year the 'Richmond River Express and Tweed Advertiser'
was being published and in 1871 a Police Magistrate and
Telegraph Office arrived. In 1876, after years of
construction, a bridge across the Richmond River was
completed.
Between the 1870s and the 1890s the town competed for
importance with Lismore and by the 1890s Lismore was clearly
the more important of the town centres. By 1905 the railway
had arrived but the town had already positioned itself as a
service centre for the surrounding rich agricultural lands.
Today Casino calls itself 'The Beef Capital'. It has an
official Beef Week which is held each May - the 'week'
actually lasts for 12 days. With a population of around
12,000 it is a thriving rural centre which relies heavily on
the region's cattle industry combined with the importance of
the local timber industry. To appreciate the scale of the
local cattle industry it is worth noting that over 120,000
head of cattle are sold at the Casino Livestock Selling
Centre each year
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Phone:
1300 136 559
Email:
enquiries@broadwalkbusinessbrokers.com.au
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Casino
