Dungog is a country town on the Williams River in the upper Hunter Region in New South Wales, Australia. Located in the middle of dairy and timber country, it is the centre of the Dungog Shire local government area and at the 2011 census it had a population of 2,131 people. The area includes the Fosterton Loop, of road, used in the annual Pedalfest. A small portion of Dungog lies in the Great Lakes Council LGA.
History
The traditional owners of the area now known as Dungog are the Gringai clan of the Wonnarua people, a group of indigenous people of Australia.
By 1825 Robert Dawson had named the Barrington area, while surveyor Thomas Florance named the Chichester River in 1827. Two years later George Boyle White explored the sources of the Allyn and Williams Rivers. Grants along the Williams followed to men such as Duncan Mackay, John Verge, James Dowling (later Chief Justice of NSW) and others, who, with their assigned convicts, began clearing land and building houses around a district that was by the early 1830s centred on a small settlement first known as Upper William. With a Court of Petty Sessions in 1833 and gazetted in 1838 as the village of Dungog (a local Gringai word), it had a court house, lockup and an increasing number of inns, shops and houses.
Lord St, as were Dowling, Mackay, Chapman, Hooke, Brown and Myles, were all named after landowners at the time surveyor Francis Rusden drew up his generous 1838 grid plan of Dungog’s streets. The descendants of some of these, notably the Dowlings, Mackays and Hookes, still live in and around Dungog. Others, such as John Lord, went bankrupt or, as did Myles, sold out early and moved to Sydney.
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