Paddys River

The river, road and Murrimba

Transport NSW’s road history records the river being named St Patrick’s River on 17 March 1818. Murrimba grew at the crossing: Willoughby Beadman’s Jolly Miller Inn opened in 1833, the year teamster James Murray won the tender for a wooden bridge. Inns, a blacksmith and a store served the traffic. Mrs Murray ran the store; the road history records that the early wooden bridge was washed away later in the nineteenth century.^[6]

A Colonial Secretary’s notice dated 15 April 1835 fixed the site of the village of Murrimba at the Great South Road crossing of Paddy’s River. It said the approved plan could be inspected in Sydney or at the Bong Bong magistrates’ office and gave a minimum price of two pounds an acre. The notice records the intended layout and terms; individual grants or purchases need separate title evidence.^[8]

The road history recounts a dramatic evening on 3 February 1865, when Ben Hall, John Gilbert and John Dunn held up Murrimba and gathered five local families at Jeffrey’s Inn. It reports that the gang took goods from Mrs Murray’s store and money from the inn before departing. The account is a useful starting point for finding contemporary newspaper reports and identifying the families involved.^[6]

Changing road travel

As transport changed, roadside businesses changed with it. The later Spot and Kay’s cafés supplied food and petrol to motorists, then closed following highway duplication and new bridges. Transport NSW also records a Second World War emergency airstrip near Uringalla Creek, thought probably not to have been used. These different traces show how a road crossing remained useful long after the early village had changed.^[6]

A Council community heritage study recorded little or no visible evidence of the earlier bridges at the highway crossing and dates the two-lane concrete bridges to November 1974. Its recommendation was to record the crossing rather than list it as a heritage item. Murrimba’s early township is no longer visible as a village; Paddys River remains a locality, and the surviving history can be followed through road records, parish maps and family documents.^[7]