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The Macdonald River, Wiseman’s Road 1840

The Macdonald River, Wiseman’s Road 1840

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Rivers and Catchments Roads

Natural features

Hawkesbury River (Dyarubbin) Macdonald River (Gunanday)

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Hawkesbury district Wisemans Ferry

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Martens, Conrad

State Library of New South Wales

Rivers and Catchments

Roads

Macdonald River (Gunanday)

Gunanday, or the Macdonald River, is a tributary of the Hawkesbury River (Dyarubbin) that rises on on the eastern slopes of Mellong Range in the Great Dividing Range. It flows east then south of the Hunter Valley for about 120 km and into the Hawkesbury River at Wisemans Ferry. It was referred to as Lower, or First Branch in early European records. By the 1830s it had been renamed after former convict John Macdonald who had been given a land grant in the area.

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Hawkesbury district

Area surrounding the Hawkesbury River to Sydney's north and north-west, which was important in early colonial agriculture and the site of the early towns of Richmond and Windsor.

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Hawkesbury River (Dyarubbin)

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River that runs for 120 kilometres from the confluence of the Nepean and Grose rivers west of Sydney to Broken Bay north of Sydney. The Darug and Darkinjung people who lived along the river called it Dyarubbin.

Wisemans Ferry

Far northern village on the Hawkesbury River. The ex-convict ferryman Solomon Wiseman (1778-1838) was known as the 'King of the Hawkesbury' and two ferries still operate there. The local Aboriginal name for this spot, recorded in 1829 by the Reverend John McGarvie, was 'Woolloomoorang'.

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