Yarramalong Macadamia Nut Farm

The Great North “Walk Companion extract- page 111

We take the Lyre Bird trail and follow bushtracks and service trails down into the Wollombi Brook gully. Our route is the same mix of ridge trails and valley crossings as yesterday. It seems as though we are only just settled to a pace when we must descend into a gully and ascend on to yet another ridge. We stop a couple of times to admire the rare rock orchids (Dendrobium speciosum — also known as rock lilies) that have colonized some of the massive boulders along the trail. The landscape provides a great background for the rest of my stories about the early timber industry. I take up the story of ‘red gold’ as we continue south, picking up the trail back towards Cedar Hall. “Cedar cutters were in this valley in the 1830s, a full 20 years before your 5 greats grandparents.”
The first licence issued in the area was to another Fred, a Mr Frederick Hely, who, on April 1, 1835, received permission to cut cedar from crown land at Yarramalong on Wyong Creek and at the head of Tuggerah Beach Creek. Once the trees had been felled, the trunks were sawn into moderate-sized logs at makeshift sawpits and then hauled by bullock team 11 to 16 kilometres to Wyong Creek. There, the tree chunks were lashed together, rafted down the creek and across Tuggerah Lake to a small landing on the lake shore just south-east of the present town of Toukley. Cedar was such a prized timber that illegal cedar felling and shipping was already rampant in the 1830s.