Port Macquarie
Port Macquarie is a port town and seaside resort with approximately 41,000 inhabitants in the Australian state of New South Wales at the mouth of the Hastings River.
The area of the present town was first described by Europeans in 1802 by Matthew Flinders, who measured the Australian coast. 1818 John Oxley reached the coast, as he followed her from the domestic to the Hastings River, commended them for settlement and named the area Port Macquarie after the then Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie. Port Macquarie was founded in 1821 as the first settlement on the north coast. It was inhabited by prisoners who have been found guilty of a crime in the colony in Sydney. These prisoners had to build the port facility and fell cedars in the hinterland.
Port Macquarie is located on the Mid North Coast, the southern end with Seal Rocks about 270 kilometers north of Sydney and its northern end is located in Coffs Harbour. The main attraction is the sandy coastal beaches. In Port Macquarie is also a Koala Hospital where koalas who have been injured due to car accidents or blind in fires, maintained and treated. Another attraction is the Sea Acres National Park and Rainforest Centre, where you can walk on a boardwalk through the rainforest. Volunteers explain the animal and plant world.
Port Macquarie is the center and the administrative seat of the local administrative area in Port Macquarie -Hastings Council.
Sons and daughters of the town
- George Lewis Becke (1855-1913), Australian writer of British descent
- James Magnussen (* 1991), Australian swimmer